The ability to strategically position buckets to catch rainwater would seem to be one of the most important skills needed at the Watts Gallery, at least on my visit, when the evidence of a recent downpour was everywhere.
But as well as dealing with holes in the roof, the director of the Watts, Perdita Hunt, is grappling with financial holes at the gallery in Compton, Surrey. It first opened in 1904 to display the work of George Frederic Watts, one of the most important figures in 19th-century British art and a leading light in the art for all movement.
But time has taken its toll, and the gallery is currently operating on deficit budgets, making it impossible to do anything more than patch up the crumbling building. The lifeline is a £10m fundraising campaign to redevelop the Grade II* arts and craft building, support conservation work on the collection and fund an endowment.
A lot of money has already been raised, including an earmarked grant of £4.3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), but Hunt still needs to find nearly £2m by spring next year to unlock the HLF money.
Watts himself was a philanthropist who supported many charities, and would have simply sold a painting to fund his work. More than a century after his death this is exactly what the gallery is doing in order to plug the £2m gap, although it is not Watts' works that is being sold, but two paintings by Albert Moore and Edward Burne-Jones.
There has been opposition to the planned sale, although UK museums are moving towards and more flexible position on disposal. The Museums Association (MA) has just voted to change the wording of its code of ethics to allow financially motivated sales in "exceptional circumstances".
The decision, taken at the MA's annual general meeting in Glasgow in late October, allowed the Watts trustees to go ahead and sanction the sale of paintings. The gallery is hoping another public collection will buy them.
"The thing I want to stress most is that this is about the long-term care of the collection," Hunt says. "The de-accessioning is in line with our collections management policy, and the proceeds from the sale will to go to the endowment specifically to support the collection."
The organisation has recently developed a collections management policy and decided that the gallery is not about all Victorian art; it is firstly about the work of GF Watts and secondly about his wife Mary, a craftswoman who designed, among other things, the remarkable cemetery chapel nearby.
"In the light of that principle, what we have sitting in store that is not in our core collection is to be discussed," Hunt says. "Do people come to the gallery to see other artists? I don't think so. This about dynamic collections management for the core collection."
Away from the controversy over the sale of paintings, Hunt has gone about quietly transforming the gallery since she joined in 2004. She was brought in to spearhead the Hope Appeal, named after an 1886 Watts painting, and this has been her main concern.
Raising cash for the endowment is a condition of the HLF grant, but if that is secured, work on the redevelopment should mean closing in the autumn for a two-year restoration.
Breadth of experience
Much of Hunt's work has involved recruiting new people to make this project possible, and this started with the trustees.
"When I became director I felt it was really important to make sure that the trustee body was ready to take on a project of this nature," Hunt says. "I discussed with the chairman appointing trustees who had the skills base to support a major enterprise."
The result has been the creation of a trustee body that includes Rob Dickins, a former Victoria and Albert Museum trustee and ex-Warner Bros executive; Christopher Forbes, the vice-chairman of Forbes Inc; Robert Napier, the chief executive of World Wildlife Foundation-UK and chairman of the Met Office; and former National Maritime Museum director Richard Ormond, the chairman of trustees.
The staff have also changed during Hunt's directorship. Mark Bills became only the fourth curator of the gallery in past 70 years when he joined last year from the Museum of London. Hunt also appointed a marketing manager, Andrew Churchill, who came from the Gulbenkian-winning Pallant House in Sussex.
The influx in new blood is best shown by the increase in volunteers from a paltry five when she joined to 150 today. Her emphasis on the importance of people and teamwork probably comes from the type of work she did before.
"What is interesting about Perdita Hunt is that she has a wider experience than just the museum sector, with her work for charities and arts organisations," says Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, which has had a long association with Watts.
"She is thoughtful and forthright, particularly over the difficult issue of de-accessioning. She has handled that well and has been very patient."
Hunt's previous employers include the Arts Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, an arts centre in Cardiff and a craft society in Suffolk. Most recently, she was the director of communications for the World Wildlife Fund-UK. "I was trying to save the planet," she jokes. "I am now trying to save a small part of it."
Hunt says the job she's had that was most like the Watts was her role as the marketing and development manager at the Aldeburgh Foundation in Suffolk, which is dedicated to the legacy of the composer Benjamin Britten and the tenor Peter Pears.
"The thing I take a great deal from is my time at Aldeburgh. There you drew very deeply from the vision of Britten and Pears. There was this combination of performance and learning and here at the Watts you have exhibitions and learning."
