Compton Verney’s director Steven Parissien has high hopes for this year as the Warwickshire gallery is celebrating its 10th anniversary with two-high profile exhibitions and a range of associated events and activities.
The Grade I-listed house and gardens opened as an art gallery in 2004 after the estate was rescued from dereliction with money from a foundation set up by Peter Moores, a former director and chairman of retail and gambling firm Littlewoods.
Compton Verney has six collections ranging from Chinese bronzes to British folk art.
Money from the Peter Moores Foundation also provided the gallery with running costs although this support was coming to an end when Parissien arrived, as Moores was starting to wind down his foundation, which will finally cease operating this year.
‘Business-like footing’
“We were generously founded by the Peter Moores Foundation, but it was always going to be the case that they were going to pull back,” says Parissien, the gallery’s third director and successor to Kathleen Soriano, who left in 2009 to join London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
“So when I arrived there was instantly a lot to do because, like other museums and galleries, we needed to establish ourselves on a more business-like footing.”
Compton Verney was not abandoned totally as the Peter Moores Foundation created a £25m endowment fund that gives it income of £1.25m a year. Parissien says this pays for the basic costs of looking after the house, gardens and collections but not the exhibition programme and other activities.
Parissien’s challenge was to work in this new financial context without any direct experience of managing a gallery. His previous roles included assistant director at Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, the dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Plymouth and the director of education at the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment.
“Having been involved in higher education it was interesting being head-hunted for the role at Compton Verney,” Parissien says. “But I think lots of museums and galleries are looking for a broader frame of reference than just curating.”
He points out that Yale and Plymouth are essentially large arts businesses, but nevertheless, his early days at Compton Verney were difficult and involved a redundancy programme as part of a plan to make the gallery a more self-sustaining organisation.
“It was a shock to the staff at the time, but it was not all bad, as it was a reminder that the marvellous days of generous annual subsidy from the Peter Moores Foundation had gone – it was part of us growing up,” he says. “We now had look, as everyone else does, for sustainable sources of income.”
New partnerships
This meant increasing visitor numbers, establishing a patrons’ group, developing a profitable events and corporate hire business, all of which have been done.
Parissien says he has enjoyed the challenge: “It has all worked out marvellously and I have learned a lot. It has been fascinating dealing with a site that has so much potential that we are trying to unlock in a difficult financial context. Not everything we do instantly turns to gold but we have had a number of big successes in recent years.”
One of Parissien’s successes is a series of new partnerships. These range from alliances of regional cultural organisations that promote the arts or carry out joint marketing, through to less formal tie-ups that help secure high-profile exhibitions at Compton Verney. He points to shows developed last year with Tate, Glasgow Museums and the British Museum, all of whom he praises for their support.
“There are some organisations that are a delight to work with while others, who shall remain nameless, are not so neighbourly, shall we say, including some regional museums. But everyone is going to have to change, as partnership is the way forward.”
Reaching audiences
Parissien says the exhibition programme, which is vital to attract visitors, is now more focused on what Compton Verney’s audiences want.
Gone are the days when the gallery could use money from the Peter Moores Foundation to develop an experimental series of exhibitions, which built its reputation but he feels would be too risky now.
“We can’t continue with that level of experimentation any more as we can’t have an exhibition that no one comes to – it would be a disaster for us,” Parissien says. “Now we have to address our real audience rather than the one we’d like.”
The gallery has been working hard to appeal to new people, by developing family friendly facilities such as a children’s playground, for example.
It has also recently carried out a research project into its audiences that was funded by Arts Council England’s Strategic Support Fund and involved two other partners – Banbury Museum and 78 Derngate, The Charles Rennie Mackintosh House and Galleries, Northampton.
“One of the things the research showed was that we need to work harder in breaking down those barriers to participation,” Parissien says.
“We look like a stately home from across the lake and, while it is a fabulous view, for many it looks forbidding. So we need to say, ‘no, it is for everyone, for families, young people, older people’.”
Parissien also says the research showed that the gallery should concentrate on people rather than be too object-focused. And the feedback was that visitors wanted to be entertained rather than lectured about art.
“Everyone is moving away from that Reithian idea of ‘here is what you ought to know’, but there is still an element of that in a lot of museums and galleries,” Parissien says.
“For people who have not been to museums and galleries that is off-putting.”
