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As part of Experience London, MasterCard is bringing you the best in culture, music, food and art suggestions this winter.

Whether your taste is for the traditional or the ultra-modern, explore the must-visit galleries in the capital.

1. The British Museum

The first national public museum in the world was founded in London in 1753 by Sir Hans Sloane. He granted free admission to all “studious and curious persons” to see his collection of curios from around the world – in all more than 71,000 objects, including prints and drawings. Today the British Museum in Bloomsbury is the holder of the national collection of prints and drawings, with approximately 50,000 drawings and more than two million prints dating from the beginning of the 15th century up to the present day.

2. The National Gallery

The National Gallery was founded in April 1824, when Parliament paid £57,000 for 38 works of art collected by the banker, John Julius Angerstein. They were displayed at Angerstein’s house, number 100 Pall Mall, until a new building was built on Trafalgar Square and opened in 1838. Now the collection has more than 2,300 works, including showstoppers such as van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus, Turner’s Fighting Temeraire and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. At the moment there is also an exhibition of Francisco de Goya’s portraits, until January. Regarded as one of the last Old Masters and the first of the moderns, Goya’s paintings are technically brilliant - one not to be missed.

3. Tate Britain

In 1897 the Tate opened its doors, displaying a small collection of British artworks; now there are four galleries, with two of them in London: Tate Britain and Tate Modern. At Tate Britain, along with a permanent exhibition of British art from 1500 to the present day, there is an extraordinary and unique show of Frank Auberbach’s work. Regarded as one of our greatest living painters – this exhibition is in celebration of his 84th birthday – around 70 paintings and drawings from throughout his career will be on display until March next year.

4. Tate Modern

The big exhibition on until January at Tate Modern is The World Goes Pop, which celebrates the international context of Pop Art – 160 works from Latin America to the Middle East. Instead of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, the exhibition delights in showcasing those left out of the art history narrative, including Ushio Shinohara’s “popped” versions of 19th-century Japanese prints.

5. The Royal Academy

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The current showstopper on the London art circuit is Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy. The exhibition, which starts in the courtyard of the Academy in Piccadilly with a forest of tree sculptures, showcases his work since 1993 - the year Ai returned to China after 12 years living in New York. Some of his sculptures included in the show are Surveillance Camera and Video Camera, made from marble, along with Straight, which was constructed out of 90 tonnes of steel rods collected from buildings damaged in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, before being straightened by hand.

6. The Serpentine Gallery

The Serpentine Gallery, a Grade II-listed former tea pavilion, was designed to be a place to show the work of emerging British artists and was opened in May 1970. Its winter exhibitions this year include Michael Craig-Martin at the Serpentine Gallery and Simon Denny at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery (designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Zaha Hadid). Do pop to the excellent restaurant, Magazine while you’re there.

7. The Barbican

Another modernist building,The Barbican, located in the heart of the City of London, has an excellent gallery (along with cinema and performance spaces; it is Europe’s largest multi-arts venue and conference centre), and is currently showing work by London-based artist Eddie Peake. Peake, who is much loved by the art world, works across the mediums of sculpture, live dance and video installations and sexuality and desire are constant strands of his work (this exhibition features nudity).

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