Now in its fifth year, Museums at Night will see a host of cultural venues and institutions open their doors a little later than normal this weekend.
The ‘festival of inspiring after hours cultural events’ this year includes over 400 venues – many of which will be hosting special exhibitions and projects across the weekend. There are sleepovers, torchlit tours and workshops, plus a number of participatory events involving audiences and artists alike.
“It’s an opportunity for venues and audiences to experience something new and to be surprised,” says Nick Stockman of Culture24, the organisation behind Musuems at Night. “Many venues are working directly with artists who bring a different perspective to their programmes and collections. We don’t impose a theme – so museums and galleries progamme events that are relevant to them.”
A major part this year’s programme is the Connect10 competiton, whereby venues around the country pitched a project in order to secure the services of one of the UK’s leading artists, with an online public vote deciding who went where. Thirty-eight venues competed to host one of ten artists – a selection that included Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gavin Turk and Richard Wentworth. Winning venues include BACKLIT, Nottingham (Mat Collishaw), The Freud Museum, London (Martin Creed) and 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe (Cullinan & Richards).
Nick Stockman explains: “The competition means there is a real element of surprise and risk for the artists and venues involved – it wasn’t until votes had been counted that the artists knew which venue they were working with and they then had only a couple of months to develop an idea together. Some of the projects have morphed into something completely different from the original proposals and gone into ‘who know’s what’ territory. For the Jake and Dinos Chapman‘s project at Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, for instance , there is a real cloak of secrecy around what they will be doing.”
Stand-alone events
Two popular stand-alone events under the Museums at Night umbrella are also taking place this weekend. Friday night’s LightNight Liverpool includes exhibitions, open studios and performances hosted by around 60 venues. Highlights include a series of large-scale light projections by new media artist Andy McKeown across three locations in the city, and the opening of Black Sun Horizon at The Royal Standard, a group exhibition curated by Dave Evans and including works by Cory Arcangel, Dick Jewell, Bill Leslie, Samuel Williams.
In NewcastleGatehead, The Late Shows takes in Friday and Saturday nights. Openings are focussed around the Ouseburn area of the city on Friday where the Toffee Factory plays host to a new programme of immersive film installations curated by artist Kelly Richardson within ISIS Arts’ touring, inflatable venue The Big M. On the Precipice brings together works by seven artists – including Gordon Cheung, Alexandra Crouwers, Jillian Mcdonald and Richardson herself – who investigate our relationship with landscape and nature.
In part thanks to Connect10, the visual arts have a higher than ever profile during this year’s Museums at Night. “There are too many [visual arts highlights] to mention,” says Stockman. “For Connect10, we’re really lucky to have securred the UK debut of rAndom International’s new light and dance installation Future Self as part of a festival within a festival at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London. And in Newcastle, artist Julia Vogl is recycling two and a half thousand plastic bottles into a chandelier in the Great Hall of the Discovery Museum – that should be a stunning project.”
Museums at Night, 16 – 18 May. Some events are ticketed so check availabilty before attending. LightNight Liverpool, 17 May. The Late Shows, 17 – 18 May.
More on a-n.co.uk:
Kelly Richardson profile.
rAndom International‘s Rain Room reviewed.
Richard Wentworth profile.
