"What in the world do you want with art in Manchester? Why can't you stick to your cotton spinning?" According to the Manchester Guardian, this was how the seventh Duke of Devonshire reacted to the news that a massive art exhibition was taking place in the city that was a byword for manufacturing in the summer of 1857.
The duke refused to send any of his own treasured possessions on the 40-mile journey from Chatsworth House to Manchester. Yet many others followed the example of Prince Albert in supporting the exhibition, even if the city that was the centre of the industrial revolution seemed an incongruous setting for such an undertaking.
In the event, the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition was (and remains) the largest and most spectacular art exhibition ever mounted in Britain.
When the idea of an art exhibition in Manchester on the scale of the great exhibitions that had taken place in London, Paris and Dublin was first proposed, it was seized upon by a group of the city's businessmen and manufacturers.
In typical Victorian style, they formed a committee, raised a guarantee fund and then oversaw the realisation of an exhibition of 16,000 pictures and objects in fewer than 14 months. In the process, they also built the vast, iron-and-brick Art-Treasures Palace, in the grounds of Manchester Cricket Club in Old Trafford.
As Manchester's prevailing winds are from the west, the Art-Treasures Palace was on the west of the city to protect exhibits and visitors from the noxious fumes issuing from the city's factories. A railway station was built next to the venue to transport people and pictures to the exhibition, with a covered corridor to protect visitors from the rain. Two large refreshment rooms (first and second class) catered for different tastes and pockets, ranging from a full dinner for 2/6d to a plain penny bun.
It was estimated that one third of the pictures in England were on show in Manchester in 1857. During the course of the exhibition, 1.3 million visitors passed through its turnstiles. General admission cost one shilling and season tickets were two guineas.
Like the Great Exhibition of 1851, it acted as a kind of social laboratory where men, women and children of different classes gathered in a new (if temporary) public space. But unlike the Great Exhibition, the Art-Treasures Exhibition is relatively unknown outside Manchester.
This autumn the 150th anniversary of the Art-Treasures Exhibition will be marked with publications, exhibitions and a conference. By the end of the year the history of the exhibition will not only be better known, but parallels between the cultural politics of 1857 and 2007 will also become evident.
"The uneducated eye"
Thanks to the Victorian obsession with recording facts, it is possible to reconstruct the story of the Art-Treasures Exhibition from the wealth of correspondence and publications that it generated. No aspect of this great enterprise was too incidental for inclusion in the official report of the exhibition, which duly noted that £1,488 8s 8d had been taken in cloakroom receipts for walking sticks and umbrellas.
The effect of the rain on admission figures was also carefully monitored. The wettest day of the exhibition was Thursday 13 August when attendance dropped to 4,426. By contrast, 20,610 visited on Saturday 22 August, when the general admission ticket was halved from one shilling to sixpence after 2pm.
If this concern with revenue generation and counting visitors sounds familiar, so too was the Victorian equivalent of social inclusion and audience diversity. In July 1856 Prince Albert had approved the planned exhibition on condition that it would provide more than the "mere gratification of public curiosity" and should address the "uneducated eye" to some productive, practical effect. Manchester newspapers were generally positive in their appraisal of the exhibition and its impact on visitors. Others were more sceptical.
Charles Dickens recounted a story of 1,200 factory workers from Sheffield whose visit to Manchester was organised and paid for by their employer. One thousand had disappeared before their lunch was served in the second-class refreshment room, leaving just 200 to eat the meal.
"The care for the common people, in the provision made for their comfort, and refreshment, is admirable and worthy of all commendation," wrote Dickens. But, he argued: "They want more amusement, and particularly something in motion, though it were only a twisting fountain. The thing is too still after their lives of machinery; the art flows over their heads, in consequence."
George Scharf, the founding director of the National Portrait Gallery who was appointed art secretary to the exhibition, said: "The lower and uneducated classes did not go to the Art-Treasures Exhibition willingly." Many went only because their employer or school organised a trip for them. As a result, Scharf claimed that the galleries became so crowded that no one was able to see the exhibits properly.
