Hobson’s choice
As the Contemporary Art Society celebrates its centenary, Gareth Harris looks at what it is doing to ensure its continuing relevance
"We were the first contemporary art organisation in this country and supported artists long before contemporary art became fashionable and a type of 'luxury brand'," says Paul Hobson, director of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS), which celebrates its centenary this year.
Since its launch in 1909 by a group of influential art world figures, including the painter Roger Fry, the CAS has purchased about 8,000 works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin and Mark Wallinger for UK public collections. The organisation attempts to buy art "ahead of the curve", when works are still affordable.
It was established with the remit to acquire and exhibit as widely as possible paintings and sculptures not more than 20 years old, explains Hobson. They were then presented to national and municipal collections.
The purchases were funded, as they continue to be, by individual subscriptions and from museums. Today the society has a nationwide membership of 90 museum subscribers with contemporary art collections. The annual museum membership fee is £1,000 (fine art) or £350 (craft).
The CAS also offers an art advisory service, CAS Consultancy, for corporate collections, alongside a full commissioning service for projects large and small, from landmark temporary and permanent public art to interior and architectural interventions. Advisory fees go back into the acquisitions pot to acquire new works for member museums.
Individual collectors are also a firm feature of the CAS brand with a £275 membership scheme (£225 outside London) offering benefits that include visits to artists' studios. Meanwhile, a listing on the gallery members page of the CAS website is one of the benefits offered under the £95 annual membership package for commercial galleries.
This broad remit means that the organisation straddles the commercial and public sectors. Gill Hedley, CAS director from 1993 to 2006, outlines how the organisation moves in tandem with the art market. "In the 1980s, the CAS had become rather middle of the road and I established a link with the artists, galleries and collectors who were crucial to the 1990s/2000s boom," she says.
But therein lies potential conflict, says Sheila McGregor, chief executive of the online contemporary art resource Axis: "One of the interesting things about the CAS is that it faces two ways, directing some of its activity towards the commercial art world and individual collectors and at the same time working to support public collections."
All things to all people?
"While there are clearly synergies between these two spheres of activity, there are sometimes tensions, too," McGregor says. "The CAS has never fully embraced the public-sector ethos of its member museums or made any real attempt to engage with local or regional government."
In Hobson's view, the CAS has always recognised the logic of working across different sectors. "We have a strong dialogue with all of our museum members and a good insight into the context in which they work… I do recognise that we can play a more influential role by identifying who the other key decision makers are in the local, institutional, policy or funding context that curators have to negotiate with in order to develop their collections."
He says this will be a key feature of the relaunched professional development programme, which has been renamed the National Network.
This scheme, which involves 100-150 national museum professionals, comprises seminars, networking events and trips for an annual subscription of £195.
Hobson's revamp is not just confined to curators; the CAS chief has introduced an "invitation-only" £30 annual membership for artists, which will enable practitioners to post images of works on self-managed micro-sites on the CAS website. "Artists are our primary stakeholders," he emphasises.
The most significant overhaul, however, is Hobson's new approach to purchasing contemporary works for museums. Previously, a CAS buying panel bought works on behalf of its museum members.
This buying usually took place over a four-year period at the end of which curators were invited to a "distribution" exhibition of the works acquired. Museums were then asked to list in order of preference their favourite pieces.
"The majority of museums would have to settle for their second or third choice of work, meaning that over any four-year cycle, it could be 12 to 16 years before a museum got its first choice," says Hobson. McGregor agrees that the distribution exhibition process was "too big, too technically challenging and sometimes too conceptually at odds with what [museums] had in their collections".
The solution, according to Hobson, is purchasing in close collaboration with small groups of its museum members over a four-year period. He says this is based on a close dialogue with the museums' curators and in the context of their acquisition policies so they will actually get the work they want.
"This year we are focusing on 10 museums [including the Herbert in Coventry, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea], which share an interest in developing their holdings in new media," he says.
Special collections
Significantly, Hobson adds that this development is informed by the Special Collection Scheme (SCS), the £3.3m eight-year project run by the CAS between 1997-2005, which enabled 15 museums throughout England to acquire 610 contemporary works by 313 artists. The time-limited project, which ended in 2005, was almost universally popular.
Godfrey Worsdale, head of the Baltic centre in Gateshead, says: "The scheme not only had a tremendous impact on the country's public collections, but also on the professional development of its curators."
Similar ventures such as the Art Fund International scheme have since provided a purchasing lifeline for regional institutions (the charity gave £1m each to five partnerships across the UK in late 2007 to spend over five years).
Clare Lilley, head curator of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, says that the CAS is "still relevant, especially if it figures a way of working with the Art Fund so that they don't replicate each other's work".
New regional initiatives are an integral part of Hobson's vision. He repeatedly refers to the CAS as being "London-centric". Although individual membership is growing rapidly - it has increased threefold since 2007 - membership is approximately 70 per cent London based. He says he wants to reverse this percentage over the next five years.
