What happened to the provincial art gallery?

Frith, A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881

What could be more pleasurable than the discovery of a new art gallery, especially if they have a café attached, so you can indulge yourself in a fantasy world of coffee, cakes and fine art, utterly shut off from the reality outside?

It wasn’t always like this. Outside of the UK, few galleries had cafes, and galleries have not until recently been pleasurable spaces to visit. 

Nor was I aware that they formed the subject of academic studies. I wasn’t aware of studies of art galleries, for example, the ideas behind their foundation, typically in Victorian times, until I came across a review of a book by Giles Waterfield, The People’s Galleries: art museums and exhibitions in Britain, 1800-1914 (2016). Sadly, this book is only available at crazy prices, so I have no chance of getting to a copy of it. But a TLS review, by Susan Owens, raises many points and makes it clear how the world in which these galleries were founded is very different to today’s world. And it’s not just the absence of a café.  

What factors led to the mass of local art galleries that we see today? The rise of an urban middle class, no doubt, the existence of learned societies perhaps less so, since there is no municipal art gallery in Spalding or Saffron Walden, despite those places having societies. The 1851 Great Exhibition was undoubtedly a spur, followed in 1857 by the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition.  Waterfield himself states “It was on the foundations of such exhibitions – entrepreneurial, commercial, entertaining, accessible – that many provincial galleries were built.” 

How many of those adjectives apply to today’s public galleries? The provincial gallery has no hope of running a full commercial operation; it would not be possible to cover their running costs. I would guess that every public art gallery is subsidised from various sources. So if at all “entrepreneurial”, the gallery typically focuses on obtaining more funding wherever possible, rather than going all out to charge the visitor. 

Some initiatives are visible. The museum café, a bookshop and giftshop, and paid exhibitions are the most obvious initiatives. Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum had a vast extension built, partly to enable the museum to mount paid exhibitions – but whether those have generated substantial revenue is, I think, unlikely. One or two of their exhibitions might have made money, but that success has to compared to other exhibitions with only a tiny attendance, as far as I could see. London and Paris have a substantial gallery-going public who think nothing of paying hefty fees to see an exhibition if they think it is culturally important. Does a similar audience exist outside London?

 

But there are other, more fundamental differences from the art galleries founded in the 19th century and the gallery of today.  Susan Owen writes: 

When the Atkinson Art Gallery – a gift to Southport from the cotton manufacturer William Atkinson – opened in 1878, it had not a single work of art. Undeterred, the gallery sent out a circular to residents requesting loans for an inaugural exhibition, which turned out to be triumphantly successful, with over a thousand works lent to the gallery. 

Would the same thing happen today? I think not. The general public has abnegated any belief that they can arbitrate in the common taste. Nobody would dare offer the pictures from their living room to the Fitzwilliam; for the most part, that’s not the kind of thing the Fitzwilliam shows. Since 1878, we have lost (or at least we suppress) the feeling that we can participate in choosing the works that enter a gallery. 

Yet we may (sometimes) pay to participate in the cultural good of the collection. In the USA, payment is the norm, even if admission to the major collections is free for certain groups, such as army veterans. I didn’t see many veterans in the Boston Museum of Fine Art the day I was there. Denmark, the Aarhus Gallery, Aros, is a stunningly successful example of a paid gallery. It would appear the Danes have an insatiable appetite for a stylish art collection. When I last checked the figures, it had double the number of visitors of the Fitzwilliam per year, even if I am rather dubious about the claim on its website to be the most visited art museum in Scandinavia. Most of the publicly funded galleries in the UK are free; there would be an outcry if they introduced a charge. 

However, having free admission does not mean that the galleries provide equally for all classes. Early galleries tried for inclusiveness through extended opening hours into the evening, “to accommodate working men and women” (from the TLS review). Although the modern UK art galleries are largely free to access, I don’t see much sign of the working men and women. 

Is there a difference in what the galleries buy today with the Victorian heyday? Of course, the cash-strapped state of Britain today means that few galleries are buying art, tasteful or otherwise. And the 19th-century solution of art presented to the galleries by rich patrons seems non-existent. “More controversial works of art were being bought by Northern Industrialists … whose eye for detail and craftsmanship was amply rewarded by Pre-Raphaelite paintings.” Precious little sign of either the taste, or the purchasing, today. What industrialists like, and what galleries want to show, are a long way apart. Perhaps it is similar to the process of gentrification of inner cities: the museum remains, but no longer addressing the locality it serves. 

So is that it? Apart from the coffee shop, are the provincial galleries out of touch with their catchment area and their locality? Has culture drifted apart so much that what people want to see differs fundamentally to what the gallery wants to show? The present-day provincial art gallery inhabits a world of great uncertainty. Few museums seem to match the ability of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, both to genuinely engage with their local population, and also serve great coffee.