Goodbye to the buckets
The sale of the paintings is not the only thing that has drawn attention to the gallery during Hunt's tenure. Last year the gallery participated in the BBC's Restoration Village programme, where the public votes for the most deserving heritage project to receive lottery cash.
The Watts Gallery got to the 2006 final, but was pipped to the post by Chedham's Yard, a traditional rural craft shop in Warwickshire.
"Restoration Village was amazing, a real roller-coaster. We were gutted to lose, but strategically the best result has been the HLF grant and the publicity has helped, so we feel we have won in both ways. The Watts Gallery caught the public imagination, and our visitor numbers doubled."
The gallery's attitude to visitor figures is another area that might attract attention. The publicity created by Restoration Village pushed annual visits up to about 25,000 and even post-redevelopment, Hunt says she is not looking for more than this.
"We are very aware that what we are not doing is trying to turn it into a major, mega-destination. There will always be a balance between keeping it as a place of contemplation and a place for events and activities. It would be wrong to be thinking of more than 25,000 people as our target."
Keeping numbers down might be helped by another decision that gallery has taken - to introduce charging. How this tallies with the gallery's foundation on socialist principles is hard to see, but it is linked to the aim to increase the number of friends from 300 now to 2010 by 2010. Friends will be allowed in free.
"With charging what we have to ensure is that we bring our visitors with us. And the thing we are trying to encourage is to tell our visitors that each time you come back to Watts Gallery there will be something new to look at."
Hunt is obviously a passionate believer in the importance of Watts and the legacy he and Mary left. She talks wistfully of how coming across the building is like seeing "sleeping beauty".
"I hope that at last Watts' star is beginning to rise and his time has come. When people start to learn the story of what the Watts' did and their vision they are all captivated," Hunt says. "But above all it is the legacy of this extraordinary building that they left us."
And it is a legacy that Hunt hopes will soon no longer include putting out buckets.
Perdita Hunt: at a glance
Perdita Hunt is an arts administrator who has worked in senior positions at the Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
She was a trustee at the Watts before being invited to become the director and lead the £10m Hope Appeal to restore the gallery and conserve its collection.
Before the Watts she was the director of communications at World Wildlife Fund-UK.
She has also been a theatre projects coordinator at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, marketing and development director at the Aldeburgh Foundation in Suffolk and press adviser to Suffolk Crafts Society.
She is a trustee of Baynards Zambia Trust and the Sonic Arts Network. She lives in Godalming, Surrey.
But as well as dealing with holes in the roof, the director of the Watts, Perdita Hunt, is grappling with financial holes at the gallery in Compton, Surrey. It first opened in 1904 to display the work of George Frederic Watts, one of the most important figures in 19th-century British art and a leading light in the art for all movement.
But time has taken its toll, and the gallery is currently operating on deficit budgets, making it impossible to do anything more than patch up the crumbling building. The lifeline is a £10m fundraising campaign to redevelop the Grade II* arts and craft building, support conservation work on the collection and fund an endowment.
A lot of money has already been raised, including an earmarked grant of £4.3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), but Hunt still needs to find nearly £2m by spring next year to unlock the HLF money.
Watts himself was a philanthropist who supported many charities, and would have simply sold a painting to fund his work. More than a century after his death this is exactly what the gallery is doing in order to plug the £2m gap, although it is not Watts' works that is being sold, but two paintings by Albert Moore and Edward Burne-Jones.
There has been opposition to the planned sale, although UK museums are moving towards and more flexible position on disposal. The Museums Association (MA) has just voted to change the wording of its code of ethics to allow financially motivated sales in "exceptional circumstances".
The decision, taken at the MA's annual general meeting in Glasgow in late October, allowed the Watts trustees to go ahead and sanction the sale of paintings. The gallery is hoping another public collection will buy them.
"The thing I want to stress most is that this is about the long-term care of the collection," Hunt says. "The de-accessioning is in line with our collections management policy, and the proceeds from the sale will to go to the endowment specifically to support the collection."
The organisation has recently developed a collections management policy and decided that the gallery is not about all Victorian art; it is firstly about the work of GF Watts and secondly about his wife Mary, a craftswoman who designed, among other things, the remarkable cemetery chapel nearby.
"In the light of that principle, what we have sitting in store that is not in our core collection is to be discussed," Hunt says. "Do people come to the gallery to see other artists? I don't think so. This about dynamic collections management for the core collection."
Away from the controversy over the sale of paintings, Hunt has gone about quietly transforming the gallery since she joined in 2004. She was brought in to spearhead the Hope Appeal, named after an 1886 Watts painting, and this has been her main concern.
