It seems like we are going to be awash with artists this summer, particularly in our museums.
In Nottingham, 1,000 young artists from 120 nations have been chosen for a new international festival that will be begin on 7 September as a finale to the Cultural Olympiad. The New Art Exchange and Nottingham Contemporary galleries and the museum at Nottingham Castle are among the venues taking part in World Event Young Artists.
This month will see 10 artists matched with 10 museums and galleries for a range of after-hours events that will take place as part of Museums at Night.
And in June, London’s Hayward Gallery will become a school run by artists. More than 100 of them will take part in Wide Open School, an experiment in what could happen if a school’s curriculum was driven by artists. Mark Wallinger, Tracey Emin and Anthony Caro are among the teachers.
Radical imaginations
Artists working with museums is nothing new, but the current level of activity does seem to point to a significant increase in this type of work. Why are so many museums involved with contemporary artists and what do both parties get out of it?
“Artists love collections and we have fantastic advocates in people like Grayson Perry and Cornelia Parker, people who bring new ways of thinking about collections in the way that they work with them,” says Paul Hobson, the director of the Contemporary Art Society, an organisation that raises funds to purchase and commission new works of art for a national network of public collections in the UK.
“The recent Grayson Perry project at the British Museum radically reimagined aspects of that collection in ways that are very distinct from the way a specialist in classical vases might do. Artists generate exciting experiences for audiences and that needs to be something that museums can draw on.”
It is this ability of artists to look at collections in fresh and innovative ways that appeals to curators. The Museum of London has been working with contemporary artists for some time; one of its recent projects was Streets of Gold, which aimed to highlight the positive contribution that migration makes to the UK.
The four artworks that were commissioned, which were on display from 20 January to 15 April, included items from the museum’s collection.
“Artists often look at things in a different way to a traditional museum point of view and that is what we want – that opening out of the debate,” says Francis Marshall, a curator at the Museum of London who worked with arts agency Motiroti on the project.
“We are a history museum and artists can address many of the subjects that we are interested in but often in a much more open-ended way than us. They can bring things together in ways that you would not expect and it brings new ideas to us in the stories we can tell.”
And it’s not just audiences in metropolitan cities that are proving responsive to contemporary artists getting involved with collections. Transform is an arts council-funded project that is a central part of the regeneration of Snibston, Leicestershire, a site that includes a museum and park located on a old colliery in the town of Coalville.
Maurice Maguire, an arts manager and lead artist on the project, says it was important that the artists involved contributed to Snibston’s sense of place. “We tested out different ways of working and established commissions that were outward looking but would bring people here.”
The project has involved seven projects with contemporary artists that were commissioned in two tranches. Work has included photography, couture, sound and light shows, maps and more. It has touched many areas of Snibston and has moved beyond the museum’s walls to the rest of the county, the UK and even overseas.
Carolyn Abel, Snibston’s principal curator, is pleased with the work produced and the reaction of visitors. She points to one of the participants, Paul Conneally, and a recent exhibition held at Snibston that he helped develop.
It was based around David Wilkie’s 1806 painting The Blind Fiddler, which is in the Tate Collection, but was painted about two miles from Snibston at Coleorton Hall.
“That exhibition represented the liveliness and diversity of this place,” Abel says. “It was playful, even though there was some serious art there. But it was also accessible, and you could engage with it on any level.”
With Arts Council England recently taking over responsibility for museums, some in the sector have been voicing concern that the organisation’s emphasis on artistic excellence fails to take into account the importance of audiences.
But for most of those museums and heritage sites involved with contemporary artists, audiences are central to what they are doing and the approaches adopted could provide some pointers as to how the arts and museums can work successfully together.
Attracting new audiences and appealing to existing ones are the reasons that the National Trust launched a series of exhibitions, events, artists’ residencies and commissions in March. The stated aim is to “connect people and places through contemporary art and crafts”.
Trust New Art has been running since 2009 and is a partnership with the arts council, which has provided £150,000 of funding over three years. This year’s programme includes five trust properties displaying work from the Arts Council Collection, including Antony Gormley at Barrington Court in Somerset.
Tom Freshwater, contemporary arts programme manager at the National Trust, says the organisation has been working hard on audience development in recent years. This has fed into its arts initiative in terms of matching artists with properties and investing in programming.
“It is about understanding where those audiences come from and what the desire is for this,” Freshwater says. “We are being a bit more intelligent about the experiences that we create for people.”
Freshwater says the trust is using art to achieve its strategic aims, such as reaching five million members by 2020 but also making everyone feel like a member.
“Making sure everyone feels like a member is quite nebulous but actually it is challenging us to think about how we should be going for those harder to reach people.”
