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ABSTRACT
Exploring the interwar exhibition histories of four civic art galleries in the East Midlands, this article demonstrates how such institutions in Britain became active agents in the production of interwar art exhibition cultures. It argues that networked curators were instrumental in moulding the practices and structures that fed civic exhibition production, and that their active involvement in wide-reaching professional networks such as the Museums Association meant that they also shaped art exhibition practices at a national level. By promoting public consumption of a wide range of artistic periods and styles, highlighting regional cultural assets, and supporting local art production, civic galleries in the 1920s and 30s helped to build regional capacity, ultimately providing a fertile basis for the centralisation of public and governmental support for the arts in Britain after 1940.
Acknowledgements
The author would also like to thank: Kate Nichols and Francesca Berry for their deft advice; colleagues at the 2019 ‘Modernist Art Writing’ conference, and at the University of Nottingham for their feedback on this research in its earlier stages; my two anonymous peer reviewers for their wise suggestions; Kate Hill for her advice and support; Dawn Haywood at The Collection, Lucy Bamford and Matt Edwards at Derby Museums; Simon Lake; David Pulford and Nick Cull; and staff at the Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire Archives for their generous help with accessing records.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For definitions of ‘civic galleries’: Waterfield, Palaces of Art (London: Lund Humpries, 1991), pp. 83–4. For the social function of civic museums: Kate Hill, Culture and Class in English Public Museums, 1850–1914 (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 53–6.
2 Andrea Geddes-Pool, Stewards of the Nation’s Art (Buffalo: Toronto UP, 2012); Brandon Taylor, Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public 1747–2001 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1999). Howard Webber, Before the Arts Council: Funding for the Arts in Britain 1934–44 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021); James Purdon, ‘“A National Visual Culture? The Rise of Corporate and Public Patronage” and Jo Baring “Behind the Scenes of the Museum: Curators and Collectors”,’ in Revisiting Modern British Art, ed. by Baring (London: Lund Humphries, 2022), pp. 107–18, 119–30; Kate Hill, ‘“A Rather Undefined Social Position and Public Recognition”: Professionalisation, Status and Masculinity in Provincial Museums, c.1870–1930,’ Gender & History, 33:2 (2021), 448–469.
3 Ibid.; Simon Spier, Creating The Bowes Museum, c.1858–1917, PhD thesis, University of Leeds (2021); Ana Baeza Ruiz, The Road to Renewal: Refiguring the Art Museum in Twentieth-Century Britain, PhD thesis, University of Leeds (2017); Laia Anguix Vilches, From Wood Shavings to an Art Collection: The Early History of the Laing Art Gallery (1904–1957), PhD thesis, Northumbria University (2020); Clive Gray, The Changing Museum (London: Routledge, 2023).
4 See Alex Harris, Romantic Moderns (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), pp. 10–11; Frances Spalding, The Real and the Romantic (London: Thames and Hudson, 2022), pp. 108–13, 268–76. For further discussion of the tension between metropolitan centres and regional peripheries: Neal Alexander and James Moran, Regional Modernisms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012), pp. 1–2.
5 Paul Dennison et al., Modern Art and St Ives: International Exchanges 1915–1965 (London: Tate, 2015).
6 Recent studies of interwar regional and rural practices suggest this characterisation emerges from pervasive place-making narratives constructed in the period itself in response to the various economic, political and social upheavals occurring in the wake of the First World War. See Bluemel and McCluskey, Rural Modernity in Britain: A Critical Intervention (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2018), p. 8; Alexander and Moran, p. 1–2; Potts, ‘Constable Country Between the Wars,’ in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, ed. by Samuel (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 166. James Wood, ‘Mobilising Englishness,’ in The Revision of Englishness, ed. By Rogers and McLeod (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004), p. 58, identifies a trend in literature in to present ‘place- home, town, institution as a microcosm of nation’.
7 Frances Spalding argues that in the 1920s and 30s ‘municipal art galleries were still very much led in their collecting habits by the standards of taste promulgated by the Royal Academy’, p. 13. For discussion of London-based touring shows of abstract art, e.g. 1935s ‘Abstract-Concrete’ show at Oxford see Harrison, English Art and Modernism (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982), pp. 180–91 and Joanna Gardner-Huggett, ‘Myfanwy Evans: ‘Axis” and a Voice for the British Avant-Garde,’ Woman’s Art Journal, 21:2 (2001), 22–26.
8 Lynne Teather, ‘The Museum Keepers,’ Museum Management and Curatorship (1990), pp. 9, 25–41; Hill, pp. 448–69; Ruiz, pp. 33–42. See also Gaynor Kavanagh, Museums and the First World War: A Social History (London: Leicester UP, 1994).
9 Ibid.
10 Catherine Pearson and Suzanne Keane, Museums in the Second World War (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 41.
