The Guardian reported on Tuesday (see the article here) that a barn in Ambleside used by Kurt Schwitters in the 1940s is the site of a proposed museum, an idea supported by Damian Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Anthony Gormley. I came across this initially when I was doing some research on the Royal College of Art, which was evacuated to Ambleside during the Second World War (the Potato-loft University). The students' proximity to this artist seems with hindsight a real missed opportunity, one student is quoted as saying,
We didn't know who the hell he was. We sometimes saw him collecting a pension or something from the Post Office, but he was never pointed out... There were an awful lot of old characters about, so he didn't stand out.
While Schwitters was working on his Merzbarn, envisioned as a 'walk-in collage', he made a living selling small realist paintings to tourists, giving locals who remembered him the impression that he was 'a penniless, eccentric foreigner'. I think this project to restore the barn and create a museological simularcrum of its interior is really one to watch. The development of the project can be seen at http://www.merzbarn.net/
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