It’s a perennial problem – how do you mount an exciting exhibition on a shoe-string budget?
Regional museums are no strangers to financial constraints, but in straitened circumstances they are fostering a new kind of entrepreneurship that relies on collaboration and partnerships to find ingenious ways around a lack of resources.
Touring shows originated by national museums are, of course, valued by the regional venues that receive them, but smaller and medium-sized venues – independents and those run by local authorities – are increasingly taking the initiative themselves. They are doing this in a number of ways, such as organising exhibitions that draw on national collections, or forming informal partnerships between peers for shows that do not rely on larger metropoli-tan centres or funding from national bodies.
Compton Verney’s summer show, Britain in the Fifties: Design and Aspiration (until 2 October), billed as a feast of nostalgia sprinkled with seasonal seaside levity, is a prime example. It originates at the Warwickshire gallery, but the exhibition is a tripartite collaboration with Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth, and will play to the different strengths of each place.
At Compton Verney, there will be paintings, posters and textiles by Edward Bawden, John Piper and Eric Ravilious, as well as textiles by a friend of Enid Marx that have a room to themselves in the permanent displays. In Great Yarmouth, the show will resonate with the town’s history as a seaside resort – the 1950s were the hey-day of the British coastal holiday – from 22 October until 5 March 2017. Then it moves to Plymouth’s 1950s-designed Council House (25 March 2017 to early June 2017), where it will complement the city’s built heritage. As a design exhibition with a retro flavour it should attract young audiences.
Spreading the cost
So where is the money coming from? “We can make these things work without outside finance,” says Steven Parissien, the director of Compton Verney. “Large-scale sponsor-ship that national institutions attract is hard to come by in the regions. What helps us is the weddings business, which largely pays for our exhibitions.”
The Warwickshire gallery charges a small fee to its partner venues for staff time spent researching and organising the show, and in return those venues get a curated exhibition they can adapt to suit themselves. This model has worked well with Compton Verney’s previous partnerships with Bath’s Holburne Museum, Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, Margate’s Turner Contemporary, the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle and Pallant House in Chichester. Transport costs may mean loans from foreign institutions are out of the question, but borrowed works can come from across the country.
Although the shows tend not to generate much money, costs are often shared, which means the production of an accompanying publication is made more possible through its sale in several venues. Also, conservation charges can be spread between museums.
Fostering relationships
The larger national museums based in London can be generous with loans and are often keen to send works that are not on display. But working with them involves planning far ahead, whereas dealing with smaller sister institutions allows decisions to be made more quickly because organisational structures are less elaborate. As Parissien says: “We know the people so we can be far nimbler and make quicker decisions.”
This sentiment is shared by Nicholas Tromans, the director of the Watts Gallery Artist’s Village in Compton, near Guildford. He has set about forming complementary partnerships with similar trusted institutions that have corresponding aims. “For an audience that’s familiar with your museum, it’s almost like being introduced to a friend of a friend,” he says. “It’s not just any old museum, there’s a real relationship there.”
There are often advantages of size too. The Watts Gallery’s exhibition rooms are intimate, so it is better to share shows that are conceived on a similar scale, rather than attempting to adapt a large exhibition to a smaller space. One of the shows Tromans says he found most satisfying to devise was on the Victorian artist Richard Dadd. It was arranged in collaboration with Bethlem Museum of the Mind, which houses the archives of the original Bedlam psychiatric hospital, where Dadd was incarcerated. The Watts Gallery took the lead, with the show opening in Compton in June 2015, before travelling to Bethlem Museum in Beckenham in November that year.
“It was a genuine partnership because we were offering each other different things,” says Tromans. “It gave us access to their archive and generous loans, and we did the research and organised the exhibition. It was collegiate. We wanted to support it.”
Although people might have thought it strange for an exhibition to tour to two venues that were not that far apart, it attracted different visitors in each location. The recent exhibition Brothers in Art: Drawings by Watts and Leighton – which saw drawings by the two Victorian artists from the Watts Gallery and Leighton House in west London exhibited side by side – is another example of the kind of show that has been a perfect fit for the Watts Gallery’s remit and space.
These collaborations involve partners close to home, but Tromans’s vision reaches beyond these shores to embrace artists’ studio museums all over the world.
Overseas network Tromans’s ambition to establish a network of studio-museums is being realised, the first phase being a dedicated website where they – often tucked away in remote areas in the countryside and unaware of each other’s existence – can introduce themselves, exchange information and work towards putting on exhibitions together.
