Down to a fine art - Museums Association

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Down to a fine art

Commissioning new art has been part and parcel of the museum and gallery sector for years. Gareth Harris discovers what makes for a successful scheme
Visitors to Bath over the next few months can enjoy the spectacle of several Serbian gnomes waving cheerily at passersby. The eye-catching sculptures, made by Belgrade-born artist Djordje Ozbolt, were commissioned for an exhibition at Bath’s Holburne Museum (until 5 March). Inspired by historical items in the museum’s collection, Ozbolt made the works during a recent residency at the Hauser & Wirth Somerset gallery.

A project statement says that “with his signature blend of surreal satire and playful reinterpretation of history, Ozbolt helps the viewer to see the collection anew”. Jennifer Scott, the director of Holburne Museum, who has just been appointed as the director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, is a believer in commissioning new works that “draw out new narratives, surprise existing audiences and entice new visitors”.

The practice of commissioning is now embedded in UK museums and galleries, from large-scale schemes – the most significant, site-specific institutional initiative has been Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall installation series, which has boosted many artists’ profiles critically and commercially – to small-scale programmes such as the Horniman Museum, in south London. The Horniman is seeking an artist interested in South Asia and its environmental issues to create an intervention in the museum’s Inspired by Nature section for a fee of £3,000.

The National Trust was a key partner in the recent national pathfinder programme New Expressions, which saw 18 artists present specially commissioned pieces in partnership with 15 regional museums and three of the trust’s properties. Grace Davies, the trust’s contemporary arts programme manager, says new commissions enrich the visitor experience. For instance, British artist Mat Collishaw’s made work for Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden in north Yorkshire last year. Created for the organisation’s Folly programme, Collishaw’s work provided a “compelling reason” to walk around the site’s Unesco-listed water gardens, Davies says.

Meanwhile, Simon Martin, the artistic director of Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, has overseen an ambitious programme of commissions for the venue. The gallery has shown commissioned work by artists including Pablo Bronstein, who makes architectural murals often with live dance, and Susie MacMurray, a multimedia artist who crafts delicate, often sinister, installations.

But Martin says that commissions need to reflect the local context: “If a commission has no connection to the place or collections, it could seem parachuted in.”

Mutually beneficial

So who benefits most when an artist secures a museum commission? Artists can expand and develop their ideas by working closely with institutions. In late 2015, the Cuban artist collective Los Carpinteros unveiled a globe-shaped wooden installation with seating, called The Globe, in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) refurbished £12.5m Europe Galleries.

“Our work to date has mainly been with museums and galleries dedicated to contemporary art, so it was exciting to work in the context of the V&A’s historical collection of objects, fine art and design,” the Los Carpinteros collective says. “It is a world with which our practice has many familiarities and connections.”
 
The residency model continues to evolve in the sector. The Delfina Foundation in London, a non-profit institution established in 2007, hosts six to eight residencies at any given time. Later this year, the organisation is launching a programme exploring the psychology and politics of collecting through residencies for artists and, unusually, collectors.

“Some of the artist residencies will be in collaboration with institutions,” says Aaron Cezar, the director of the Delfina Foundation. “We are doing one with the V&A where the artist will respond to the collection working from a studio on site at the museum. Another collaboration, led by the V&A, is with artist Mark Dion, who will be making a display, or cabinet of curiosity.”

Maria Balshaw, the director of the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester City Galleries (recently announced as the next director of Tate), says provocative and powerful commissions that transform gallery spaces can benefit artists, visitors and institutions . “Artists’ works do not just fit into frames,” Balshaw says. “They have long recognised the benefit of stepping out of the white cube.”

The Kinderzimmer installation by the German artist Gregor Schneider, which was commissioned by the Whitworth in 2009 for the exhibition Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art, plunged visitors, one by one, into total darkness in a cavernous space.

“We needed to do something that bold,” says Balshaw. “We wanted people to say that you must go to Manchester to see Gregor’s disorienting piece.”

Contemporary collections

Balshaw also points to an installation by the Indian performance artist Nikhil Chopra that drew 11,500 people to the Whitworth over one weekend in 2013. For the work, Coal on Cotton, Chopra created a large-scale landscape drawing of Manchester and Mumbai’s textile districts in charcoal on a vast tent wall, over a 65-hour period.

“It created a different sense of what contemporary art is about and also connected with South Asian audiences,” Balshaw says, adding that the piece, a co-commission with the Manchester International Festival (MIF), was acquired by the Whitworth.

Not every work commissioned is acquired though. In their 2012 publication, Commissioning Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson), Louisa Buck and Daniel McClean outline the possible outcomes. Decisions about whether to acquire a commissioned work or not vary according to the individual commission, they emphasise.

“Sometimes works are commissioned specifically for acquisition or for permanent display in a specific part of the gallery,” the book says. “Others enter the collection at a later point, having been purchased after commission and then given to the museum. Sometimes the artist donates the work.”

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead does not have a collection, so commissioned work is returned to the artist after being on display. Laurence Sillars, the Baltic’s chief curator, says contracts are drawn up with the artists. “The production costs that Baltic spends on a work are recouped in the event of a sale,” he says.

The production of Fiona Tan’s Depot piece, a 76-foot-long vehicle housing a cabinet of curiosities inspired by Jonah the Giant Whale, was funded by the Sfumato Foundation in association with the Art Fund. The vast work was the centrepiece of Baltic’s 2015 show dedicated to the Amsterdam-based artist.
 