Raising cash for the endowment is a condition of the HLF grant, but if that is secured, work on the redevelopment should mean closing in the autumn for a two-year restoration.
Breadth of experience
Much of Hunt's work has involved recruiting new people to make this project possible, and this started with the trustees.
"When I became director I felt it was really important to make sure that the trustee body was ready to take on a project of this nature," Hunt says. "I discussed with the chairman appointing trustees who had the skills base to support a major enterprise."
The result has been the creation of a trustee body that includes Rob Dickins, a former Victoria and Albert Museum trustee and ex-Warner Bros executive; Christopher Forbes, the vice-chairman of Forbes Inc; Robert Napier, the chief executive of World Wildlife Foundation-UK and chairman of the Met Office; and former National Maritime Museum director Richard Ormond, the chairman of trustees.
The staff have also changed during Hunt's directorship. Mark Bills became only the fourth curator of the gallery in past 70 years when he joined last year from the Museum of London. Hunt also appointed a marketing manager, Andrew Churchill, who came from the Gulbenkian-winning Pallant House in Sussex.
The influx in new blood is best shown by the increase in volunteers from a paltry five when she joined to 150 today. Her emphasis on the importance of people and teamwork probably comes from the type of work she did before.
"What is interesting about Perdita Hunt is that she has a wider experience than just the museum sector, with her work for charities and arts organisations," says Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, which has had a long association with Watts.
"She is thoughtful and forthright, particularly over the difficult issue of de-accessioning. She has handled that well and has been very patient."
Hunt's previous employers include the Arts Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, an arts centre in Cardiff and a craft society in Suffolk. Most recently, she was the director of communications for the World Wildlife Fund-UK. "I was trying to save the planet," she jokes. "I am now trying to save a small part of it."
Hunt says the job she's had that was most like the Watts was her role as the marketing and development manager at the Aldeburgh Foundation in Suffolk, which is dedicated to the legacy of the composer Benjamin Britten and the tenor Peter Pears.
"The thing I take a great deal from is my time at Aldeburgh. There you drew very deeply from the vision of Britten and Pears. There was this combination of performance and learning and here at the Watts you have exhibitions and learning."
Goodbye to the buckets
The sale of the paintings is not the only thing that has drawn attention to the gallery during Hunt's tenure. Last year the gallery participated in the BBC's Restoration Village programme, where the public votes for the most deserving heritage project to receive lottery cash.
The Watts Gallery got to the 2006 final, but was pipped to the post by Chedham's Yard, a traditional rural craft shop in Warwickshire.
"Restoration Village was amazing, a real roller-coaster. We were gutted to lose, but strategically the best result has been the HLF grant and the publicity has helped, so we feel we have won in both ways. The Watts Gallery caught the public imagination, and our visitor numbers doubled."
The gallery's attitude to visitor figures is another area that might attract attention. The publicity created by Restoration Village pushed annual visits up to about 25,000 and even post-redevelopment, Hunt says she is not looking for more than this.
"We are very aware that what we are not doing is trying to turn it into a major, mega-destination. There will always be a balance between keeping it as a place of contemplation and a place for events and activities. It would be wrong to be thinking of more than 25,000 people as our target."
Keeping numbers down might be helped by another decision that gallery has taken - to introduce charging. How this tallies with the gallery's foundation on socialist principles is hard to see, but it is linked to the aim to increase the number of friends from 300 now to 2010 by 2010. Friends will be allowed in free.
"With charging what we have to ensure is that we bring our visitors with us. And the thing we are trying to encourage is to tell our visitors that each time you come back to Watts Gallery there will be something new to look at."
Hunt is obviously a passionate believer in the importance of Watts and the legacy he and Mary left. She talks wistfully of how coming across the building is like seeing "sleeping beauty".
"I hope that at last Watts' star is beginning to rise and his time has come. When people start to learn the story of what the Watts' did and their vision they are all captivated," Hunt says. "But above all it is the legacy of this extraordinary building that they left us."
And it is a legacy that Hunt hopes will soon no longer include putting out buckets.
Perdita Hunt: at a glance
Perdita Hunt is an arts administrator who has worked in senior positions at the Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
She was a trustee at the Watts before being invited to become the director and lead the £10m Hope Appeal to restore the gallery and conserve its collection.
Before the Watts she was the director of communications at World Wildlife Fund-UK.
She has also been a theatre projects coordinator at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, marketing and development director at the Aldeburgh Foundation in Suffolk and press adviser to Suffolk Crafts Society.
She is a trustee of Baynards Zambia Trust and the Sonic Arts Network. She lives in Godalming, Surrey.