So far, one show has come about as a result of the Artists’ Studio Museums of Europe network: a show on the 19th-century Russian painter Elena Polenova that took place in the winter of 2014-15 as a collaboration between the Watts Gallery and the Elena Polenova Gallery, south of Moscow. There was a natural fit between the two studio museums: Mary Seton Watts and Elena Polenova were contemporaries and interested in national styles.
“The partnership was almost more powerful than if we had borrowed from the Hermitage, because we were partnering with equals,” Tromans says.
Funding can also come from partners abroad, often through personal contacts. Dulwich Picture Gallery’s collaboration with foreign institutions has fostered an international network that has generated exhibitions and the money to support them. Its director, Ian Dejardin, and his enthusiasm for Canadian art led to an encounter with the art collector David Thomson, who persuaded him to curate the London gallery’s Painting Canada show in 2011.
A visit to that country secured sponsor-ship and led to the foundation of a Canadian Friends Group, which also helped fund the gallery’s Emily Carr exhibition. Since then, the Canadian Friends have supported shows that are not just about Canadian art, such as Dulwich Picture Gallery’s recent Winifred Knights exhibition.
One thing has lead to another, Dejardin says. “The success of Painting Canada attracted the notice of Norway. My old boss at the Royal Academy of Arts, MaryAnne Stevens, was chairing a committee commissioned by the Bank of Norway to look into ways of promoting Nikolai Astrup to an international audience. She asked me to join in and the idea of the exhibition at Dulwich, supported entirely by the bank, evolved from there.” The Astrup exhibition was held in spring this year and there are plans for another Norwegian art show.
Partners in art
The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings is also exploring new types of partnership to support its exhibitions.
“We can approach it slightly differently, partly because we’re the new kid on the block so our planning cycles are fairly new,” says Liz Gilmore, the gallery’s director.
Earlier this year, the gallery took on the public as an exhibition partner, when people were invited to respond to a call of “Bring Out Your Bratbys” and lend works by John Bratby for a show on the artist. Many of his works are unknown as they are tucked away in private collections. Because the owners brought in the works, transport costs were kept to a minimum.
Commercial galleries, which are increasingly programming museum-quality shows, can also be helpful partners. “It helps our cashflow at a time when purse strings are tight,” says Gilmore.
The gallery’s summer show of work by Marcus Harvey (until 16 October) is a case in point: the gallery invited the artist to create a show to tie in with the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. To make it possible, the organisation collaborated with the Vigo Gallery, which represents Harvey, while Arts Council England helped with a grant. This autumn, the Jerwood Gallery will collaborate with the Lightbox in Woking, home to the Ingram Collection of modern British and contemporary art. The two galleries will mount a show of British 20th-century art by uniting their collections.
“Putting them together will be like looking at old friends in a slightly different way, while offering new interpretations of our collection,” says Gilmore.
Ultimately, it’s about being inventive, and cultivating personal relationships and a network of partners.
“It’s not about securing loans or tours by email – it’s about meeting people and keeping the relationship going,” Parissien says.
“If any of us have a problem we contact each other. If a loan falls through all our partners rally round with alternative offers. Ten years ago it was different, but now everyone feels we’re in it together and we’re there to help each other.
Partner venues, along with Engage, put in a bid for funding, and the exhibition toured to three cities. It started at Turner Contemporary in Margate, then moved to Leicester, where it was held in partnership with New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, Soft Touch Arts and Spark Art for Children. It then travelled to Quay Arts, a mixed arts venue in Newport on the Isle of Wight. The hosting institutions adapted it to their own audiences and commissioned a site-specific work from a professional artist. At Turner Contemporary, this took the form of a giant lightbox displaying text messages from young people; in Leicester, it was a trail of perspex boxes connecting the museum and Soft Touch Arts down the road.
According to Jo Plimmer, who organised the tour, it was particularly strong in Leicester because of the different partners nvolved: an Accredited museum with a formal and rigorous approach, and Soft Touch Arts, which is more light on its feet and reactive.
The museum found it liberating to work with a local arts organisation. It helped to develop outreach activities, while the young people involved in Soft Touch Arts came into the museum, met he technical teams and curators, and learned a huge amount about how to curate an exhibition.
“We’re about to launch the digital resource that has come from the tour, which will share some of the learning,” says Plimmer. “And there are tentative explorations on how we can build on that.
Caroline Bugler is a freelance writer. The Artists’ Studio Museums of Europe.
Century: 100 works of Modern British Art from the Ingram and Jerwood Collections is at the Jerwood Gallery from 22 October 2016 to 8 January 2017
Regional museums are no strangers to financial constraints, but in straitened circumstances they are fostering a new kind of entrepreneurship that relies on collaboration and partnerships to find ingenious ways around a lack of resources.
