A new museum recently opened in London is Banksy Limitless, a short walk from South Kensington tube station at 79 – 85 Old Brompton Road, SW7 3LD It is in an old Victorian building which was transformed into a museum in September 2025. The entrance fee is £25.

Banksy claims to dislike museums but, as a major artist, he has accepted the inevitable and lent his name to a museum that showcases his work. He is a street artist who often spray paints new works onto the side of buildings in the middle of the night. As one person says, ‘having a Banksy on the side of your building increases its value rather than decreases it’.

Love is in the Air aka Flower Thrower by Banksy. Photo Credit: © Edwin Lerner.

You do not find out who he is at the museum as all videos of him working are pixelated and interviews with him show Banksy with a hoodie over his head so you cannot identify the artist. Banksy is keen to protect his anonymity and often uses stencils on his paintings because they are ‘quick and hard to get wrong’ (as he says himself), With Banksy it is the idea rather than the execution that is the point and he remains one of our wittiest and most subversive artists, whose work is as good in reproduction as it is in its original form.

He is also a political artist and his sympathy for protest movements, particularly those related to what has happened in Gaza and Palestine, is apparent in his paintings. He also uses animals in his works, that often appear at unpredictable times and places. (Banksy’s Instagram account is used to confirm his authorship of new paintings.) He has made a painting of a judge hitting a protestor with his hammer, one which was painted over soon after it appeared as the building on which it was featured – the Royal Courts of Justice at the meeting of the City and Westminster at Temple Bar – as it was thought of as a public building which needed preserving. The original of the painting can be seen in the museum.

Banksy Game Changer painting celebrating NHS Staff. Photo Credit: © Edwin Lerner.

Original Banksys often sell for millions of pounds at auction. (The museum includes videos of these events.) To undermine this process Banksy, who has sold his works on the street for around sixty dollars, a small fraction of their value at auction, offered one of his paintings to be auctioned but built a shredder into it so that it was partially destroyed once it was sold. As if to prove the artist’s point, the resulting work was later sold for 13.8 million dollars.

Many of the artists best known works are on display at Banksy Illuminated, including the protestor throwing flowers, a ruined telephone box, the Diana Tenner (a fake £10 note based on portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales which Banksy made a million pounds worth of) and Wall Art (a picture of a neanderthal pushing a modern supermarket trolley that Banksy smuggled unto the British Museum and which the museum now owns and displays).

Girl with Balloon painting renamed Love Is in the Bin by Banksy. Photo Credit: © Edwin Lerner.

Banksy Illuminated is interesting for people who enjoy one of our most challenging artists who makes no secret of his political views but goes to great lengths to protect his identity.

Vandalized Phone Box (2005) by Banksy. Photo Credit: © Edwin Lerner.