In creating its contemporary arts programme the National Trust has the advantage of being a large organisation with critical mass. Other museums working with artists have realised that size is important and have joined forces to develop their projects.
New Expressions is a series of contemporary art commissions in museums in south west England that was first funded by money from Renaissance in the Regions. This year, it’s involved nine artists and six commissions.
“The museums feel part of a regional programme and that has helped in all kinds of ways in terms of support, as it can be scary working with an artist and it is also hard work,” says Claire Gulliver, who is carrying out the evaluation for this year’s commissions.
The New Expressions commissions are set in an ongoing scheme of professional development, with staff taking part in workshops and field visits so they can share experiences.
This desire to create a legacy that provides some lasting capacity for museum staff working with artists is becoming more common. This helps to avoid the danger inherent in all project work – that when the initiative ends, the knowledge and experience disappear with it.
“You have to hold your nerve”
This is important, as working with artists is time-consuming and sometimes risky. Carolyn Abel at Snibston says that it is not always easy.
“At times we have felt very overstretched,” she says. “It has worked, although it has put a lot of people under pressure at a time of massive organisational change. But it was important to keep going... you have to hold your nerve, particularly when money is at stake.”
Bryony Bond has worked on a number of projects involving contemporary artists and museums, including the Alchemy initiative at Manchester Museum, which started in 2003 and involved artists such as Mark Dion. More recently, she has helped create a strategy to support contemporary art at National Museums Scotland.
“Museums have to think about their capability and ability to support the artists,” says Bond, who says it also pays dividends to spend time getting the right artist in the first place. “It is about choosing an artist who is happy to work with the museum and that works both ways.”
Bond says that the Alchemy project was particularly challenging for some of the artists who were not used to being questioned about their work by museum staff and visitors. “We needed artists who would be able to stand up to this and also not make the museum never want to work with an artist again,” she says.
The Wellcome Collection in London frequently works with artists as part of its exhibition programme. The Wellcome Trust also funds art programmes linked to science and medicine. Ken Arnold, the head of public programmes at the Wellcome Collection, agrees that finding the right artist is important, although he warns that there is no blueprint for getting this right.
“We don’t have a rule book for choosing artists,” he says. “Often they choose us. An openness to investigation is crucial. Most of the artists we work with have to be comfortable with some form of collaboration.”
But Arnold also says that some element of conflict can help. “One of the things that has struck me about the arts projects we have funded is that there is often a credible and useful tension. I get suspicious of initiatives that sound like they are just a big love-in.”
Having an arts agency in the middle of the artist and the museum can often help resolve disputes and Arnold says this is usually money well spent. And broadly, he agrees with Bond that it is important to get the balance right between control and freedom.
“It is about setting clear parameters at the beginning but leaving some space for the artist to do what they do, which is to make work,” says Bond.
Arnold concludes: “There is that middle ground, where the artist doesn’t just play back to you what you wanted in the first place, otherwise they have not been allowed to be an artist, but they haven’t been so wildly disruptive of what you thought you wanted that you can’t use it. Either it’s too wild or it’s too tame and it’s how to negotiate that.”
National Museums Scotland (NMS) has a new strategy to support contemporary arts that was started by Sally Manuireva, the former director of public programmes at NMS, who wanted to use contemporary art to challenge established practices within the museum and to attract new audiences.
It was developed by freelance curator Byrony Bond and involves Dutch artist Melvin Moti, who is making a film based on light-reactive minerals in the collection. Glasgow artist Ilana Halperin started an 18-month fellowship in January.
New Expressions is a partnership programme in south west England involving museums in Exeter, Plymouth, Bristol, Barnstaple, Falmouth and Cheltenham. It is allowing museums to commission new work and work with artists to create joint projects. Artists involved include ceramicist Clare Twomey and Neville Gabie, an Olympic Park artist-in-residence.
Basketry Plus is a group of 13 contemporary makers whose next exhibition is at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. The show is focusing on amulets, which are represented in the collection and were among the interests of the museum’s founder, Flinders Petrie. It opens on 1 May.
North Yorkshire Open Studios 2012 takes place during two weekends in June, when artists and makers across the region will invite the public into a range of spaces, including hidden locations on the North Yorkshire Moors and harbourside huts in Whitby.
Among them will be artist/metalsmith Rebecca Gouldson, who has been responding to the collection at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes, and Linda Schwab (left), who will use hundreds of vintage chandelier drops to create an installation at the Royal Pump Room Museum in Harrogate.
Ironbridge Gorge Museum’s contribution to the London 2012 Festival, part of the finale of the Cultural Olympiad, is Core, a digital art exhibition by Chicago-based artist Kurt Hentschlager. The work, which was unveiled at the Shropshire venue on 23 March, comprises a digital world made up of virtual aquariums containing bodies in motion.
