Avoid the crowds - see some fantastic art for free

There are currently a number of 'big name' art exhibitions drawing big crowds in London including Picasso at Tate Britain,  Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery and David Hockney at the Royal Academy. I'm sure these are all excellent exhibitions but at around £14 for a ticket, they're not cheap options and it seems a shame to pay so much for art that you have to see over the top of other people's heads.  Far better, I say, to take advantage of many of the free exhibitions available which bizarrely enough are sometimes less crowded than the paying ones.

I had this in mind when I found myself near the Tate Britain at lunchtime one day last week with an hour to spare. My main objective was to see an exhibition by the photojournalist Don McCullin that I'd read about. This was smaller than I'd expected - may be around 30 or so photos in total - but certainly didn't disappoint. The pictures, all black and white, were typically bleak but thought provoking, particularly the pictures of homeless people in East London which were taken in the 70s and 80s but could have been taken yesterday.

With abit of extra time on my hands, I had a quick look at some of the other parts of the Gallery. They are currently previewing an interesting-sounding exhibition called Family Matters that starts in October and which will show the way in which families have been portrayed in art through the ages. I can't imagine many family portraits like this nowadays.

I also saw the Chris Ofili painting 'No woman, no cry' which as well as being a beautiful piece of work is a tribute to Stephen Lawrence.

Finally, I watched a short piece of video art called 'High Wire' by Catherine Yass. I'm not usually that keen on video art but if you're a fan of 'Man on Wire' then you'll enjoy this short film of a man balancing on a tightrope suspended between two tower blocks (somewhere in London I think but I couldn't quite work out where). For some reason he doesn't walk all the way across but stops about two thirds of the way across and walks backwards to where he started - very nerve wracking even though you know he's unlikely to fall off.

So all in all an hour well spent.