The Art Fund has supported several new commissions over the past year including Anya Gallaccio’s permanent public sculpture unveiled in Whitworth Park in Manchester in June (Untitled 2016, Stainless Steel Tree). The funding charity is also behind Christine Borland’s commission for Glasgow Museums (see box, above).

“These site-specific works add an important new dimension to the nation’s public art collections,” says Stephen Deuchar, the director of the Art Fund.

Bearing the cost

The Contemporary Art Society (CAS) also champions commissioning art – from 2008 to 2015, it ran an initiative called Annual Award: Commission to Collect, giving museums £80,000 to commission a work. The funding, provided by the Sfumato Foundation, has since been redirected towards CAS’s new Great Works project, but Caroline Douglas, the director, says the organisation is developing a new commissioning venture that will launch in 2018.

If a commissioned work is returned to an artist (or their commercial gallery), the issue of how the work was funded in the first place and whether it is eventually sold on the art market might come under scrutiny. “Can the commissioned artwork be resold in the future? Should the commissioner be able to benefit in the resale of the commissioned work?” ask Buck and McClean in their book.

The pair stress that it is common for public institutions to require that some or all of the production costs they have invested are returned to them if the work is subsequently sold. The rationale is that any revenue reaped can be used to fund further acquisitions or commissions.

“The negatives of recoupment are that it can potentially cause institutions to commission artists whose work is more likely to be sold in the marketplace, which might lead to the selection of fewer experimental artists,” the authors say.

They cite Conrad Shawcross’s commission to produce three large works for his exhibition The Steady States in 2005 at the New Art Gallery Walsall as a good example of a successful collaboration between an artist, public institution and a commercial gallery.

All three parties agreed that the production costs of the three works – divided equally across them – could be recouped from their sale. When one work sold, an agreed proportion of the sale proceeds was subsequently paid to the New Art Gallery. Victoria Miro, Shawcross’s dealer, supported the move.

“The works we’re supporting are mainly commissioned for museums and public collections,” says a spokeswoman for the Art Fund (an alternative work by Fiona Tan was donated to Laing Gallery in Newcastle as part of the Great Works project).

Arts Council England has published guidelines on recoupment; its director of visual arts, Peter Heslip, says that the most important step is for the relevant parties to agree – upfront and in writing – on issues such as ownership, recoupment from sale and intellectual property rights.

Public value

Balshaw outlines another acquisition scenario. In 2009, the Whitworth commissioned Gustav Metzger’s work Flailing Trees – 21 upended willow trees encased
in a bed of concrete – in partnership with the MIF.

“After the festival, we agreed to give the work a permanent location in Whitworth Park and we agreed an acquisition fee with the artist, production costs having already been covered by us and MIF,” Balshaw says. “We paid the artist the agreed value of the work. Public benefit guidelines apply; you have to ask, for instance, whether the work will be available for the public to see all year round.”

Ultimately, hiring artists often means taking a leap in the dark both financially and aesthetically. Sillars is philosophical on the subject, saying: “Boards, acquisition committees, collectors and commercial supporters need to see finished things before they commit. But it’s also a fundamental responsibility of publicly funded organisations to commission or otherwise bring new work into the world with their core funding.”

For curators, commissions are all about keeping collections relevant and fresh. Later this year, the National Trust will ask artists to respond to properties that have strong links with LGBTQ issues as part of its contemporary programme Trust New Art. The initiative coincides with the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts.

“In addition to shining a light on unknown stories and hidden places, we are enabling artists to present fresh perspectives about the issues of the day that remain rooted in our rich and varied heritage,” says Davies.

The sculptor Antony Gormley, whose work Field for the British Isles was on display at Barrington Court, a National Trust property, in 2012, sums up why new art is needed. “It’s good that the trust commissions and shows new art. All art was contemporary once.”
Glasgow Museums: making topical art commissions
Jo Meacock, the curator of British art at Glasgow Museums, says that the artist Christine Borland was the perfect choice for a new commission linked to the institution’s first world war collection. Ayrshire-born Borland will create a permanent work supported by 14-18 Now, the UK’s arts programme for the first world war centenary, and the Art Fund.

“Borland is particularly interested in reclaiming histories and making hidden stories and people visible for the general public,” says Meacock. “She has been drawn
to a series of small-scale, little-researched objects that indicate her interest in personalising the experience of those directly involved in the conflict, both soldiers and civilians.

“Her creative response to the collection is helping us view our holdings in new ways.”

The commission commenced last October with a one-year research residency at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC). This phase will be followed by a period of experimental practical work back in Borland’s studio from October 2017, Meacock says, with the work due to be unveiled in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in October 2018.

Glasgow Museums is holding numerous events centred on the commission, including a community consultation event scheduled for spring 2018, when the public and local schools can react to the piece.

Meacock highlights why the initiative has proved successful, saying: “By commissioning contemporary artists to create works for Glasgow Museums, as opposed to purchasing existing works at auction, through dealers or from the artist, we can ensure the greatest possible fit with our collecting policy and relevance for our city, collection, displays and audiences.” 

Gareth Harris is a freelance journalist.

Djordje Ozbolt: The Grand Detour is at Holburne Museum in Bath until 5 March. Djordje Ozbolt: Brave New World is at Hauser & Wirth Somerset in Bruton until 7 May

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