A “Welcome to Margate: Home of Turner Contemporary” sign greets you at Margate train station, leaving you in no doubt about the importance of the gallery to this town on the Kent coast.
The £17.5m Turner Contemporary, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, opened in 2011. The gallery attracted nearly 320,000 visitors last year and its striking presence on the seafront is seen as a major driver for the regeneration of the town and the wider area.
Turner Contemporary is among the new breed of galleries that have been built since the millennium, largely with funds from the lottery. Others include Firstsite in Colchester, the Towner in Eastbourne and Nottingham Contemporary.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that these and other recently built venues have transformed the cultural life of the UK. Visiting a museum or gallery has become a mainstream activity for many people and these new buildings have played a big role in this.
The impact of Tate Modern, which has attracted about 40 million visitors since opening in 2000, should also not be underestimated.
But how are these buildings working now that they have bedded down and visitors have become familiar with them?
American art history professor Andrew McClellan, in his book The Art Museum: From Boullée to Bilbao, points to a historic tension between galleries as venues to show art and as places of civic pride that are accessible and socially engaged.
Have today’s galleries resolved this tension and do they combine impressive architecture with an overall sense that the venues are welcoming and accessible to all?
As McClellan emphasises throughout his book, these are not new challenges, and have been debated since the 19th century. This continued into the 20th century with developments such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, which was seen by many as the template for a gallery that was accessible, fun and iconic when it opened in 1977.
Victoria Pomery, the director of Turner Contemporary, says that her building works well for artists, visitors and staff. One of the main problems is a nice one to have – the high number of people who come through the doors.
Comfortable but inspirational
“I think the building gets put under pressure at various points, but overall it’s a great building and they are great gallery spaces, so I think it’s standing up well,” Pomery says. “It sits well in its context, it is a comfortable space and doesn’t feel overpowering, but at the same time it feels inspirational.”
A bit more space to cope with the number of visitors might help but the scale of the building seems to work for the town and the gallery’s audience. Pomery and her staff are proud that many of its visitors have never been to a gallery before.
“It’s about what’s appropriate for the context and what’s appropriate for the particular place,” she says. “I know not everyone likes the building, but the majority of our visitors do like it and feel comfortable in it, and that’s important. It’s a simple but elegant building that serves the functions really, really well.”
One of the striking features of Turner Contemporary is the huge windows that provide spectacular views over the sea, the same views that inspired the painter JMW Turner, who became a regular visitor to the town from the 1820s onwards.
Galleries that have strong links to the landscape are part of a recent move away from buildings being hermetically sealed white boxes that are cut off physically, but also intellectually, from the outside world.
The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings is another recently opened arts venue on the coast in south-east England. A not-for-profit organisation, the £4m Jerwood Gallery which opened in 2012, did not receive lottery funding for its construction. The architect for the project was HAT Projects, a practice run by Tom Grieve and Hanna Loftus.
“To their credit, this was their first major project and they got as far as the mid-list of the Stirling prize, which we were incredibly proud of, and we’ve won about four different architectural awards, which is astonishing really,” says Liz Gilmore, the director of the Jerwood Gallery.
“Aesthetically, this building fits so seamlessly with the landscape and yet stands out as an interesting structure.”
The gallery is next to the fishing beach in Hastings’ historic old town and its black tiles, which cover the exterior, are designed to evoke the tarred boards of the nearby fishermen’s net huts. The tiles were hand-glazed in Kent and Gilmore says the gallery is one of the greenest in the country.
The £35m Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire is another Chipperfield project. It opened in 2011 as the UK’s largest purpose-built gallery since London’s Hayward Gallery was built in 1968. Like Turner Contemporary and the Jerwood Gallery, one of its features is views from its galleries to the world outside.
The gallery brings together items from Wakefield’s art collection, exhibitions by contemporary artists and works by the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who was born in the city in 1903 and was inspired by the Yorkshire landscape.
“I think it’s hugely in tune with the area and the building sits very comfortably in the environment here,” says Simon Wallis, the director of the Hepworth Wakefield.
