Welcome, welcome and Happy New Year!

I don’t know just how occasional this occasional sift through art, collections and heritage will be, but January 2022 seems like a good time to get things started, so here goes. 

I love a good book. Much of what I read is influenced by, and influences, my work. My current reading stack is no exception and offers a cultural crosscurrent of books about curators, artists (both real and fictional), material culture and collections.

In December I went to see the exhibition Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life at The Hepworth in Wakefield (on until 27 Feb 2022) – the largest exhibition of Hepworth’s work since her death in 1975. 

Many moons ago, I worked at The Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St Ives and feel like I’ve retained a decent baseline of knowledge about Hepworth. But seeing so many of her sculptures gathered in Wakefield (her birthplace) really offered me new perspectives on her work and insight into the variety of media she employed throughout her career. By my reckoning, The Hepworth also win the prize for the best exhibition poster in 2021. I’d never visited the gallery before, so that was a treat. I also won a competition (these things never happen to me) and was given a copy of the book accompanying the exhibition written by the show’s curator, Eleanor Clayton. Bonus!

The book discusses a retrospective of Hepworth’s work that was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1954 (pg 169). Bryan Robertson (1925-2002) was the Director of The Whitechapel at the time and is someone I’ve been interested in since cutting out his obituary from The Times in 2002 (ever the collector!). I was working in a gallery with a collection of Modern British Art at the time and my interest was piqued by the description of Robertson as someone who “…administered an immense stimulus to the renaissance in British art that took place over his 16 years in post”. He was Director from 1952 to 1969. 

So I was delighted to be given a copy of The Life of Bryan, A Celebration of Bryan Robertson by Andrew Lambirth. The book is not a straightforward biography but recalls Robertson’s work through his own writings and the memories of his friends. It now also provides a perfect hardback home for Robertson’s newspaper obituary!

Robertson wanted to offer new perspectives on artists and the next book in my stack, Slavery in Small Things, Slavery and Modern Cultural Habits by James Walvin, is offering me different ways of thinking about material culture. I’m currently working on a project which seeks to contextualise and update catalogue entries for historic objects connected to slavery and colonialism, and I came to this book through that work. It explores the history of African slavery and its long-term cultural legacy through an analysis of a variety of commonplace objects and commodities, such as sugar and tea, and is a fascinating read.

Much of Walvin’s commentary discusses the movement of objects and this theme is continued in National Treasures, Saving the Nation’s Art in World War II by Caroline Shenton, which documents the covert wartime evacuation of Britain’s historic art and heritage collections. The system swung into action speedily at the time and the book is equally fast-paced.

I also sometimes need fictional relief and having been laid low with a festive dose of Covid that stopped me returning home to Cornwall, I opted to re-read Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale, which is set in Penzance. With a focus on artists and exhibitions it’s not wholly off topic for me, but it’s the evocation of West Cornwall which made me turn to the novel again and that I'm really enjoying. 

So, there you have it. A glimpse into what I’m reading as 2021 turns into 2022. What are you reading? Can you recommend any good books, blogs or podcasts about art, collections, and heritage? I’d love to hear from you.

Until the next time.

Charlie