11 The data covered here is partial. Some records were split across multiple locations with their own idiosyncratic structures, and some records were not complete. The galleries at Lincoln and Derby hold bound copies of exhibition catalogues for the years in question, which have few omissions. Additional records for Lincoln are in the county archives. It was not possible to view material at Nottingham Castle Museum, as the museum was closed under refurbishment 2018–2021, and then closed again in 2022; Nottinghamshire County Archives hold complete Committee minutes for the Castle for the period in question, although these do not provide a full record of all exhibitions held in the period. The New Walk Gallery Leicester holds fulsome gallery reports for the years in question and a number of exhibition catalogues. Archive consulted: Lincoln: bound exhibition catalogues of the Usher Gallery 1927–1929, The Collection archives; Lincolnshire Archives, L1/1/50/1 Minutes of Library, Museum and Art Gallery committee, 1927–1940, R Box; L.LINC.050 CIT Report of the Committee of the City of Lincoln Corporation public libraries, museum and art gallery, 1931–1935; 2-LCL/14/7 Directors Reports to Library, Museum and Art Gallery committee 1936–1940. Derby: bound exhibition catalogues of Derby Corporation Art Gallery, 1919–1940, Derby Museums archives. Leicester: New Walk Gallery archive and library, Borough of Leicester Museum and Art Gallery Committee Reports to the City Council, 1912–1941. Nottingham: Nottinghamshire County Archives, Committee Minutes: Castle Museum, CA.CM/CASTLE/8/6 – 1920–1926; CA.CM/CASTLE/8/7 – 1926–1932; CA.CM/CASTLE/8/8 – 1932–1934; CA.CM/CASTLE/8/9 – 1934–1939.
12 I concentrate on temporary exhibitions of paintings, sculptures, works on paper and prints.
13 Ysanne Holt, ‘Borderlands: Visual and Material Culture in the Interwar Anglo-Scottish Border,’ in Rural Modernity in Britain, pp. 168–9.
14 E.g. Amy Woodson-Boulton, Transformative Beauty: Art Museums in Industrial Britain (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2012); Ruiz, The Road to Renewal; Tom Steele, Alfred Orage and the Leeds Art Club (Leeds: Centre for Cultural Studies, 1989); Morna O’Neill, ‘Art and Labour’s Cause is One’: Walter Crane and Manchester 1880–1915 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2008); Rebecca Wade, An Exhibition History of Victorian Leeds (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2023); James Moore, High Culture and Tall Chimneys: Art Institutions and Urban Society in Lancashire, 1780–1914 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2018). Exceptions include Gray’s The Changing Museum; Edward Mayor, Lincolnshire Artists (Lincoln: Ruddocks, 2006). Vilches, ‘From wood shavings … ’; E. Morris and T. Stevens, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1873–2000 (Bristol: Sanson & Co, 2013).
15 Waterfield’s The People’s Galleries provides comprehensive surveys of civic galleries across the country up to 1914 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2015). For London galleries, see Christopher Whitehead, The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth Century Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Pearson and Keane touch on the emergence of regional museums federations and the Carnegie Trust’s support of professionalisation at a regional level, although their main focus is the development of museums during the Second World War, see, pp. 29, 34. For scholarship covering the histories of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), and their post-war manifestation, the Arts Council, see Margaret Garlake, New Art, New World (New Have: Yale UP, 1998); Clive Gray, The Politics of Art in Britain (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 2000); Brian Foss, War Paint Art, War, State, and Identity in Britain, 1939–45 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2007); Jane Alison, ed., Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945–1965 (London: Barbican, 2022); Linda Nead, The Tiger in the Smoke (New Haven: Yale University Press), 200, pp. 234–5.
16 Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt and Caroline Cornish, Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation (London: UCL, 2021), p. 1. They argue that studying circulating collections can help us to ‘unsettle common assumptions’ about the formation and operation of museums and galleries.
17 See N7.
18 Waterfield, pp. 258, 286–9.
19 Souvenir and Official Programme of the Opening of the Usher Gallery Lincoln (1927).
20 See Waterfield, pp. 83–4; Ruiz, pp. 72–3; Vilches, pp. 4, 74, 102.
21 On interchangeable titles, see Ruiz, p. 39.
22 Comparisons elsewhere include Bernard Stevenson at Newcastle and Philip Hendy at Leeds, see Vilches and Ruiz respectively.
23 Gray, p. 23.
24 Rochdale Museum, annual report for 1911, <https://archive.org/stream/annualreport1911roch/annualreport1911roch_djvu.txt> [accessed August 2021].
25 See Waterfield, p. 286, CA.CM/CASTLE/8/6, p. 102; Baird, ‘The Knights of Museums: The Wallis Family and their Memorabilia in the Collection of the Wolverhampton Art Gallery,’ Birmingham Historian, 3 (2008).
