MSN?

The MSN? Event is proving very popular...lots of interest from across the country - keep an eye of the MSN? website:
Museum Studies Now?

Mark

Audience Engagement Consultant job

RENAISSANCE STRATEGIC SUPPORT FUNDING ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND

Access All Areas: Harrogate Museums and Arts, Culture/Tourism/Sports, Harrogate Borough Council

Invitation for expression of interest. 
If you are interested in this project please email your CV and an expression of your interest in the project, saying why you think you would be suitable, to diane.taylor@harrogate.gov.uk by 5pm on Monday 22^nd April 2013.

Interviews will be held at the Mercer Art Gallery, Swan Road, Harrogate on  Monday 29^th April 2013 with a start date as soon as possible afterwards.

Project Title:              THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE: MERCER ART GALLERY EXHIBITION 2013

Length of project:      6 months

Dates:                          May to October 2013

Commission:               Audience Engagement Consultant

Fee:                             £8,500 FTE paid in 6 monthly instalments

Supervisor:                 Diane Taylor, Audience Development Officer

Project Description:
The purpose of this project is to involve our local communities, including the Friends of the Mercer Art gallery and and the Friends of Harrogate District Museums, local councillors, young people, local celebrities, community groups and local organisations in the making of an exhibition of works of art selected from our own collection.

This is all part of Harrogate: Access All Areas, a wide ranging project, the aim of which is to bring more people of all ages into contact with our collections, and to develop a body of new research on the collections that will lead to new exhibitions, publications and other forms of interpretation.

The idea for The People’s Choice project is that people will be invited to choose their favourite painting, print or drawing from the collection to go on display. Then we will ask individuals to write or dictate a couple of paragraphs about why they have chosen this picture, or possibly draw their response.  Some popular pictures will be chosen by more than one person.

Individuals and groups will be invited to be involved in different ways including:

·         Selecting from the BBC Your Paintings website, which has all the oils and acrylics from Harrogate’s collection on it;

·         Selecting from works currently on show in our exhibition All Dressed Up;

·         Attending a special session or workshop with works on paper brought out from the store;

·         Being involved in an outreach session at their community venue using computer or printed images of a group of art works from our collection.

The project outcomes will include:

·         the exhibition and its interpretation in the Main Gallery of the Mercer 13 July to 15 September 2013;

·         a publication containing all the selectors’ statements about the art;

·         a programme of events throughout the exhibition’s run;

·         engagement with a wide range of audiences across the Harrogate district through a variety of methods;

·         evaluation of the community involvement to be carried out at the end of the exhibition.

The Harrogate Fine Art Collection
The Mercer has outstanding early 20th century pictures bought in the immediate post-war period, including works by W R Sickert, Paul Nash, Christopher Wood, Edward Wadsworth and Ivon Hitchens. Harrogate’s most famous artist is the great Victorian painter, William Powell Frith, of whose work the gallery has excellent holdings. Other great Victorians in the collection include Leeds born Victorian Leeds landscape painter Atkinson Grimshaw, the Pre Raphaelite Edward Burne –Jones, landscapist James Buxton Knight, horse painter John Herring and pioneer photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron. Harrogate has many works depicting famous local picturesque sites, such as Fountains Abbey, Wharfedale, Nidderdale, and aspects of the built heritage in Harrogate, Ripon and Knaresborough. There are watercolours and cartoons by Rowlandson, Templar and others, plus prints and posters relating to the region’s long history of tourism. British women artists of the 20th century are particularly well represented in the collection, including Nina Hamnet, Anna Zinkeisen and Dame Laura Knight. There is a growing element of contemporary British art, including works by Alan Davie, David Mach, Tacita Dean and Andy Goldsworthy.

The People’s Choice Audience Engagement Consultant: Person Specification

·         You will have a first degree in an appropriate subject

·         You will have either:

o   a post graduate qualification in museum and/or gallery studies or an education specialism or

o   demonstrable experience working in the museum and gallery sector

o   demonstrable experience working in a learning environment or with different audiences

·         An interest in involving museum and gallery audiences  of all ages and backgrounds with our collections

·         Very good communication skills, plus very good writing, photography and computer skills.

·         A basic  knowledge of History of Art.

You will be provided with a lap top and camera to work on the project, plus the space to work at the gallery. It is anticipated that some work will be carried out at community locations around the Harrogate District.

MSN? Event

Hello All,
the Museum Studies Now? event is gathering pace...check out the MSN? Blog!

MSN? logo design by Carys Wilkins (MSN? project assistant)

Museum Studies Now?

Hello everyone!

