THIS new entrance and balcony are to be created at the rear of York Art Gallery as part of an £8 million redevelopment.

The artists’ impression by architects Ushida Findlay shows how visitors will be able to enter the gallery for the first time from the Museum Gardens, via a first-floor balcony.

They will also be able to leave the gallery into a new Artists’ Garden – where a wide range of events and installations will be staged – on land which has been closed off since monks built St Mary’s Abbey a thousand years ago.

Janet Barnes, chief executive of York Museums Trust, which runs the gallery, said the new entrance was in a previously hidden corner of York that very few people had ever seen.

She said the new balcony would be reached by both stairs and a lift, with visitors entering a reception area with a small shop before heading into the mezzanine gallery which would form part of the gallery’s centre of ceramic art.

A trust spokesman said: “This space will be used to display works from the gallery’s British Studio Ceramics collectizon, which is the largest and most significant collection in the country.”

“From there, they can use a new lift inside to access the rest of the gallery.

“Outside, from the Artists’ Garden, visitors can walk down a new snickleway onto Exhibition Square.

“Alternatively, they can walk through new garden spaces that will link to the current York Museum Gardens.”

The gallery, which closed almost a year ago, will reopen in spring 2015 with 60 per cent more exhibition space.

A suite of three galleries will allow for more ambitious and high profile exhibitions to be staged, and improved facilities will include a new cafe, shop, toilets and lift and a new learning room.