“There’s a wonderful bluntness to the building in a way, yet at the same time this sort of softer sensual side unfolds as you spend time with it. And that unfolding comes from moving around the interior spaces.
“I think David Chipperfield really thought long and hard about the function of the gallery as a place where one has an aesthetic experience, and has created spaces that are not just tedious uniform cubes,” Wallis says. “They’ve got character, yet not one that impinges on an experience of a work of art.”
Wallis is understandably enthusiastic about his own building but, without naming names, is dismissive of some other recent UK gallery projects.
“I have a personal loathing for those bits of architecture that look like they are swathed in a veneer like a cheap sweet wrapper, or a crumpled cigarette packet, or badly designed gold blingy jewellery,” he says. “And it might look spectacular for a moment, but there’s not much of substance beyond that for me.”
Redeveloping and extending
But for many architects, there are limited opportunities to create new museums or galleries, good or bad. There is more work in redeveloping and extending existing buildings and this is likely to continue, particularly as it is now difficult to obtain large lottery grants for substantial new-builds.
A more common example of what we are probably going to see is projects like the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, which reopens this month following a £15m scheme to extend and reconfigure the 125-year-old building. The architectural practice for the project is McInnes, Usher, McKnight Architects (Muma).
Stuart McKnight, a partner at Muma, says one of the main aims is to connect the gallery better to the parkland that surrounds it. This was done to great effect in Bath in 2011 with the £11.2m redevelopment of the Holburne Museum of Art by Eric Parry Architects.
“The extension not only connects with the park, creating an outdoor gallery, it also acts as a pressure relief, allowing us to reconfigure and rationalise the existing building,” McKnight says. “Our approach is to make the building accessible but we are also trying to unlock its full potential.”
As well as accessibility and openness, one of the other key aims for the redevelopment is to make the Whitworth less energy hungry. This is becoming an increasingly important part of architects’ briefs because of the financial pressures that museums and galleries face.
Revitalising tired but distinguished 19th-century museums and galleries is what architect Rick Mather did particularly well. His work includes the redevelopment of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and the Wallace Collection and Dulwich Picture Gallery, both in London.
Mather died in 2013, but his practice continues and was recently appointed by Ipswich Borough Council to develop plans for the Ipswich Arts and Museum as the centrepiece of a community, arts and heritage project.
“With existing buildings such as the Ashmolean Museum, if you work with the fabric and historic intent and don’t try to make them something they are not, you get great results,” says Stuart Cade, a partner at Rick Mather Architects.
Cade says that his practice’s approach when working on an existing museum or gallery, particularly 19th-century buildings, is about peeling layers away to find the original features and intent and work from there. But even though the aim is to improve and celebrate the building, there can be resistance to this.
“I suppose it’s how you view the change and how some people see leaky roofs, overfilled display cases and tiny little labels as characterful,” Cade says. “And you can empathise with that.”
“With the Ashmolean, for example, where we argued the demolition of 50% of the building behind the Cockerell building, there were some who didn’t want to see anything change, but I think what they actually wanted was to better appreciate the good old buildings,” Cade says.
“We were able to create a new complementary building that works really well with the existing one, and the old building is even better than it was before because it doesn’t have the unsympathetic additions on the back of it.”
Purcell is another practice that has worked extensively on redeveloping museums and historic houses, including Kew Palace, Dover Castle, the National Museum of the Royal Navy and the National Mining Museum Scotland. Last year, it completed the redevelopment of the Wallace Collection’s Great Gallery.
“It’s not only understanding how the building works today but understanding how it got to be like it is,” says Mark Hammond, a partner at Purcell.
“It’s often a fairly complex unpicking that you have to do, as there may be some things that are architecturally or historical significant and you have to assess how they are working. The one thing we try and do is to take an overview of the site before we try to solve some of the problems, because sometimes you end up with some different answers.”
Regeneration – not only about buildings
It will be interesting to see how some of the recently built museums and galleries stand the test of time. Whatever the merits of the architecture, having a building that works for visitors, staff and collections is only part of creating a successful venue. The institution still has to develop and manage a programme of exhibitions, events and activities that appeals to audiences.