26 Teather, p. 25.
27 Gray, pp. 52–3; see also Corporation Art Gallery of Derby, Catalogue of A Loan Collection and the Permanent collection, 1920, p. 1.
28 CA.CM/CASTLE/8/8, pp. 165–6.
29 See Hatchwell ‘The Interwar Years,’ in Laura Knight: A Panoramic View, ed. by Blanchard and Spira (London: Philip Wilson, 2021), p. 51, CA.CM/CASTLE/8/7, p. 245; CA.CM/CASTLE/8/9, p. 103.
30 Suzanne McLeod, Museum Architecture: A New Biography (London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013), p. 81. This was a matter of debate even at the time: Squire, in his address to the MA conference in Newcastle 1936 outlined the ambiguities of the local authority system for managing museums. See ‘Reflections of a Committee Man,’ Squire Museums Journal, 37:5, (1937), 221–2.
31 Evidenced by the legal incorporation of the MA in 1930. See Teather, p. 27; Vilches, p. 94.
32 Geddes-Pool, pp. 222–4; Ruiz, pp. 33–42; Vilches, pp. 6,167; McLeod, pp. 9–10; Pearson and Keane, pp.32–3.
33 A. C. Sewter, ‘Contemporary Art and the Museum,’ Museum Journal, 37 (1937–1938), 157–8.
34 Ibid.
35 Waterfield, p. 288; Spalding, p. 13.
36 Waterfield, pp. 230; 286.
37 By the 1930s, several local societies joined together to form the Federation of Midland Art Societies. The Bedford, Chesterfield, Dudley, Kettering, Lincolnshire, Mansfield, Northampton, Nottingham, Peterborough and Staffordshire artists’ societies were all members, and the Federation joined the roster of local exhibitions with shows in Nottingham and Lincoln from the mid-1930s onwards. See Federation of Midlands Art Societies: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture (Usher Gallery, 1938) and Midlands Arts Societies Annual Exhibition (Nottingham Castle, 1936).
38 For the Dukeries and the Castle collection, see Waterfield, Catalogue of An Exhibition of Engraved views of Derbyshire (Derby: Corporation Art Gallery, 1921), pp. 286–8; Williamson, Wright of Derby: Catalogue of the Bi-Centenary Exhibition of Paintings (Derby: Libraries, Museums and Art Gallery Committee, 1934). LI/1/50/2 (15 March 1928) and <https://www.thecollectionmuseum.com/blog/view/9-objects-from-every-decade-of-the-usher-gallery-second-decade> [accessed February 2023]. Shannon was Lincolnshire-born. De Wint’s in-laws lived in the city.
39 Vilches, pp. 99, 246. She also details a comparable attention to local artists’ societies such as the Northern Counties exhibitions at the Laing, and notes comparable practices at Leeds and Liverpool.
40 For CAS’s history: Lucy Byatt and Charlotte Troy, One Hundred Years of the Contemporary Art Society (London: CAS, 2011).
41 Featured artists included J. W. M Turner, Thomas Girtin, and John Sell Cotman. C.E. Hughes, ‘Early English Watercolour,’ in Catalogue of the Herbert Powell Collection of Watercolours and Drawings of the Early British School (1931), pp. 5–18.
42 See Geddes-Pool, pp. 102–9.
43 Robert Witt, ‘Preface,’ in the Catalogue of the Herbert Powell Collection, pp. 3–4.
44 Contemporary Art (City of Leicester Museum and Gallery, 1936). Featured British artists included Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Europeans included Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and André Masson.
45 Sewter, p. 158.
46 CA.CM/CASTLE/8/8, p. 190, LI/1/50/2 (13 April 1931).
47 Modern British Paintings (1923), Contemporary British Sculpture (1927), Colour Prints by Living British Artists (1930), Oil Paintings by British Artists of To-day (1931), Watercolours by British Artists of Today (1932)
48 Angela Summerfield, Interventions: Twentieth-Century Art Collection Schemes and their Impact on Local Authority Art Gallery and Museum Collections, PhD thesis, City University London (2007), pp. 55–7.
49 Including e.g. Contemporary British Sculpture (1927), Watercolours by British Artists of Today (1928), Watercolour drawings by British artists of Today (1933).
50 Ibid.
51 Famous Foreign Masterpieces: Colour Facsimiles (Derby, Lincoln, both 1928); Paintings by Mr Ernest and Mrs Dod Procter (Leicester, 1928); Watercolour drawings by British artists of Today (Lincoln, 1933); Works loaned by Hugh Blaker, Modern English Tempura Painting, and the Rodin Collection (Nottingham, 1931, 1931, 1932).