In Nottingham, 1,000 young artists from 120 nations have been chosen for a new international festival that will be begin on 7 September as a finale to the Cultural Olympiad. The New Art Exchange and Nottingham Contemporary galleries and the museum at Nottingham Castle are among the venues taking part in World Event Young Artists.
This month will see 10 artists matched with 10 museums and galleries for a range of after-hours events that will take place as part of Museums at Night.
And in June, London’s Hayward Gallery will become a school run by artists. More than 100 of them will take part in Wide Open School, an experiment in what could happen if a school’s curriculum was driven by artists. Mark Wallinger, Tracey Emin and Anthony Caro are among the teachers.
Radical imaginations
Artists working with museums is nothing new, but the current level of activity does seem to point to a significant increase in this type of work. Why are so many museums involved with contemporary artists and what do both parties get out of it?
“Artists love collections and we have fantastic advocates in people like Grayson Perry and Cornelia Parker, people who bring new ways of thinking about collections in the way that they work with them,” says Paul Hobson, the director of the Contemporary Art Society, an organisation that raises funds to purchase and commission new works of art for a national network of public collections in the UK.
“The recent Grayson Perry project at the British Museum radically reimagined aspects of that collection in ways that are very distinct from the way a specialist in classical vases might do. Artists generate exciting experiences for audiences and that needs to be something that museums can draw on.”
It is this ability of artists to look at collections in fresh and innovative ways that appeals to curators. The Museum of London has been working with contemporary artists for some time; one of its recent projects was Streets of Gold, which aimed to highlight the positive contribution that migration makes to the UK.
The four artworks that were commissioned, which were on display from 20 January to 15 April, included items from the museum’s collection.
“Artists often look at things in a different way to a traditional museum point of view and that is what we want – that opening out of the debate,” says Francis Marshall, a curator at the Museum of London who worked with arts agency Motiroti on the project.
“We are a history museum and artists can address many of the subjects that we are interested in but often in a much more open-ended way than us. They can bring things together in ways that you would not expect and it brings new ideas to us in the stories we can tell.”
And it’s not just audiences in metropolitan cities that are proving responsive to contemporary artists getting involved with collections. Transform is an arts council-funded project that is a central part of the regeneration of Snibston, Leicestershire, a site that includes a museum and park located on a old colliery in the town of Coalville.
Maurice Maguire, an arts manager and lead artist on the project, says it was important that the artists involved contributed to Snibston’s sense of place. “We tested out different ways of working and established commissions that were outward looking but would bring people here.”
The project has involved seven projects with contemporary artists that were commissioned in two tranches. Work has included photography, couture, sound and light shows, maps and more. It has touched many areas of Snibston and has moved beyond the museum’s walls to the rest of the county, the UK and even overseas.
Carolyn Abel, Snibston’s principal curator, is pleased with the work produced and the reaction of visitors. She points to one of the participants, Paul Conneally, and a recent exhibition held at Snibston that he helped develop.
It was based around David Wilkie’s 1806 painting The Blind Fiddler, which is in the Tate Collection, but was painted about two miles from Snibston at Coleorton Hall.
“That exhibition represented the liveliness and diversity of this place,” Abel says. “It was playful, even though there was some serious art there. But it was also accessible, and you could engage with it on any level.”
With Arts Council England recently taking over responsibility for museums, some in the sector have been voicing concern that the organisation’s emphasis on artistic excellence fails to take into account the importance of audiences.
But for most of those museums and heritage sites involved with contemporary artists, audiences are central to what they are doing and the approaches adopted could provide some pointers as to how the arts and museums can work successfully together.
Attracting new audiences and appealing to existing ones are the reasons that the National Trust launched a series of exhibitions, events, artists’ residencies and commissions in March. The stated aim is to “connect people and places through contemporary art and crafts”.
Trust New Art has been running since 2009 and is a partnership with the arts council, which has provided £150,000 of funding over three years. This year’s programme includes five trust properties displaying work from the Arts Council Collection, including Antony Gormley at Barrington Court in Somerset.
Tom Freshwater, contemporary arts programme manager at the National Trust, says the organisation has been working hard on audience development in recent years. This has fed into its arts initiative in terms of matching artists with properties and investing in programming.
“It is about understanding where those audiences come from and what the desire is for this,” Freshwater says. “We are being a bit more intelligent about the experiences that we create for people.”
Freshwater says the trust is using art to achieve its strategic aims, such as reaching five million members by 2020 but also making everyone feel like a member.
“Making sure everyone feels like a member is quite nebulous but actually it is challenging us to think about how we should be going for those harder to reach people.”
In creating its contemporary arts programme the National Trust has the advantage of being a large organisation with critical mass. Other museums working with artists have realised that size is important and have joined forces to develop their projects.