But the real issue for Scharf was what he called "labelling for the multitude". Not one of the 16,000 exhibits was identified by even a rudimentary label. Although the production of labels on this scale would have been a daunting task, Scharf offered to take it on.
But he was refused permission by the exhibition committee, which wanted to boost catalogue sales. Visitors had to spend another shilling on the official catalogue, which featured a list of nearly everything on show. Tensions between the desire for income and inclusivity are not new.
The impact of the Art-Treasures Exhibition resonated well beyond Manchester. Although visitors from London and overseas were often shocked by the noise and dirt of the city, the exhibition was evidence that, in the words of the Manchester Guardian, its inhabitants were as interested in "the pleasant and the beautiful" as in "the practical and the pecuniary".
It was an unprecedented opportunity to see a survey of paintings by old masters, a chronology of British portraits and a broad spectrum of contemporary paintings, as well as photography, prints, drawings and decorative arts. French critic Théophile Thoré said the range and quality of pictures on show compared favourably with the Louvre in every respect except for the Italian Renaissance.
It would be impossible to recreate such an enterprise nowadays. Even in an age of blockbusters, surely we would find such exhibitionary gigantism indigestible. So how can a museum curate an exhibition about the Art-Treasures Exhibition in 2007?
Perhaps the answer to this question seemed more straightforward in 1957 when the Manchester City Art Gallery mounted a centenary survey of European and British painting from 1400 to 1857. In practice, the exhibition was a melancholy reflection on the number of paintings exported in the previous century. The curatorial perspective was aristocratic, rather than democratic.
The current politics of display are very different. Art Treasures in Manchester: 150 years on, at Manchester Art Gallery, will focus as much on the social as the artistic contexts and repercussions of 1857.
Like its Victorian precedent, the anniversary exhibition will seek to reach a wide and diverse audience, although it is anticipated that only schools (rather than factories) will organise compulsory visits.
In contrast to 1857, the gallery will not only provide "labelling for the multitude", but audiovisual and interactive interpretation as well. Even so, many of the preoccupations of 1857 still reverberate today. In particular, the desire still persists to transform both the image and the experience of the city through the widest access to a cultural spectacle. Plus ça change.
Helen Rees Leahy is the director of the Centre for Museology at the University of Manchester
The duke refused to send any of his own treasured possessions on the 40-mile journey from Chatsworth House to Manchester. Yet many others followed the example of Prince Albert in supporting the exhibition, even if the city that was the centre of the industrial revolution seemed an incongruous setting for such an undertaking.
In the event, the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition was (and remains) the largest and most spectacular art exhibition ever mounted in Britain.
When the idea of an art exhibition in Manchester on the scale of the great exhibitions that had taken place in London, Paris and Dublin was first proposed, it was seized upon by a group of the city's businessmen and manufacturers.
In typical Victorian style, they formed a committee, raised a guarantee fund and then oversaw the realisation of an exhibition of 16,000 pictures and objects in fewer than 14 months. In the process, they also built the vast, iron-and-brick Art-Treasures Palace, in the grounds of Manchester Cricket Club in Old Trafford.
As Manchester's prevailing winds are from the west, the Art-Treasures Palace was on the west of the city to protect exhibits and visitors from the noxious fumes issuing from the city's factories. A railway station was built next to the venue to transport people and pictures to the exhibition, with a covered corridor to protect visitors from the rain. Two large refreshment rooms (first and second class) catered for different tastes and pockets, ranging from a full dinner for 2/6d to a plain penny bun.
It was estimated that one third of the pictures in England were on show in Manchester in 1857. During the course of the exhibition, 1.3 million visitors passed through its turnstiles. General admission cost one shilling and season tickets were two guineas.
Like the Great Exhibition of 1851, it acted as a kind of social laboratory where men, women and children of different classes gathered in a new (if temporary) public space. But unlike the Great Exhibition, the Art-Treasures Exhibition is relatively unknown outside Manchester.
This autumn the 150th anniversary of the Art-Treasures Exhibition will be marked with publications, exhibitions and a conference. By the end of the year the history of the exhibition will not only be better known, but parallels between the cultural politics of 1857 and 2007 will also become evident.