There is no doubt that Turner Contemporary has been a huge catalyst for the regeneration of Margate. The architecture has played a vital role in this, but it’s also about what goes on at the gallery day to day.
“There is still some way to go in terms of regeneration in Margate, but it’s a massively changed place,” says Pomery.
“But regeneration is so often seen as just about physical infrastructure, and it is about that, but it’s also about the people side – it’s about attitudes, change and transformation. Some of our projects working with young people and the elderly, and the learning and outreach programmes we do have really made an impact on people’s lives. That’s the important thing for me.”
A second article, to be published in the May issue of Museums Journal, will look at the future of museum and gallery architecture
Firstsite, Colchester
Cost £28m
Opened 2011
Architect Rafael Viñoly
First-year visitor figures 172,000
Latest annual visitor figures 147,000
The Hepworth Wakefield
Cost £35m
Opened 2011
Architect David Chipperfield Architects
First-year visitor figures 511,781
Latest annual visitor figures 226,150
Jerwood Hastings*
Cost £4m
Opened 2012
Architect HAT Projects
First-year visitor figures 65,000
Latest annual visitor figures 35,000
New Art Gallery Walsall
Cost £21.5m
Opened 2000
Architect Caruso St John
First-year visitor figures 202,000
Latest annual visitor figures 206,276
Nottingham Contemporary
Cost £19.8m
Opened 2009
Architect Caruso St John
First-year visitor figures 290,000
Latest annual visitor figures 226,727
Towner, Eastbourne
Cost £8.58m
Opened 2009
Architect Rick Mather Architects
First-year visitor figures 85,642
Latest annual visitor figures 120,000
Turner Contemporary
Cost £17.4m
Opened 2011
Architect David Chipperfield Architects
First-year visitor figures 466,949
Latest annual visitor figures 319,272
*Jerwood Gallery, an independent, not-for-profit organisation, operates without any public subsidy. It sustains itself through income from admission fees, retail, café etc and receives a grant from Jerwood Foundation.
The £17.5m Turner Contemporary, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, opened in 2011. The gallery attracted nearly 320,000 visitors last year and its striking presence on the seafront is seen as a major driver for the regeneration of the town and the wider area.
Turner Contemporary is among the new breed of galleries that have been built since the millennium, largely with funds from the lottery. Others include Firstsite in Colchester, the Towner in Eastbourne and Nottingham Contemporary.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that these and other recently built venues have transformed the cultural life of the UK. Visiting a museum or gallery has become a mainstream activity for many people and these new buildings have played a big role in this.
The impact of Tate Modern, which has attracted about 40 million visitors since opening in 2000, should also not be underestimated.
But how are these buildings working now that they have bedded down and visitors have become familiar with them?
American art history professor Andrew McClellan, in his book The Art Museum: From Boullée to Bilbao, points to a historic tension between galleries as venues to show art and as places of civic pride that are accessible and socially engaged.
Have today’s galleries resolved this tension and do they combine impressive architecture with an overall sense that the venues are welcoming and accessible to all?
As McClellan emphasises throughout his book, these are not new challenges, and have been debated since the 19th century. This continued into the 20th century with developments such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, which was seen by many as the template for a gallery that was accessible, fun and iconic when it opened in 1977.
Victoria Pomery, the director of Turner Contemporary, says that her building works well for artists, visitors and staff. One of the main problems is a nice one to have – the high number of people who come through the doors.
Comfortable but inspirational
“I think the building gets put under pressure at various points, but overall it’s a great building and they are great gallery spaces, so I think it’s standing up well,” Pomery says. “It sits well in its context, it is a comfortable space and doesn’t feel overpowering, but at the same time it feels inspirational.”
A bit more space to cope with the number of visitors might help but the scale of the building seems to work for the town and the gallery’s audience. Pomery and her staff are proud that many of its visitors have never been to a gallery before.