New Expressions is a series of contemporary art commissions in museums in south west England that was first funded by money from Renaissance in the Regions. This year, it’s involved nine artists and six commissions.
“The museums feel part of a regional programme and that has helped in all kinds of ways in terms of support, as it can be scary working with an artist and it is also hard work,” says Claire Gulliver, who is carrying out the evaluation for this year’s commissions.
The New Expressions commissions are set in an ongoing scheme of professional development, with staff taking part in workshops and field visits so they can share experiences.
This desire to create a legacy that provides some lasting capacity for museum staff working with artists is becoming more common. This helps to avoid the danger inherent in all project work – that when the initiative ends, the knowledge and experience disappear with it.
“You have to hold your nerve”
This is important, as working with artists is time-consuming and sometimes risky. Carolyn Abel at Snibston says that it is not always easy.
“At times we have felt very overstretched,” she says. “It has worked, although it has put a lot of people under pressure at a time of massive organisational change. But it was important to keep going... you have to hold your nerve, particularly when money is at stake.”
Bryony Bond has worked on a number of projects involving contemporary artists and museums, including the Alchemy initiative at Manchester Museum, which started in 2003 and involved artists such as Mark Dion. More recently, she has helped create a strategy to support contemporary art at National Museums Scotland.
“Museums have to think about their capability and ability to support the artists,” says Bond, who says it also pays dividends to spend time getting the right artist in the first place. “It is about choosing an artist who is happy to work with the museum and that works both ways.”
Bond says that the Alchemy project was particularly challenging for some of the artists who were not used to being questioned about their work by museum staff and visitors. “We needed artists who would be able to stand up to this and also not make the museum never want to work with an artist again,” she says.
The Wellcome Collection in London frequently works with artists as part of its exhibition programme. The Wellcome Trust also funds art programmes linked to science and medicine. Ken Arnold, the head of public programmes at the Wellcome Collection, agrees that finding the right artist is important, although he warns that there is no blueprint for getting this right.
“We don’t have a rule book for choosing artists,” he says. “Often they choose us. An openness to investigation is crucial. Most of the artists we work with have to be comfortable with some form of collaboration.”
But Arnold also says that some element of conflict can help. “One of the things that has struck me about the arts projects we have funded is that there is often a credible and useful tension. I get suspicious of initiatives that sound like they are just a big love-in.”
Having an arts agency in the middle of the artist and the museum can often help resolve disputes and Arnold says this is usually money well spent. And broadly, he agrees with Bond that it is important to get the balance right between control and freedom.
“It is about setting clear parameters at the beginning but leaving some space for the artist to do what they do, which is to make work,” says Bond.
Arnold concludes: “There is that middle ground, where the artist doesn’t just play back to you what you wanted in the first place, otherwise they have not been allowed to be an artist, but they haven’t been so wildly disruptive of what you thought you wanted that you can’t use it. Either it’s too wild or it’s too tame and it’s how to negotiate that.”
Working with artists
National Museums Scotland (NMS) has a new strategy to support contemporary arts that was started by Sally Manuireva, the former director of public programmes at NMS, who wanted to use contemporary art to challenge established practices within the museum and to attract new audiences.
It was developed by freelance curator Byrony Bond and involves Dutch artist Melvin Moti, who is making a film based on light-reactive minerals in the collection. Glasgow artist Ilana Halperin started an 18-month fellowship in January.
New Expressions is a partnership programme in south west England involving museums in Exeter, Plymouth, Bristol, Barnstaple, Falmouth and Cheltenham. It is allowing museums to commission new work and work with artists to create joint projects. Artists involved include ceramicist Clare Twomey and Neville Gabie, an Olympic Park artist-in-residence.
Basketry Plus is a group of 13 contemporary makers whose next exhibition is at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. The show is focusing on amulets, which are represented in the collection and were among the interests of the museum’s founder, Flinders Petrie. It opens on 1 May.
North Yorkshire Open Studios 2012 takes place during two weekends in June, when artists and makers across the region will invite the public into a range of spaces, including hidden locations on the North Yorkshire Moors and harbourside huts in Whitby.
Among them will be artist/metalsmith Rebecca Gouldson, who has been responding to the collection at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes, and Linda Schwab (left), who will use hundreds of vintage chandelier drops to create an installation at the Royal Pump Room Museum in Harrogate.
Ironbridge Gorge Museum’s contribution to the London 2012 Festival, part of the finale of the Cultural Olympiad, is Core, a digital art exhibition by Chicago-based artist Kurt Hentschlager. The work, which was unveiled at the Shropshire venue on 23 March, comprises a digital world made up of virtual aquariums containing bodies in motion.