Jerwood Gallery to lose British art collection by November The Hastings-based gallery, which has been sponsored by the philanthropic organisation since its opening in 2012, currently houses almost 300 works from the Jerwood Collection. This includes modern and contemporary British art assembled by Alan Grieve, the chairman of the Jerwood Foundation, including pieces by Barbara Hepworth and Stanley Spencer.
However, the Jerwood Foundation has announced plans to terminate its funding agreement by the end of this year. This, it says, will result in the removal of the collection, ‘in a reasonable manner’, by the end of November.
The gallery will also be renamed, although it will remain a tenant of the foundation, which owns the £5m building.
The Art Newspaper reports that the dispute was sparked after the foundation informed the gallery in 2016 that its funding would cease after 2019, according to Grieve. He claims that gallery management subsequently took legal action, hiring a US law firm which informed the foundation that it had allegedly failed to meet its funding obligations and should continue making grants beyond 2019.
The gallery’s director, Liz Gilmore, has issued a statement which states: “Disengagement discussions between the Foundation and the Gallery include the departure of the Jerwood Collection from the gallery. Many works in the Jerwood Collection have become ‘old friends’ to our visitors, and our artistic DNA has been shaped by the presence of the Foundation’s Modern British Art collection – with Hastings being recognised as a beacon for British painting.”
Gilmore adds that the departure of the Jerwood Collection would allow the gallery to expand its exhibition programme. “It will allow us to use the full potential of our remarkable building for a more diverse range of exhibitions for the different audience groups we have built.”
The gallery became an independent charity in 2017 in order to ‘diversify its income streams’ beyond the Jerwood Foundation’s support. The same year, Arts Council England awarded the gallery £400,000 over four years as part of its National Portfolio from 2018 to 2022.
Ai Weiwei cut from film with producer citing ‘fear of China’ Whilst under house arrest in Beijing in 2015, the Chinese artist and activist contributed to the anthology film Berlin, I Love You, remotely directing his segment. Weiwei’s section portrayed the separation of a family and featured his five-year-old son, Ai Lao, who was living in Germany.
However, in the final version of the film, which was released in the United States this month and stars Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren and Luke Wilson, his scenes were cut. Weiwei told the New York Times that producers had told him they had decided to cut his segment after investors, distributors and other partners raised concerns about the artist’s political sensitivity in China.
Weiwei commented: “When I found out, I was very angry. It was frustrating to see Western creators and institutions collaborating with Chinese censorship in such an obvious way.”
New study claims 85% of artists shown in US museums are white Researchers examined more than 40,000 artworks in the collections of 18 museums across the US, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago, with the aim of analysing the gender and ethnic diversity of the artists whose work is being held.
It showed that 85% of artists represented in the collections are white and 87% are men. Notably, researchers found ‘a very weak association’ between a collection’s mission and diversity, which they suggest might mean that ‘a museum wishing to increase diversity in its collection might do so without changing the geographic and/or temporal emphases of its mission’.
Chad Topaz, a mathematics professor at Williams College and one of the study’s authors, told artnet News: “We’ve noted the deaccessioning of works in museums in order to diversify collections, as happened in Baltimore, and we’ve read informative and thought-provoking writing on gender and ethnicity in art by Aruna D’Souza and others. Our own work strives to provide some empirical data in order to contribute to the national and international dialogue taking place.”
Producer and commissioner Atlas Arts announces international appointments in research and development year Scottish arts leader Caroline Winn will take up the post of research and development director, and will focus on the development of Atlas as an organisation. Meanwhile, curator Rob Blackson, who has previously worked at Nottingham Contemporary, will join Atlas as a consultant curator and will develop a new series of art projects.
Norman Gillies, chairman of the Atlas Arts board, commented: “We want to take this opportunity to build on the local, national and international success of our first eight years by looking rigorously at new approaches in current artistic practice, and options for Atlas ‘development as an organisation. To do this we have initiated a research and development year; enabling us to appoint exciting specialists with national and international reputations to identify and test new strategies.”
The appointments follows the departure at the end of last year of founding director Emma Nicolson, who has taken up a new position as head of exhibitions at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Image:
1. The side of the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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