Touring shows originated by national museums are, of course, valued by the regional venues that receive them, but smaller and medium-sized venues – independents and those run by local authorities – are increasingly taking the initiative themselves. They are doing this in a number of ways, such as organising exhibitions that draw on national collections, or forming informal partnerships between peers for shows that do not rely on larger metropoli-tan centres or funding from national bodies.
Compton Verney’s summer show, Britain in the Fifties: Design and Aspiration (until 2 October), billed as a feast of nostalgia sprinkled with seasonal seaside levity, is a prime example. It originates at the Warwickshire gallery, but the exhibition is a tripartite collaboration with Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth, and will play to the different strengths of each place.
At Compton Verney, there will be paintings, posters and textiles by Edward Bawden, John Piper and Eric Ravilious, as well as textiles by a friend of Enid Marx that have a room to themselves in the permanent displays. In Great Yarmouth, the show will resonate with the town’s history as a seaside resort – the 1950s were the hey-day of the British coastal holiday – from 22 October until 5 March 2017. Then it moves to Plymouth’s 1950s-designed Council House (25 March 2017 to early June 2017), where it will complement the city’s built heritage. As a design exhibition with a retro flavour it should attract young audiences.
Spreading the cost
So where is the money coming from? “We can make these things work without outside finance,” says Steven Parissien, the director of Compton Verney. “Large-scale sponsor-ship that national institutions attract is hard to come by in the regions. What helps us is the weddings business, which largely pays for our exhibitions.”
The Warwickshire gallery charges a small fee to its partner venues for staff time spent researching and organising the show, and in return those venues get a curated exhibition they can adapt to suit themselves. This model has worked well with Compton Verney’s previous partnerships with Bath’s Holburne Museum, Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, Margate’s Turner Contemporary, the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle and Pallant House in Chichester. Transport costs may mean loans from foreign institutions are out of the question, but borrowed works can come from across the country.
Although the shows tend not to generate much money, costs are often shared, which means the production of an accompanying publication is made more possible through its sale in several venues. Also, conservation charges can be spread between museums.
For an audience that’s familiar with your museum, it’s almost like being introduced to a friend of a friend"
Fostering relationships
The larger national museums based in London can be generous with loans and are often keen to send works that are not on display. But working with them involves planning far ahead, whereas dealing with smaller sister institutions allows decisions to be made more quickly because organisational structures are less elaborate. As Parissien says: “We know the people so we can be far nimbler and make quicker decisions.”
This sentiment is shared by Nicholas Tromans, the director of the Watts Gallery Artist’s Village in Compton, near Guildford. He has set about forming complementary partnerships with similar trusted institutions that have corresponding aims. “For an audience that’s familiar with your museum, it’s almost like being introduced to a friend of a friend,” he says. “It’s not just any old museum, there’s a real relationship there.”
There are often advantages of size too. The Watts Gallery’s exhibition rooms are intimate, so it is better to share shows that are conceived on a similar scale, rather than attempting to adapt a large exhibition to a smaller space. One of the shows Tromans says he found most satisfying to devise was on the Victorian artist Richard Dadd. It was arranged in collaboration with Bethlem Museum of the Mind, which houses the archives of the original Bedlam psychiatric hospital, where Dadd was incarcerated. The Watts Gallery took the lead, with the show opening in Compton in June 2015, before travelling to Bethlem Museum in Beckenham in November that year.
“It was a genuine partnership because we were offering each other different things,” says Tromans. “It gave us access to their archive and generous loans, and we did the research and organised the exhibition. It was collegiate. We wanted to support it.”
Although people might have thought it strange for an exhibition to tour to two venues that were not that far apart, it attracted different visitors in each location. The recent exhibition Brothers in Art: Drawings by Watts and Leighton – which saw drawings by the two Victorian artists from the Watts Gallery and Leighton House in west London exhibited side by side – is another example of the kind of show that has been a perfect fit for the Watts Gallery’s remit and space.
These collaborations involve partners close to home, but Tromans’s vision reaches beyond these shores to embrace artists’ studio museums all over the world.
Overseas network Tromans’s ambition to establish a network of studio-museums is being realised, the first phase being a dedicated website where they – often tucked away in remote areas in the countryside and unaware of each other’s existence – can introduce themselves, exchange information and work towards putting on exhibitions together.
So far, one show has come about as a result of the Artists’ Studio Museums of Europe network: a show on the 19th-century Russian painter Elena Polenova that took place in the winter of 2014-15 as a collaboration between the Watts Gallery and the Elena Polenova Gallery, south of Moscow. There was a natural fit between the two studio museums: Mary Seton Watts and Elena Polenova were contemporaries and interested in national styles.
