Saatchi to open museum of contemporary British art on south bank of Thames

The advertising entrepreneur Charles Saatchi disclosed his long-awaited plans yesterday for a privately run museum of contemporary British art in the heart of London.

The new gallery will open next spring at County Hall, the former home of the Greater London Council, not far from Tate Modern on the south bank of the Thames. It will offer Mr Saatchi the opportunity to show more of his collection of nearly 3,000 works by some of the best-known younger British artists in a location likely to attract a wider audience than the gallery he ran for 15 years in St John's Wood, north London.

An exhibition of the art of Damien Hirst, including mammals in formaldehyde and the giant £1m sculpture entitled Hymn, is being tipped as a likely attention-grabbing debut for the new 30,000sq-ft space.

Mr Saatchi said: "Tate Modern is astonishing and I love the Hayward and Serpentine [galleries]. But I think that new British art is the most exciting in the world and needs a dedicated showcase.

"The extraordinary rooms in County Hall will make an interesting setting for works like Hirst's shark and Tracey Emin's bed.

"I don't want the artists I believe in having to wait until they are pensioners before the public has a chance to see their works in large-scale shows."

Mr Saatchi became the most important connoisseur of works by the generation emerging from art schools, notably Goldsmiths', at the beginning of the 1990s. He owns some of the most celebrated works by artists such as Hirst, Emin, the Chapman brothers, Sarah Lucas and Jenny Saville, in a private collection that rivals the holdings even of Tate Modern.

His influence and spending power have been immense and have not always been welcomed by critics who believe he has distorted the market.

Exhibitions at the new gallery will primarily feature work by young British artists, with many shows curated by Mr Saatchi. But the gallery will also show work from other international collections.

Nigel Hurst, who will run the gallery on a day-to-day basis, was not available for comment yesterday. But there are suggestions that Mr Saatchi expects up to a million visitors a year. The gallery will be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. The London Aquarium, which occupies part of the County Hall basement, receives a million people a year and the nearby London Eye attracts 4 million. With close proximity to the Eurostar station at Waterloo, the Saatchi Gallery, which will charge an entrance fee, is likely to prove an extra attraction to art lovers from Europe.