When Lucy Askew got her first paid job in an art gallery in 2001, she would have found it hard to believe that less than 10 years later she would be in charge of one of the most important art collections in public ownership.
But that’s exactly what happened in 2008 when she became the managing curator of Artist Rooms, the £125m collection of contemporary and postwar works that collector Anthony d’Offay gifted to the nation.
“I am very aware that it is a really significant and wonderful collection to be involved in and I feel hugely privileged to be in this position. I feel very lucky.”
It is a remarkable collection, featuring 725 items, with Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Joseph Beuys and Jeff Koons among the artists represented. Each of the 50 rooms features work from an individual artist. The collection is held jointly by the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate, and Askew has worked for both organisations.
“I have such huge love for Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, it is a dream job for me. In a big project where those relationships are important it has been very beneficial and has allowed me to get moving quickly as I did not have the ‘getting-to-know people’ stage.”
Much of Askew’s time is spent working on the tour of Artist Rooms, which is supported by the Art Fund in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Scottish Government in Scotland. The Artist Rooms team is small, comprising Askew, a registrar and a collections conservator, although they work closely with lots of other people.
“With a collection and programme of this scale it impacts on a huge number of people,” says Askew. “One of the joys of my job is working right across the organisations at Tate and National Galleries of Scotland on every aspect of conservation, storage, cataloguing and research.”
The 2009 Artist Rooms tour visited 18 museums and galleries, from the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney, to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on the south coast of England. Outside London and Edinburgh it reached about 700,000 people, according to Tate, with a total of 372 works going on tour. Askew went to every single venue.
“Probably the best bit of my job is getting to know people across the country. Having those creative discussions about how works are shown, those interesting curatorial conversations that come up; it is fantastic.”
“Stromness was a real case in point where context was crucial,” Askew continues. “Seeing Bill Viola’s work on Orkney was a very different experience from seeing it in London. Not better or worse, just different. Having a sense of the ancient landscape, and looking at Viola’s intimate work, which is very spiritual, was really powerful.”
Askew says that the development of the exhibitions is very much a partnership with the galleries. “I think right from the start there was a desire to have a dialogue and to exchange knowledge. So rather than create an exhibition that is parachuted in, we work collaboratively to create something unique within that organisation.”
Visiting all the participating galleries has also allowed Askew to get to know the Artist Rooms collection better. “A lot of that has been to do with seeing the works in the flesh for the first time,” she says. “The collection has only just been acquired by us, so getting to know the works myself is a really important part of my job.”
Askew is now looking forward to the 2010 tour, which was announced last month. Works will go to 21 museums and galleries in the UK, including venues in Stornoway, Perth, Thurso, Llandudno and Belfast.
Askew says one of the really interesting elements is a tour of works by American artist Ed Ruscha of four galleries in the Scottish Highlands. This has been overseen by the Highland Council and this “tour within a tour” is a model that will be used in later Artist Rooms exhibitions.
There are other changes that Askew is hoping will help to widen the audiences for Artist Rooms. One is developing a more formal system for galleries to express an interest in hosting an Artist Room, perhaps by outlining what they are interested in over a three-year period.
There is also the opportunity to pair artists together and there have already been some ideas about how this could be done, says Askew. Warhol is an obvious choice to put with other artists to investigate the legacy of pop art.
Artist Rooms is also developing as other works are added by donations from artists and collectors. Ruscha has donated a work as has Ian Hamilton Finlay and there are pledges by Robert Therrien and Jannis Kounellis.
“We are keen to extend the collection as we want it to maintain that dynamism and the appeal that there is something fresh,” Askew says.
D’Offay himself is very much involved in the project and will remain so. “Anthony is ex-officio curator of the collection so he has a very important role,” says Askew.
“He has been incredibly generous with his time and one of the things we have found working with partner galleries is that they have really enjoyed meeting him. He is hugely energetic and a big advocate for what is being done.
“It very much stems from his own experience of seeing art,” Askew continues. “All of us involved in the arts have had those experiences. It is those moments when you walk into an art gallery and see a painting or a sculpture, which can be quite transformative.”
It is giving people the chance to see great art face-to-face that excites Askew, who remembers how a trip to the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York inspired her when she was younger.
“It was very much on a budget, and I think the only thing we could afford in the Moma cafe was a bagel, but seeing Barnett Newman works in the flesh was extraordinary. You sit in a lecture and look at works in books, but the experience of seeing them is unrivalled. I find that all the time with Artist Rooms.
“We were installing Agnes Martin at the Gallery of Modern Art in the summer, and there was this beautiful August Edinburgh light, and this light-filled room with these incredibly ethereal paintings by Martin – you just can’t get that from a book. That experience of having an artist’s work in front of you is an amazing thing.”
The future for Askew herself looks bright. Through working with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, combined with the visits to regional galleries last year, she must be developing a contacts book that many people in the arts community would kill for.
And with the 2010 programme just announced, there are a whole host of new venues to check out and people to meet.
Lucy Askew was born 1976 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey.
She graduated from the University of St Andrews with an MA in the history of art and English. She also has an MA in modern art from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Askew joined the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh as a volunteer in 2000 and became a curatorial assistant in 2001. She joined Tate Modern in 2004, primarily working on research, displays and acquisitions.
In 2008, she became the managing curator of Artist Rooms.