“It’s about what’s appropriate for the context and what’s appropriate for the particular place,” she says. “I know not everyone likes the building, but the majority of our visitors do like it and feel comfortable in it, and that’s important. It’s a simple but elegant building that serves the functions really, really well.”
One of the striking features of Turner Contemporary is the huge windows that provide spectacular views over the sea, the same views that inspired the painter JMW Turner, who became a regular visitor to the town from the 1820s onwards.
Galleries that have strong links to the landscape are part of a recent move away from buildings being hermetically sealed white boxes that are cut off physically, but also intellectually, from the outside world.
The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings is another recently opened arts venue on the coast in south-east England. A not-for-profit organisation, the £4m Jerwood Gallery which opened in 2012, did not receive lottery funding for its construction. The architect for the project was HAT Projects, a practice run by Tom Grieve and Hanna Loftus.
“To their credit, this was their first major project and they got as far as the mid-list of the Stirling prize, which we were incredibly proud of, and we’ve won about four different architectural awards, which is astonishing really,” says Liz Gilmore, the director of the Jerwood Gallery.
“Aesthetically, this building fits so seamlessly with the landscape and yet stands out as an interesting structure.”
The gallery is next to the fishing beach in Hastings’ historic old town and its black tiles, which cover the exterior, are designed to evoke the tarred boards of the nearby fishermen’s net huts. The tiles were hand-glazed in Kent and Gilmore says the gallery is one of the greenest in the country.
The £35m Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire is another Chipperfield project. It opened in 2011 as the UK’s largest purpose-built gallery since London’s Hayward Gallery was built in 1968. Like Turner Contemporary and the Jerwood Gallery, one of its features is views from its galleries to the world outside.
The gallery brings together items from Wakefield’s art collection, exhibitions by contemporary artists and works by the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who was born in the city in 1903 and was inspired by the Yorkshire landscape.
“I think it’s hugely in tune with the area and the building sits very comfortably in the environment here,” says Simon Wallis, the director of the Hepworth Wakefield.
“There’s a wonderful bluntness to the building in a way, yet at the same time this sort of softer sensual side unfolds as you spend time with it. And that unfolding comes from moving around the interior spaces.
“I think David Chipperfield really thought long and hard about the function of the gallery as a place where one has an aesthetic experience, and has created spaces that are not just tedious uniform cubes,” Wallis says. “They’ve got character, yet not one that impinges on an experience of a work of art.”
Wallis is understandably enthusiastic about his own building but, without naming names, is dismissive of some other recent UK gallery projects.
“I have a personal loathing for those bits of architecture that look like they are swathed in a veneer like a cheap sweet wrapper, or a crumpled cigarette packet, or badly designed gold blingy jewellery,” he says. “And it might look spectacular for a moment, but there’s not much of substance beyond that for me.”
Redeveloping and extending
But for many architects, there are limited opportunities to create new museums or galleries, good or bad. There is more work in redeveloping and extending existing buildings and this is likely to continue, particularly as it is now difficult to obtain large lottery grants for substantial new-builds.
A more common example of what we are probably going to see is projects like the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, which reopens this month following a £15m scheme to extend and reconfigure the 125-year-old building. The architectural practice for the project is McInnes, Usher, McKnight Architects (Muma).
Stuart McKnight, a partner at Muma, says one of the main aims is to connect the gallery better to the parkland that surrounds it. This was done to great effect in Bath in 2011 with the £11.2m redevelopment of the Holburne Museum of Art by Eric Parry Architects.
“The extension not only connects with the park, creating an outdoor gallery, it also acts as a pressure relief, allowing us to reconfigure and rationalise the existing building,” McKnight says. “Our approach is to make the building accessible but we are also trying to unlock its full potential.”
As well as accessibility and openness, one of the other key aims for the redevelopment is to make the Whitworth less energy hungry. This is becoming an increasingly important part of architects’ briefs because of the financial pressures that museums and galleries face.
Revitalising tired but distinguished 19th-century museums and galleries is what architect Rick Mather did particularly well. His work includes the redevelopment of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and the Wallace Collection and Dulwich Picture Gallery, both in London.