You may be interested to know that we are running a new project called 'Museum Studies Now?'...an event at Leeds City Art Gallery on Monday 15th April - we're inviting stakeholders from across a range of sectors - university departments in museum & heritage studies; museum & heritage professionals; policy makers and NGOs; and students (of course) - to come a discuss and debate the present, and future, state of museum studies...we'll post more info on this important project as it develops over the next few months, so watch this space!
We already have a Facebook Page Museum Studies Now?
And a Twitter Feed MuseumsNow

More soon on MSN!
Mark

Pinatopia and Mount Folly

My name is Freya and I'm on the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA and this term have been on a fantastic placement with visual arts organization Pavilion. Currently Pavilion have been working on a really exciting project to research the historic grounds at Temple Newsam, so that contemporary artist Harold Offeh can produce a response to the landscape. On the 17th of March Offeh will perform Pinatopia and Mount Folly with a group of young people from East Leeds.

I've really enjoyed working alongside Pavilion, the other volunteers, artist and young people to develop this project. Temple Newsam has quite a unique and eclectic history and through our research into the gardens we found out that pineapples used to be grown in hot houses there, as in the 18th century Pineapples were an ostentatious status symbol. Offeh will be running a workshop and performance, using the pineapple as a motif to explore issues of money, power and escapism. At dusk audiences will be invited on an exploration of the grounds at Temple Newsam to bear witness to a number of playful performances.

This is going to be a really fun event and it would be lovely if some of you could come along, plus there is a free bus running from the HMI so if you are interested email linzi@pavilion.org.uk or call 0113 343 2718

Read more at http://www.pavilion.org.uk/project.php?pid=148 and check out the blog too http://pavilionypp.tumblr.com/

Up The Steps

UP THE STEPS

This Saturday come be part of Up The Steps first pop-up arts event and help us build a big oragami sculpture on Briggate! We hope to create a large participatory structure which will then be shown in Leeds City Art Gallery as part of Up The Steps second art event.

Up The Steps is a brand new Leeds based collective of young people (which myself and other Level 2 HAMS students are involved in). Creating participatory arts events in association with Leeds Art Gallery, REcreative and funded by the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project.

 

You can like our page to learn more about the project and its future events:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Up-The-Steps/217813158365355

And  follow us on twitter to keep up to date with our preparations:
@Up_The_Steps

Conservation of Contemporary Art?

Last month our Level 2 HAMS group attended a talk at Temple Newsam (@TempleNewsam) addressing the conservation of art in the Leeds Collections. This talk was delivered by Jenny Hack (painting conservator) and Ian Fraser (head of preventive conservation).

Jenny Hack talked of the two modes of coservation: to re-store and to re-touch. I asked Jenny why, if we are so concerned with retaining the objects true authenticity, are Greek sculptures not brightly painted? In response we discussed the boundaries of the conservator. Although it is known that Greek Sculpture was once coloured, due to the lack of documentation 're-touching' them in this way may put us in danger of fabricating the works original appearance. This is being addressed by the use of digital technology, projecting onto works 'what may have been' without physically falsifying the material object.

With this in mind it seems today's art practice may come up against the opposite problem. Different to the Greeks we face no shortage of documentation; mass media (photographing, blogging, tweeting, filming) puts us in the position where such a suggestion would be impossible. Documenting is not only widely practiced, but has become a characteristic of our contemporary culture. However, are we instead in a greater danger of the loss of material object? Art that takes the form of Installation and Perfomance moves away from arts traditional ties, functioning as participatory/conceptual instead of a purely decorative function. But in making these innovations, what aesthetic traditions are being compromised?  

Jenny talked of the difficulty in conserving objects made of degradable materials or involving technologies that become obselete, in place of durable materials such as oil paint. This issue is something that NeCCAR (Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art Research) have been introduced to resolve. However aside from this issue regarding material, other questions must also be considered. How are we to conserve artworks that are location specific? How are we to conserve artworks that require a certain person or performance to function? When supposing this, it may be justified to state that contemporary art seems to place greater concern on concept over the durability of its aesthetic.

My main thinking when leaving the talk was: will contemporary art remain in museums as the ancient Greek culture continues to exist in ours? Perhaps this is missing the point of what contemporary art is all about. With 'concept' playing such a large role, maybe the physical object and its durability take the back seat. It may be that the artwork of today will exist in the future in-part as material object, but mostly through text and documentation... as projections not of 'what may have been', but 'what was'.

The changing role of the conservator is something I want to look into more, maybe even as a sub-topic in my Dissertation next year. (I am completley new to it so excuse any mis-understandings! Found the talk very interesting though)

Rosa