"The uneducated eye"
Thanks to the Victorian obsession with recording facts, it is possible to reconstruct the story of the Art-Treasures Exhibition from the wealth of correspondence and publications that it generated. No aspect of this great enterprise was too incidental for inclusion in the official report of the exhibition, which duly noted that £1,488 8s 8d had been taken in cloakroom receipts for walking sticks and umbrellas.
The effect of the rain on admission figures was also carefully monitored. The wettest day of the exhibition was Thursday 13 August when attendance dropped to 4,426. By contrast, 20,610 visited on Saturday 22 August, when the general admission ticket was halved from one shilling to sixpence after 2pm.
If this concern with revenue generation and counting visitors sounds familiar, so too was the Victorian equivalent of social inclusion and audience diversity. In July 1856 Prince Albert had approved the planned exhibition on condition that it would provide more than the "mere gratification of public curiosity" and should address the "uneducated eye" to some productive, practical effect. Manchester newspapers were generally positive in their appraisal of the exhibition and its impact on visitors. Others were more sceptical.
Charles Dickens recounted a story of 1,200 factory workers from Sheffield whose visit to Manchester was organised and paid for by their employer. One thousand had disappeared before their lunch was served in the second-class refreshment room, leaving just 200 to eat the meal.
"The care for the common people, in the provision made for their comfort, and refreshment, is admirable and worthy of all commendation," wrote Dickens. But, he argued: "They want more amusement, and particularly something in motion, though it were only a twisting fountain. The thing is too still after their lives of machinery; the art flows over their heads, in consequence."
George Scharf, the founding director of the National Portrait Gallery who was appointed art secretary to the exhibition, said: "The lower and uneducated classes did not go to the Art-Treasures Exhibition willingly." Many went only because their employer or school organised a trip for them. As a result, Scharf claimed that the galleries became so crowded that no one was able to see the exhibits properly.
But the real issue for Scharf was what he called "labelling for the multitude". Not one of the 16,000 exhibits was identified by even a rudimentary label. Although the production of labels on this scale would have been a daunting task, Scharf offered to take it on.
But he was refused permission by the exhibition committee, which wanted to boost catalogue sales. Visitors had to spend another shilling on the official catalogue, which featured a list of nearly everything on show. Tensions between the desire for income and inclusivity are not new.
The impact of the Art-Treasures Exhibition resonated well beyond Manchester. Although visitors from London and overseas were often shocked by the noise and dirt of the city, the exhibition was evidence that, in the words of the Manchester Guardian, its inhabitants were as interested in "the pleasant and the beautiful" as in "the practical and the pecuniary".
It was an unprecedented opportunity to see a survey of paintings by old masters, a chronology of British portraits and a broad spectrum of contemporary paintings, as well as photography, prints, drawings and decorative arts. French critic Théophile Thoré said the range and quality of pictures on show compared favourably with the Louvre in every respect except for the Italian Renaissance.
It would be impossible to recreate such an enterprise nowadays. Even in an age of blockbusters, surely we would find such exhibitionary gigantism indigestible. So how can a museum curate an exhibition about the Art-Treasures Exhibition in 2007?
Perhaps the answer to this question seemed more straightforward in 1957 when the Manchester City Art Gallery mounted a centenary survey of European and British painting from 1400 to 1857. In practice, the exhibition was a melancholy reflection on the number of paintings exported in the previous century. The curatorial perspective was aristocratic, rather than democratic.
The current politics of display are very different. Art Treasures in Manchester: 150 years on, at Manchester Art Gallery, will focus as much on the social as the artistic contexts and repercussions of 1857.
Like its Victorian precedent, the anniversary exhibition will seek to reach a wide and diverse audience, although it is anticipated that only schools (rather than factories) will organise compulsory visits.
In contrast to 1857, the gallery will not only provide "labelling for the multitude", but audiovisual and interactive interpretation as well. Even so, many of the preoccupations of 1857 still reverberate today. In particular, the desire still persists to transform both the image and the experience of the city through the widest access to a cultural spectacle. Plus ça change.
Helen Rees Leahy is the director of the Centre for Museology at the University of Manchester