“The partnership was almost more powerful than if we had borrowed from the Hermitage, because we were partnering with equals,” Tromans says.
Funding can also come from partners abroad, often through personal contacts. Dulwich Picture Gallery’s collaboration with foreign institutions has fostered an international network that has generated exhibitions and the money to support them. Its director, Ian Dejardin, and his enthusiasm for Canadian art led to an encounter with the art collector David Thomson, who persuaded him to curate the London gallery’s Painting Canada show in 2011.
A visit to that country secured sponsor-ship and led to the foundation of a Canadian Friends Group, which also helped fund the gallery’s Emily Carr exhibition. Since then, the Canadian Friends have supported shows that are not just about Canadian art, such as Dulwich Picture Gallery’s recent Winifred Knights exhibition.
One thing has lead to another, Dejardin says. “The success of Painting Canada attracted the notice of Norway. My old boss at the Royal Academy of Arts, MaryAnne Stevens, was chairing a committee commissioned by the Bank of Norway to look into ways of promoting Nikolai Astrup to an international audience. She asked me to join in and the idea of the exhibition at Dulwich, supported entirely by the bank, evolved from there.” The Astrup exhibition was held in spring this year and there are plans for another Norwegian art show.
Partners in art
The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings is also exploring new types of partnership to support its exhibitions.
“We can approach it slightly differently, partly because we’re the new kid on the block so our planning cycles are fairly new,” says Liz Gilmore, the gallery’s director.
Earlier this year, the gallery took on the public as an exhibition partner, when people were invited to respond to a call of “Bring Out Your Bratbys” and lend works by John Bratby for a show on the artist. Many of his works are unknown as they are tucked away in private collections. Because the owners brought in the works, transport costs were kept to a minimum.
Commercial galleries, which are increasingly programming museum-quality shows, can also be helpful partners. “It helps our cashflow at a time when purse strings are tight,” says Gilmore.
The gallery’s summer show of work by Marcus Harvey (until 16 October) is a case in point: the gallery invited the artist to create a show to tie in with the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. To make it possible, the organisation collaborated with the Vigo Gallery, which represents Harvey, while Arts Council England helped with a grant. This autumn, the Jerwood Gallery will collaborate with the Lightbox in Woking, home to the Ingram Collection of modern British and contemporary art. The two galleries will mount a show of British 20th-century art by uniting their collections.
“Putting them together will be like looking at old friends in a slightly different way, while offering new interpretations of our collection,” says Gilmore.
Ultimately, it’s about being inventive, and cultivating personal relationships and a network of partners.
“It’s not about securing loans or tours by email – it’s about meeting people and keeping the relationship going,” Parissien says.
“If any of us have a problem we contact each other. If a loan falls through all our partners rally round with alternative offers. Ten years ago it was different, but now everyone feels we’re in it together and we’re there to help each other.
Engaging enterprise
Engage,
the organisation for gallery education, recently piloted an
innovative collaborative model for a touring exhibition –
Generation Art. It was an open submission show of around 40 pieces of
work by young people aged between five and 18. Participants not only
produced the art, but also helped select, curate and market the
exhibition, as well as deliver workshops.Partner venues, along with Engage, put in a bid for funding, and the exhibition toured to three cities. It started at Turner Contemporary in Margate, then moved to Leicester, where it was held in partnership with New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, Soft Touch Arts and Spark Art for Children. It then travelled to Quay Arts, a mixed arts venue in Newport on the Isle of Wight. The hosting institutions adapted it to their own audiences and commissioned a site-specific work from a professional artist. At Turner Contemporary, this took the form of a giant lightbox displaying text messages from young people; in Leicester, it was a trail of perspex boxes connecting the museum and Soft Touch Arts down the road.
According to Jo Plimmer, who organised the tour, it was particularly strong in Leicester because of the different partners nvolved: an Accredited museum with a formal and rigorous approach, and Soft Touch Arts, which is more light on its feet and reactive.
The museum found it liberating to work with a local arts organisation. It helped to develop outreach activities, while the young people involved in Soft Touch Arts came into the museum, met he technical teams and curators, and learned a huge amount about how to curate an exhibition.
“We’re about to launch the digital resource that has come from the tour, which will share some of the learning,” says Plimmer. “And there are tentative explorations on how we can build on that.
Caroline Bugler is a freelance writer. The Artists’ Studio Museums of Europe.
Century: 100 works of Modern British Art from the Ingram and Jerwood Collections is at the Jerwood Gallery from 22 October 2016 to 8 January 2017