Mather died in 2013, but his practice continues and was recently appointed by Ipswich Borough Council to develop plans for the Ipswich Arts and Museum as the centrepiece of a community, arts and heritage project.
“With existing buildings such as the Ashmolean Museum, if you work with the fabric and historic intent and don’t try to make them something they are not, you get great results,” says Stuart Cade, a partner at Rick Mather Architects.
Cade says that his practice’s approach when working on an existing museum or gallery, particularly 19th-century buildings, is about peeling layers away to find the original features and intent and work from there. But even though the aim is to improve and celebrate the building, there can be resistance to this.
“I suppose it’s how you view the change and how some people see leaky roofs, overfilled display cases and tiny little labels as characterful,” Cade says. “And you can empathise with that.”
“With the Ashmolean, for example, where we argued the demolition of 50% of the building behind the Cockerell building, there were some who didn’t want to see anything change, but I think what they actually wanted was to better appreciate the good old buildings,” Cade says.
“We were able to create a new complementary building that works really well with the existing one, and the old building is even better than it was before because it doesn’t have the unsympathetic additions on the back of it.”
Purcell is another practice that has worked extensively on redeveloping museums and historic houses, including Kew Palace, Dover Castle, the National Museum of the Royal Navy and the National Mining Museum Scotland. Last year, it completed the redevelopment of the Wallace Collection’s Great Gallery.
“It’s not only understanding how the building works today but understanding how it got to be like it is,” says Mark Hammond, a partner at Purcell.
“It’s often a fairly complex unpicking that you have to do, as there may be some things that are architecturally or historical significant and you have to assess how they are working. The one thing we try and do is to take an overview of the site before we try to solve some of the problems, because sometimes you end up with some different answers.”
Regeneration – not only about buildings
It will be interesting to see how some of the recently built museums and galleries stand the test of time. Whatever the merits of the architecture, having a building that works for visitors, staff and collections is only part of creating a successful venue. The institution still has to develop and manage a programme of exhibitions, events and activities that appeals to audiences.
There is no doubt that Turner Contemporary has been a huge catalyst for the regeneration of Margate. The architecture has played a vital role in this, but it’s also about what goes on at the gallery day to day.
“There is still some way to go in terms of regeneration in Margate, but it’s a massively changed place,” says Pomery.
“But regeneration is so often seen as just about physical infrastructure, and it is about that, but it’s also about the people side – it’s about attitudes, change and transformation. Some of our projects working with young people and the elderly, and the learning and outreach programmes we do have really made an impact on people’s lives. That’s the important thing for me.”
A second article, to be published in the May issue of Museums Journal, will look at the future of museum and gallery architecture
New landmarks
Firstsite, Colchester
Cost £28m
Opened 2011
Architect Rafael Viñoly
First-year visitor figures 172,000
Latest annual visitor figures 147,000
The Hepworth Wakefield
Cost £35m
Opened 2011
Architect David Chipperfield Architects
First-year visitor figures 511,781
Latest annual visitor figures 226,150
Jerwood Hastings*
Cost £4m
Opened 2012
Architect HAT Projects
First-year visitor figures 65,000
Latest annual visitor figures 35,000
New Art Gallery Walsall
Cost £21.5m
Opened 2000
Architect Caruso St John
First-year visitor figures 202,000
Latest annual visitor figures 206,276
Nottingham Contemporary
Cost £19.8m
Opened 2009
Architect Caruso St John
First-year visitor figures 290,000
Latest annual visitor figures 226,727
Towner, Eastbourne
Cost £8.58m
Opened 2009
Architect Rick Mather Architects
First-year visitor figures 85,642
Latest annual visitor figures 120,000
Turner Contemporary
Cost £17.4m
Opened 2011
Architect David Chipperfield Architects
First-year visitor figures 466,949
Latest annual visitor figures 319,272
*Jerwood Gallery, an independent, not-for-profit organisation, operates without any public subsidy. It sustains itself through income from admission fees, retail, café etc and receives a grant from Jerwood Foundation.
