“With the odd exception, Scottish museums did not collect contemporary art in the 1990s.” This startling observation comes from Mungo Campbell, deputy director at the Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow.
Although Campbell qualifies it by saying that contemporary art collecting was helped by schemes such as the Collecting Initiative pioneered by the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), where 1,645 works from its collection were donated to over 60 Scottish institutions in 1996, it is still a worrying trend.
Campbell says there are good collections of 20th-century art, particularly Scottish art, in public collections. But it is the contemporary field that is lacking.
And this is at a time when the Scottish contemporary art scene has been dramatically transformed over the past 15 years, prompting museums to rethink their strategy for acquiring works by living artists.
A growth in temporary exhibition venues and organisations and the increase of influential dealers, from Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh to the Modern Institute and Mary Mary in Glasgow, have helped shape this dynamic, more commercially-minded art environment.
And not all these developments have been outside the public sector. The Common Guild and Tramway in Glasgow both receive funding from Culture & Sport Glasgow, the council-owned trust that manages the city’s own museums.
“The trust understands the potential of the visual arts to regenerate and supports its artists,” says Wendy Law, an Edinburgh-based visual arts consultant and former curator of the SAC collection.
Meanwhile, the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, which is funded by SAC, is to curate the Scottish pavilion at the Venice Biennale next year.
Scotland’s contemporary art scene is finding a space in public galleries, particularly in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s 50th anniversary show.
Martin Boyce’s mixed-media installation, Electric Trees and Telephone Booth Conversations, was the striking centrepiece of the first part of What You See Is Where You’re At, earlier this year.
Simon Groom, director of modern and contemporary art at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), says that this year all 22 rooms in the gallery will be rehung together for the first time in 25 years.
“It is a world-class collection, but like all collections, has a tendency to be overlooked,” says Groom, who points out that the Boyce piece has since been acquired for the collection.
The scale of the new arrangement, the second phase of which opened in March, is ambitious, incorporating a wide range of artists, including contemporary Scottish artist Callum Innes, Henri Matisse, the Scottish colourists, and Indonesian-born Fiona Tan.
And the public seem keen on the new-look gallery. An NGS spokeswoman says there has been a 23 per cent increase in visitor numbers at both modern art galleries since the rehang.
Following dips in attendance at the modern art galleries in the past three years (2007: 305,808; 2008: 283,115; 2009: 274,975), this initial increase provides a welcome boost for 2010.
Another World at the Dean Gallery (10 July-9 January 2011), an exhibition of the entire surrealist collection of the gallery, should prove a further draw.
“We would, of course, like to see our visitor figures grow, but the quality of engagement is of primary concern,” says Groom, who aims to radically reconfigure the collection, with plans to treat both the Dean and the gallery of modern art as one entity.
“The idea being to consider the gallery of modern art as one gallery that just happens to be in two buildings. I am also keen to reintegrate the surrealist collection, which has been shown together and apart in the Dean Gallery since 1999, back into the permanent collection.”
Providing a new curatorial context for the gallery of modern art’s collection is, however, overshadowed by the obvious question: how do you acquire contemporary works in today’s market-led climate of high prices, especially with an acquisition budget of just £1.26m spread across five galleries?
Groom’s answer is that they have made a conscious decision to try to show and acquire works by younger artists in the last few years.
This acquisition issue is brought into sharp focus by the NGS’s decision to commit most of its future funding to the £50m joint purchase of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon with London’s National Gallery.
“Alongside the need to collect such Renaissance gems is the need for galleries, nationals and local authority museums and galleries to be investing far greater sums in the work by our excellent living artists,” says Law.
But there are breakthroughs. Tate and NGS contributed £500,000 each to setting up a £5m endowment fund when both galleries secured ownership of 725 major postwar works from the collection of London dealer Anthony d’Offay in 2008, under the Artist Rooms initiative. The interest from the endowment will be used to help acquire new pieces, which could be seen in Scotland.
The d’Offay development has also revolutionised the presentation of modern and contemporary art through a series of displays at NGS venues, including a recent Diane Arbus show at the Dean Gallery and at eight museums and galleries across Scotland this year. These include an Ian Hamilton Finlay exhibition at An Lanntair in Stornoway (30 August-1 November).
The latter will include works from the NGS galleries of modern art’s collection, highlighting the “gallery’s commitment to making the collection accessible and visible”, says Groom. “Artist Rooms means we now act as a hub; it has galvanised the process of putting the collection on the road.”