52 Reported on in the Borough of Leicester Museum and Art Gallery Committee, 24th Report to the City Council (C H Gee and Co. LTD, Leicester), 1.4.1927–31.3.1928, p. 5.
53 Summerfield, pp. 55–7.
54 British artists of today (Derby: City Art Corporation, 1926).
55 There were 7 federations by 1937, with a further 2 proposed. ‘Handlist of Museum Federations and Officers,’ Museums Journal, 37:7 (1937), 341.
56 City of Leicester Museum and Art Gallery Committee, 30th Report to the City Council (Leicester: W. Thornley & Son, 1933–1934), p. 8. Museums Journal, 37, p. 161. <https://midfed.org/> [accessed August 2022].
57 CA.CM/CASTLE/8/8, p. 182, and ibid. Pearson and Keane suggest (p. 34) that the eastern regions were not actively served by the museum federations before WW2, but the data here contradicts that.
58 V. C. Smith and B. H. Watts, eds., Technical Index to the Museums Journal 1930–1955 (Nottingham: Midlands Federation of Museums and Art Galleries, 1957).
59 R Box L.LINC.050 CIT,99/442,1932–3 and CA.CM/CASTLE/8/6;7. The former records that, between 1930–1933, the Usher received loans from, amongst others, the Williamson Art Gallery Birkenhead, Cartwright Memorial Hall Bradford, the Walker, Manchester, the Laing, Birmingham, Brighton, Royal Albert Memorial Museum Exeter, Oldham, Municipal Gallery Plymouth, Preston Art Gallery, Victoria Institute Worcester, Nottingham Castle, and civic galleries in Hull, Leeds, Rochdale, Southport, Blackpool, Salford and Sheffield. The latter records that between 1923–1927, Nottingham loaned works to, among others, the Laing (July 1923), Manchester (July 1925), Stoke (1927), the Usher (1927) and Harrogate (1927).
60 Ibid.
61 Summerfield, p. 75.
62 ‘It is only by the constant and willing assistance of the Committees and Directors of other Art Galleries, of private collectors and of professional and amateur artists that this essential and constant flow of exhibits can be maintained.’ Report by Corns, R Box L.LINC.050 CIT,99/442,1932–1933.
63 CA.CM/CASTLE/8/9, pp. 87; 174–5 and LI/1/50/2 (7 July 1939).
64 Sewter, pp. 158–9.
65 Sewter, ‘A Policy for Provincial Art Galleries’, Museum Journal. 39 (1939–1940), pp. 60–63.
66 CA.CM/CASTLE/8/7, p. 210.
67 E.g. for the 1932 Contemporary French Art show programme, CA.CM/CASTLE/8/7, p. 368.
68 Borough of Leicester Museum and Art Gallery Committee, 23rd Report to the City Council (C H Gee and Co. LTD, Leicester), 1.4.1926–1931.3.1927,7.
69 E.E. Lowe, A Report on American Museum Work (London: T&A Constable, 1928), pp. 10; 21–31;43–4.
70 Again following Holt’s concept of the network, pp. 168–9.
71 Bluemel and McCluskey, p. 10.
72 Alexander and Moran identify (p. 3) a ‘long afterlife of regional modernism’ in the post-war period. Nead concurs that the post-war period has a long history extending before 1940, pp. 8–9.
73 By which I am referring to the contrast between characterisations of the interwar regions as backward and inward-looking, versus the active role played by the regions in wartime arts initiatives and then post-war cultural reconstruction. For Romantic characterisations: Harris; Spalding. For surveys of wartime initiatives: Foss; Pearson and Keane. For the post-war context: Garlake, pp. 10–19.
74 See Pearson and Keane, pp. 100,106–12.
75 Anon, ‘Report on the Committee for Consultation with the Arts Council,’ Museums Journal, 48:1 (1948), 6–7.
76 Beginning with the 1944 ‘Mid-European Art’ exhibition, and following some years of lull after Thomas’s departure, renewed work in this field manifested in the 1978 ‘Expressionist Revolution in German Art’ exhibition. See <https://germanexpressionismleicester.org/> [accessed February 2023].
77 ‘Between Two Worlds’ exhibition, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, March 2020–August 2020.
78 Today, supporting contemporary art practice and professional development remains a key part of what the Usher does within their Arts Council NPO commitments.
79 Museums Journal, 46:12 (1947), 240.
80 S. F. Markham, ‘Post-War Reconstruction of Museums and Art Galleries,’ Museums Journal, 42:4 (1942), 77–80.
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Sophie Hatchwell
Sophie Hatchwell is Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on text-image relationships and regional display cultures in twentieth century Britain. She is author of Performance and Spectatorship (Palgrave, 2019), editor of Midlands Art Papers, and has also authored articles on twentieth-century British art, and art theory and pedagogy. She is Head of Postgraduate Taught Programmes in the Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies at the University of Birmingham, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.