Landscape plans
Parissien is also hoping to expand Compton Verney’s appeal by restoring its Capability Brown-designed parkland. His plan was recently boosted by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s decision to award initial support for a £2.5m bid to carry out this work.
Development funding of £179,656 will allow Compton Verney to progress its plans to apply for a full grant at a later date. Parissien hopes the scheme will help create a stronger link between the galleries and the landscape.
This link between the house and the park will be highlighted in February when Compton Verney opens one of two major exhibitions being held in its 10th anniversary.
Moore Rodin will run for six months and will show sculpture inside the galleries and in the parkland. The exhibition includes loans from the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Henry Moore Foundation and other public collections in the UK.
Moore Rodin will be followed by British Folk Art, an exhibition that will come to the gallery after a spell at Tate Britain. It will feature 100-plus exhibits, including many items from Compton Verney’s own large folk art collection.
Parissien feels that folk art is an excellent fit with the gallery and its strategy to attracting audiences of all ages.
“Folk art is a great way of engaging with the audiences. It is about art not being po-faced or elitist and it is not about us telling you what to think. It underlines what we do here, which is show art that is for everyone, is fun and is accessible.”
Steven Parissien joined Compton Verney as its director in 2009 from the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, where he was the director of education.
Before that he was the dean of arts and professor of architectural history at the University of Plymouth. He has also been the assistant director of Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.
He took his BA and PhD at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on architectural and cultural history.
Warwickshire’s Compton Verney was home to the Verney or Willoughby de Broke family until 1921, after which the house and lands changed hands a number of times before eventually falling derelict, with parts of the land and house being sold off.
In 1993 it was rescued by the Compton Verney House Trust, which bought the house and immediate grounds with a grant from the Peter Moores Foundation. It opened as an art gallery in 2004.
Compton Verney is set in 120 acres of Grade II-listed parkland landscaped by 18th-century gardener Capability Brown.
The collections features Neapolitan art, Northern European art, British art, Chinese bronzes and British Folk Art.
It also has a collection created by designer, author and illustrator Enid Marx (1902-1998) and her friend Margaret Lambert (1906-95).
The Compton Verney House Trust had an income of £2.41m in 2012, of which £1.25m came from its endowment fund.
It employed 23 people on permanent contract and had 30 seasonal employees.
The gallery had just over 55,000 visitors in 2012, excluding schools visits.
The Grade I-listed house and gardens opened as an art gallery in 2004 after the estate was rescued from dereliction with money from a foundation set up by Peter Moores, a former director and chairman of retail and gambling firm Littlewoods.
Compton Verney has six collections ranging from Chinese bronzes to British folk art.
Money from the Peter Moores Foundation also provided the gallery with running costs although this support was coming to an end when Parissien arrived, as Moores was starting to wind down his foundation, which will finally cease operating this year.
‘Business-like footing’
“We were generously founded by the Peter Moores Foundation, but it was always going to be the case that they were going to pull back,” says Parissien, the gallery’s third director and successor to Kathleen Soriano, who left in 2009 to join London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
“So when I arrived there was instantly a lot to do because, like other museums and galleries, we needed to establish ourselves on a more business-like footing.”
Compton Verney was not abandoned totally as the Peter Moores Foundation created a £25m endowment fund that gives it income of £1.25m a year. Parissien says this pays for the basic costs of looking after the house, gardens and collections but not the exhibition programme and other activities.
Parissien’s challenge was to work in this new financial context without any direct experience of managing a gallery. His previous roles included assistant director at Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, the dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Plymouth and the director of education at the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment.
“Having been involved in higher education it was interesting being head-hunted for the role at Compton Verney,” Parissien says. “But I think lots of museums and galleries are looking for a broader frame of reference than just curating.”
He points out that Yale and Plymouth are essentially large arts businesses, but nevertheless, his early days at Compton Verney were difficult and involved a redundancy programme as part of a plan to make the gallery a more self-sustaining organisation.
“It was a shock to the staff at the time, but it was not all bad, as it was a reminder that the marvellous days of generous annual subsidy from the Peter Moores Foundation had gone – it was part of us growing up,” he says. “We now had look, as everyone else does, for sustainable sources of income.”
New partnerships
This meant increasing visitor numbers, establishing a patrons’ group, developing a profitable events and corporate hire business, all of which have been done.
Parissien says he has enjoyed the challenge: “It has all worked out marvellously and I have learned a lot. It has been fascinating dealing with a site that has so much potential that we are trying to unlock in a difficult financial context. Not everything we do instantly turns to gold but we have had a number of big successes in recent years.”