This ethos of showing works in new spaces beyond the usual city and gallery limits has rubbed off on other ventures, such as the National Collecting Scheme for Scotland (NCSS), a SAC initiative founded in 2003 with six regional museum partners: Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums; the McManus: Dundee’s Museum & Art Gallery; the City Art Centre, Edinburgh; Pier Arts Centre, Orkney; Paisley Museum and Art Gallery; and the Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery, Glasgow. (The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow joined the scheme in 2007.)
With the scheme about to enter its third phase, NCSS research associate Tina Fiske says that this next stage could focus more on “access and engagement, possibly encouraging its partner museums to place their contemporary holdings in new contexts”.
The scheme, which was initially administered by the Contemporary Art Society, has proved a lifeline for museums outside the “central belt” by funding the acquisition of almost 200 works by artists such as Mat Collishaw, Mark Dion and Wolfgang Tillmans for the seven participating institutions.
“The NCSS has definitely strengthened our collection,” says Jennifer Melville, lead curator of fine and decorative art at Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums.
“It has also provided funding for research and travel,” she adds, an issue for regional museums where curators struggle to obtain support from local authorities for travel outside city boundaries.
But “the real beauty of the NCSS is that it allows leverage for other funds”, says Mungo Campbell from the Hunterian. Most NCSS acquisitions are supported by additional funding from the Art Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions (NFA), which is financed by the Scottish government.
The latter, which has stood at £200,000 since 1996, awarded 12 grants totalling £66,275 towards NCSS acquisitions for the financial year 2009-10.
Despite the scheme there are still obstacles to collaboration. “We sometimes struggle to deliver,” says Campbell, who cites a work by Glasgow-based artists Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan, which was a joint commission by the original six partner museums.
“The sad reality is that only the Hunterian has shown the piece so far since its original installation at Newhailes House, as the extra funding needed to install the work is unavailable.”
And what are the prospects for the NCSS? Amanda Catto, head of visual arts at SAC, says that in the past three financial years, it has invested more than £300,000 in the scheme.
“Further investment may be possible, particularly in relation to developing the third phase of the programme. We have created a momentum, an energy, with the scheme, that is far greater than the sum of its parts.”
Law strikes a note of caution: “There is a danger in the current funding climate that momentum will be lost. However, with Creative Scotland now in place this is an ideal time for Scotland to think of new models, such as a national endowment fund for contemporary art, bringing together public and private funds to help museums to work collaboratively and raise the profile for new work.”
Gareth Harris is a freelance arts journalist
Image: Diane Arbus 1923-71, Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967, Copyright 1972 The Estate of Diane Arbus LLC
Although Campbell qualifies it by saying that contemporary art collecting was helped by schemes such as the Collecting Initiative pioneered by the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), where 1,645 works from its collection were donated to over 60 Scottish institutions in 1996, it is still a worrying trend.
Campbell says there are good collections of 20th-century art, particularly Scottish art, in public collections. But it is the contemporary field that is lacking.
And this is at a time when the Scottish contemporary art scene has been dramatically transformed over the past 15 years, prompting museums to rethink their strategy for acquiring works by living artists.
A growth in temporary exhibition venues and organisations and the increase of influential dealers, from Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh to the Modern Institute and Mary Mary in Glasgow, have helped shape this dynamic, more commercially-minded art environment.
And not all these developments have been outside the public sector. The Common Guild and Tramway in Glasgow both receive funding from Culture & Sport Glasgow, the council-owned trust that manages the city’s own museums.
“The trust understands the potential of the visual arts to regenerate and supports its artists,” says Wendy Law, an Edinburgh-based visual arts consultant and former curator of the SAC collection.
Meanwhile, the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, which is funded by SAC, is to curate the Scottish pavilion at the Venice Biennale next year.
Scotland’s contemporary art scene is finding a space in public galleries, particularly in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s 50th anniversary show.
Martin Boyce’s mixed-media installation, Electric Trees and Telephone Booth Conversations, was the striking centrepiece of the first part of What You See Is Where You’re At, earlier this year.
Simon Groom, director of modern and contemporary art at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), says that this year all 22 rooms in the gallery will be rehung together for the first time in 25 years.
“It is a world-class collection, but like all collections, has a tendency to be overlooked,” says Groom, who points out that the Boyce piece has since been acquired for the collection.
The scale of the new arrangement, the second phase of which opened in March, is ambitious, incorporating a wide range of artists, including contemporary Scottish artist Callum Innes, Henri Matisse, the Scottish colourists, and Indonesian-born Fiona Tan.
And the public seem keen on the new-look gallery. An NGS spokeswoman says there has been a 23 per cent increase in visitor numbers at both modern art galleries since the rehang.
Following dips in attendance at the modern art galleries in the past three years (2007: 305,808; 2008: 283,115; 2009: 274,975), this initial increase provides a welcome boost for 2010.