ARTfutures, the contemporary art fair held in London by the CAS to help raise money for acquisitions by its members, has been cancelled this year, but could be "rolled out in different regions of the UK", he adds.
Other regional developments include a new outpost operation in the northwest funded by Arts Council England (ACE) North West and headed by Mark Doyle, a curator at the Lowry in Salford Quays. Market development projects based in East Anglia and the East Midlands are also planned in collaboration with ACE.
"The organisation needed to review all of its activities after the SCS. Membership was depleted, the visibility of the organisation was low, the brand of the organisation was a little tired," says Hobson, whose revamp has ruffled feathers among some museum members known to be "upset" by the shake-up.
However, Louisa Buck, co-author of Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector's Handbook, says: "Hobson's kind of joined-up mindset is just what the CAS needs to adapt to today's ever more challenging art world."
For McGregor, the original rationale for the creation of the CAS in 1909 is as relevant now as it ever was. "It has done and continues to do sterling work in making sure that our collections reflect the latest developments in artistic practice. Significant additional public funding is clearly what the CAS needs and deserves."
The CAS receives an annual ACE grant of £86,000, which amounts to about 10 per cent of its funding, with the remainder coming from subscriptions. ACE has also commissioned the CAS to conduct research that will inform a national strategy for collecting contemporary art that will be launched this year.
Other high-profile plans should keep the CAS in the public eye. A fundraising auction of works by over 30 artists on a Gothic theme took place last month with pieces donated by headline-hitting figures such as the Chapman brothers and Grayson Perry.
Hobson hopes to mount a CAS display at Tate Britain next year, while the inaugural CAS Annual award will be announced in November. The £60,000 prize, funded by the private philanthropic Sfumato Foundation, will enable a member museum to commission a new work.
And what about the thorny issue of collecting contemporary art in these fraught economic times? "The shift back to criticality due to the recession is good for the CAS. We are known for discreet, informed and meaningful engagement with contemporary practice. We are not flashy," says Hobson, smiling.
Gareth Harris is a freelance arts writer
Since its launch in 1909 by a group of influential art world figures, including the painter Roger Fry, the CAS has purchased about 8,000 works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin and Mark Wallinger for UK public collections. The organisation attempts to buy art "ahead of the curve", when works are still affordable.
It was established with the remit to acquire and exhibit as widely as possible paintings and sculptures not more than 20 years old, explains Hobson. They were then presented to national and municipal collections.
The purchases were funded, as they continue to be, by individual subscriptions and from museums. Today the society has a nationwide membership of 90 museum subscribers with contemporary art collections. The annual museum membership fee is £1,000 (fine art) or £350 (craft).
The CAS also offers an art advisory service, CAS Consultancy, for corporate collections, alongside a full commissioning service for projects large and small, from landmark temporary and permanent public art to interior and architectural interventions. Advisory fees go back into the acquisitions pot to acquire new works for member museums.
Individual collectors are also a firm feature of the CAS brand with a £275 membership scheme (£225 outside London) offering benefits that include visits to artists' studios. Meanwhile, a listing on the gallery members page of the CAS website is one of the benefits offered under the £95 annual membership package for commercial galleries.
This broad remit means that the organisation straddles the commercial and public sectors. Gill Hedley, CAS director from 1993 to 2006, outlines how the organisation moves in tandem with the art market. "In the 1980s, the CAS had become rather middle of the road and I established a link with the artists, galleries and collectors who were crucial to the 1990s/2000s boom," she says.
But therein lies potential conflict, says Sheila McGregor, chief executive of the online contemporary art resource Axis: "One of the interesting things about the CAS is that it faces two ways, directing some of its activity towards the commercial art world and individual collectors and at the same time working to support public collections."
All things to all people?
"While there are clearly synergies between these two spheres of activity, there are sometimes tensions, too," McGregor says. "The CAS has never fully embraced the public-sector ethos of its member museums or made any real attempt to engage with local or regional government."
In Hobson's view, the CAS has always recognised the logic of working across different sectors. "We have a strong dialogue with all of our museum members and a good insight into the context in which they work… I do recognise that we can play a more influential role by identifying who the other key decision makers are in the local, institutional, policy or funding context that curators have to negotiate with in order to develop their collections."
He says this will be a key feature of the relaunched professional development programme, which has been renamed the National Network.
This scheme, which involves 100-150 national museum professionals, comprises seminars, networking events and trips for an annual subscription of £195.
Hobson's revamp is not just confined to curators; the CAS chief has introduced an "invitation-only" £30 annual membership for artists, which will enable practitioners to post images of works on self-managed micro-sites on the CAS website. "Artists are our primary stakeholders," he emphasises.
The most significant overhaul, however, is Hobson's new approach to purchasing contemporary works for museums. Previously, a CAS buying panel bought works on behalf of its museum members.
This buying usually took place over a four-year period at the end of which curators were invited to a "distribution" exhibition of the works acquired. Museums were then asked to list in order of preference their favourite pieces.