One of Parissien’s successes is a series of new partnerships. These range from alliances of regional cultural organisations that promote the arts or carry out joint marketing, through to less formal tie-ups that help secure high-profile exhibitions at Compton Verney. He points to shows developed last year with Tate, Glasgow Museums and the British Museum, all of whom he praises for their support.
“There are some organisations that are a delight to work with while others, who shall remain nameless, are not so neighbourly, shall we say, including some regional museums. But everyone is going to have to change, as partnership is the way forward.”
Reaching audiences
Parissien says the exhibition programme, which is vital to attract visitors, is now more focused on what Compton Verney’s audiences want.
Gone are the days when the gallery could use money from the Peter Moores Foundation to develop an experimental series of exhibitions, which built its reputation but he feels would be too risky now.
“We can’t continue with that level of experimentation any more as we can’t have an exhibition that no one comes to – it would be a disaster for us,” Parissien says. “Now we have to address our real audience rather than the one we’d like.”
The gallery has been working hard to appeal to new people, by developing family friendly facilities such as a children’s playground, for example.
It has also recently carried out a research project into its audiences that was funded by Arts Council England’s Strategic Support Fund and involved two other partners – Banbury Museum and 78 Derngate, The Charles Rennie Mackintosh House and Galleries, Northampton.
“One of the things the research showed was that we need to work harder in breaking down those barriers to participation,” Parissien says.
“We look like a stately home from across the lake and, while it is a fabulous view, for many it looks forbidding. So we need to say, ‘no, it is for everyone, for families, young people, older people’.”
Parissien also says the research showed that the gallery should concentrate on people rather than be too object-focused. And the feedback was that visitors wanted to be entertained rather than lectured about art.
“Everyone is moving away from that Reithian idea of ‘here is what you ought to know’, but there is still an element of that in a lot of museums and galleries,” Parissien says.
“For people who have not been to museums and galleries that is off-putting.”
Landscape plans
Parissien is also hoping to expand Compton Verney’s appeal by restoring its Capability Brown-designed parkland. His plan was recently boosted by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s decision to award initial support for a £2.5m bid to carry out this work.
Development funding of £179,656 will allow Compton Verney to progress its plans to apply for a full grant at a later date. Parissien hopes the scheme will help create a stronger link between the galleries and the landscape.
This link between the house and the park will be highlighted in February when Compton Verney opens one of two major exhibitions being held in its 10th anniversary.
Moore Rodin will run for six months and will show sculpture inside the galleries and in the parkland. The exhibition includes loans from the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Henry Moore Foundation and other public collections in the UK.
Moore Rodin will be followed by British Folk Art, an exhibition that will come to the gallery after a spell at Tate Britain. It will feature 100-plus exhibits, including many items from Compton Verney’s own large folk art collection.
Parissien feels that folk art is an excellent fit with the gallery and its strategy to attracting audiences of all ages.
“Folk art is a great way of engaging with the audiences. It is about art not being po-faced or elitist and it is not about us telling you what to think. It underlines what we do here, which is show art that is for everyone, is fun and is accessible.”
Steven Parissien at a glance
Steven Parissien joined Compton Verney as its director in 2009 from the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, where he was the director of education.
Before that he was the dean of arts and professor of architectural history at the University of Plymouth. He has also been the assistant director of Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.
He took his BA and PhD at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on architectural and cultural history.
Compton Verney at a glance
Warwickshire’s Compton Verney was home to the Verney or Willoughby de Broke family until 1921, after which the house and lands changed hands a number of times before eventually falling derelict, with parts of the land and house being sold off.
In 1993 it was rescued by the Compton Verney House Trust, which bought the house and immediate grounds with a grant from the Peter Moores Foundation. It opened as an art gallery in 2004.
Compton Verney is set in 120 acres of Grade II-listed parkland landscaped by 18th-century gardener Capability Brown.
The collections features Neapolitan art, Northern European art, British art, Chinese bronzes and British Folk Art.
It also has a collection created by designer, author and illustrator Enid Marx (1902-1998) and her friend Margaret Lambert (1906-95).
The Compton Verney House Trust had an income of £2.41m in 2012, of which £1.25m came from its endowment fund.
It employed 23 people on permanent contract and had 30 seasonal employees.
The gallery had just over 55,000 visitors in 2012, excluding schools visits.