Another World at the Dean Gallery (10 July-9 January 2011), an exhibition of the entire surrealist collection of the gallery, should prove a further draw.
“We would, of course, like to see our visitor figures grow, but the quality of engagement is of primary concern,” says Groom, who aims to radically reconfigure the collection, with plans to treat both the Dean and the gallery of modern art as one entity.
“The idea being to consider the gallery of modern art as one gallery that just happens to be in two buildings. I am also keen to reintegrate the surrealist collection, which has been shown together and apart in the Dean Gallery since 1999, back into the permanent collection.”
Providing a new curatorial context for the gallery of modern art’s collection is, however, overshadowed by the obvious question: how do you acquire contemporary works in today’s market-led climate of high prices, especially with an acquisition budget of just £1.26m spread across five galleries?
Groom’s answer is that they have made a conscious decision to try to show and acquire works by younger artists in the last few years.
This acquisition issue is brought into sharp focus by the NGS’s decision to commit most of its future funding to the £50m joint purchase of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon with London’s National Gallery.
“Alongside the need to collect such Renaissance gems is the need for galleries, nationals and local authority museums and galleries to be investing far greater sums in the work by our excellent living artists,” says Law.
But there are breakthroughs. Tate and NGS contributed £500,000 each to setting up a £5m endowment fund when both galleries secured ownership of 725 major postwar works from the collection of London dealer Anthony d’Offay in 2008, under the Artist Rooms initiative. The interest from the endowment will be used to help acquire new pieces, which could be seen in Scotland.
The d’Offay development has also revolutionised the presentation of modern and contemporary art through a series of displays at NGS venues, including a recent Diane Arbus show at the Dean Gallery and at eight museums and galleries across Scotland this year. These include an Ian Hamilton Finlay exhibition at An Lanntair in Stornoway (30 August-1 November).
The latter will include works from the NGS galleries of modern art’s collection, highlighting the “gallery’s commitment to making the collection accessible and visible”, says Groom. “Artist Rooms means we now act as a hub; it has galvanised the process of putting the collection on the road.”
This ethos of showing works in new spaces beyond the usual city and gallery limits has rubbed off on other ventures, such as the National Collecting Scheme for Scotland (NCSS), a SAC initiative founded in 2003 with six regional museum partners: Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums; the McManus: Dundee’s Museum & Art Gallery; the City Art Centre, Edinburgh; Pier Arts Centre, Orkney; Paisley Museum and Art Gallery; and the Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery, Glasgow. (The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow joined the scheme in 2007.)
With the scheme about to enter its third phase, NCSS research associate Tina Fiske says that this next stage could focus more on “access and engagement, possibly encouraging its partner museums to place their contemporary holdings in new contexts”.
The scheme, which was initially administered by the Contemporary Art Society, has proved a lifeline for museums outside the “central belt” by funding the acquisition of almost 200 works by artists such as Mat Collishaw, Mark Dion and Wolfgang Tillmans for the seven participating institutions.
“The NCSS has definitely strengthened our collection,” says Jennifer Melville, lead curator of fine and decorative art at Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums.
“It has also provided funding for research and travel,” she adds, an issue for regional museums where curators struggle to obtain support from local authorities for travel outside city boundaries.
But “the real beauty of the NCSS is that it allows leverage for other funds”, says Mungo Campbell from the Hunterian. Most NCSS acquisitions are supported by additional funding from the Art Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions (NFA), which is financed by the Scottish government.
The latter, which has stood at £200,000 since 1996, awarded 12 grants totalling £66,275 towards NCSS acquisitions for the financial year 2009-10.
Despite the scheme there are still obstacles to collaboration. “We sometimes struggle to deliver,” says Campbell, who cites a work by Glasgow-based artists Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan, which was a joint commission by the original six partner museums.
“The sad reality is that only the Hunterian has shown the piece so far since its original installation at Newhailes House, as the extra funding needed to install the work is unavailable.”
And what are the prospects for the NCSS? Amanda Catto, head of visual arts at SAC, says that in the past three financial years, it has invested more than £300,000 in the scheme.
“Further investment may be possible, particularly in relation to developing the third phase of the programme. We have created a momentum, an energy, with the scheme, that is far greater than the sum of its parts.”
Law strikes a note of caution: “There is a danger in the current funding climate that momentum will be lost. However, with Creative Scotland now in place this is an ideal time for Scotland to think of new models, such as a national endowment fund for contemporary art, bringing together public and private funds to help museums to work collaboratively and raise the profile for new work.”
Gareth Harris is a freelance arts journalist
Image: Diane Arbus 1923-71, Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967, Copyright 1972 The Estate of Diane Arbus LLC