"The majority of museums would have to settle for their second or third choice of work, meaning that over any four-year cycle, it could be 12 to 16 years before a museum got its first choice," says Hobson. McGregor agrees that the distribution exhibition process was "too big, too technically challenging and sometimes too conceptually at odds with what [museums] had in their collections".
The solution, according to Hobson, is purchasing in close collaboration with small groups of its museum members over a four-year period. He says this is based on a close dialogue with the museums' curators and in the context of their acquisition policies so they will actually get the work they want.
"This year we are focusing on 10 museums [including the Herbert in Coventry, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea], which share an interest in developing their holdings in new media," he says.
Special collections
Significantly, Hobson adds that this development is informed by the Special Collection Scheme (SCS), the £3.3m eight-year project run by the CAS between 1997-2005, which enabled 15 museums throughout England to acquire 610 contemporary works by 313 artists. The time-limited project, which ended in 2005, was almost universally popular.
Godfrey Worsdale, head of the Baltic centre in Gateshead, says: "The scheme not only had a tremendous impact on the country's public collections, but also on the professional development of its curators."
Similar ventures such as the Art Fund International scheme have since provided a purchasing lifeline for regional institutions (the charity gave £1m each to five partnerships across the UK in late 2007 to spend over five years).
Clare Lilley, head curator of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, says that the CAS is "still relevant, especially if it figures a way of working with the Art Fund so that they don't replicate each other's work".
New regional initiatives are an integral part of Hobson's vision. He repeatedly refers to the CAS as being "London-centric". Although individual membership is growing rapidly - it has increased threefold since 2007 - membership is approximately 70 per cent London based. He says he wants to reverse this percentage over the next five years.
ARTfutures, the contemporary art fair held in London by the CAS to help raise money for acquisitions by its members, has been cancelled this year, but could be "rolled out in different regions of the UK", he adds.
Other regional developments include a new outpost operation in the northwest funded by Arts Council England (ACE) North West and headed by Mark Doyle, a curator at the Lowry in Salford Quays. Market development projects based in East Anglia and the East Midlands are also planned in collaboration with ACE.
"The organisation needed to review all of its activities after the SCS. Membership was depleted, the visibility of the organisation was low, the brand of the organisation was a little tired," says Hobson, whose revamp has ruffled feathers among some museum members known to be "upset" by the shake-up.
However, Louisa Buck, co-author of Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector's Handbook, says: "Hobson's kind of joined-up mindset is just what the CAS needs to adapt to today's ever more challenging art world."
For McGregor, the original rationale for the creation of the CAS in 1909 is as relevant now as it ever was. "It has done and continues to do sterling work in making sure that our collections reflect the latest developments in artistic practice. Significant additional public funding is clearly what the CAS needs and deserves."
The CAS receives an annual ACE grant of £86,000, which amounts to about 10 per cent of its funding, with the remainder coming from subscriptions. ACE has also commissioned the CAS to conduct research that will inform a national strategy for collecting contemporary art that will be launched this year.
Other high-profile plans should keep the CAS in the public eye. A fundraising auction of works by over 30 artists on a Gothic theme took place last month with pieces donated by headline-hitting figures such as the Chapman brothers and Grayson Perry.
Hobson hopes to mount a CAS display at Tate Britain next year, while the inaugural CAS Annual award will be announced in November. The £60,000 prize, funded by the private philanthropic Sfumato Foundation, will enable a member museum to commission a new work.
And what about the thorny issue of collecting contemporary art in these fraught economic times? "The shift back to criticality due to the recession is good for the CAS. We are known for discreet, informed and meaningful engagement with contemporary practice. We are not flashy," says Hobson, smiling.
Gareth Harris is a freelance arts writer
Common wealth
Since its formation in 1909 by Roger Fry, Lady Ottoline Morrell, John Maynard Keynes and others, the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) has "used [its] cultural expertise to acquire the work of living artists, often early in their careers, in order to give them to our national membership of collecting bodies".
Since then, it has purchased over 8,000 works of art that have then been presented to galleries and museums throughout the UK. The highlights are numerous, with purchases that include Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso.
Among the many artists who donated works to Gothic, the CAS's fundraising auction held in the atmospheric Shunt vaults in London last month, raising a total of £180,000, were Damien Hirst, Cornelia Parker, Paula Rego and Anselm Kiefer.
Since its formation in 1909 by Roger Fry, Lady Ottoline Morrell, John Maynard Keynes and others, the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) has "used [its] cultural expertise to acquire the work of living artists, often early in their careers, in order to give them to our national membership of collecting bodies".
Since then, it has purchased over 8,000 works of art that have then been presented to galleries and museums throughout the UK. The highlights are numerous, with purchases that include Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso.
Among the many artists who donated works to Gothic, the CAS's fundraising auction held in the atmospheric Shunt vaults in London last month, raising a total of £180,000, were Damien Hirst, Cornelia Parker, Paula Rego and Anselm Kiefer.