Workshops at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery

An essential part of running a museum and art gallery is encouraging new audiences, and the Friends are keen to help the museum achieve this goal. One of the ways this can be done is by holding children's workshops, they are not only very popular but also help familiarise children the gallery. We made a donation, along with the Art Society, to help these run last summer, and were very pleased once again this year to make a donation to help these workshops take place. We also paid for the design and printing of the flyer advertising the workshops, which are really family workshops, since the accompanying adults usually enjoy helping their children.
This is what the flyers look like:

The workshops are illustrated on the museum's website if you click on the link, you can see them in more detail. It's also very rewarding and interesting invigilating at the workshops, many of the Friends help with running the workshops.

Latest Plans for Swindon MAG

On the 14 March, we read about the latest plans for the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, in this cabinet paper, on page 35 onwards:
https://ww5.swindon.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/g9398/Public%20reports%20pack%2020th-Mar-2019%2018.00%20Cabinet.pdf?T=10
 It's interesting how similar they are to the plans proposed in 1968 which resulted in the building of the Wyvern Group, and discussed in the previous blog post after Michael Gray's talk.
The plans were approved by cabinet a week later and goes before the Scrutiny Committee on 25 March for further consideration.
There was a press conference in the gallery at the museum when Cllr Dale Heenan was given a chance to outline the plans, here he is discussing them

 There's a good summary of his ideas/plans on the museum's website and another summary of the plans here:

'As most of you may know, Swindon Borough Council undertook an options appraisal last year to find a new home for the museum and art gallery, but recently it announced that it had not identified an affordable, deliverable option in the immediate term.

In March, the council’s Cabinet agreed:

• to spend £400,000 on remedial works of the current building in Bath Road
• to spend £100,000 to take the collections ‘on tour’ to venues around Swindon
• To use £250,000 grant from the Local Enterprise Partnership to test the viability of a future project to create a combined new Wyvern Theatre, Museum & Art Gallery and ‘Civic quarter’. This quarter may be largely paid for by the sale or redevelopment of the Civic Offices on Euclid Street.'

I  appeared on  Points West the evening of the press conference, here's a photo of me being filmed  talking to Will Glennon about what I think about the proposals. I think the plans are great, but in the interim, it is hard to imagine how cuts can be made the the budget without affecting how the museum operates.

I talked to Tom Seaward, from the Swindon Advertiser about the £20000 cut in the museum's budget this year and how the running costs cannot be considered a subsidy, and the fact that it is hard to imagine how the museum can break even in its present location. Yesterday's piece in the Advertiser is here.
We now have a Plan B and hopefully us oldies will live to see Swindon Museum and Art Gallery being relocated in our lifetime.

Michael Gray's Talk on the Wyvern Theatre

I first met Michael Gray when he came to talk to the Friends about Swindon's Town Hall, designed by Brightwen Binyon, three years ago. The great advantage of having a blog is that even if not much is written about each talk, at least I can say when the talk was held and there are a few photos taken at the time. Here's the link to that talk. I very much enjoyed the way Michael told the tale of the Town Hall, and was keen to know more about the Wyvern Theatre Group, so invited him to come and tell us what's so good about the Wyvern Theatre. I was also pleased that Michael gave me a short biography, and here's what I said about him:

'I am pleased to welcome back tonight’s speaker Michael Gray who is going to talk to us about Casson Conder’s 1971 Wyvern Theatre Project. 

Michael is a Conservation Architect with over 30 years of experience in historic buildings involving many different projects ranging from medieval churches and barns to a grand historic hotel in Pall Mall and many more.

He is currently Head of Conservation and Building at Oxford University.

He lives in Swindon, not far from the Museum and Art Gallery in the Prospect Place Conservation Area where he is chairman of the local Conservation Trust.

He is actively involved in promoting Lydiard Park an 18^th century country house on the edge of Swindon as a Trustee of the Friends of Lydiard Park.

With the passing of time heritage designations are increasing recognising 20^th Century architecture as something worthy of preservation under the 30 year rule. Against this background Michael has prepared this talk to inform and promote the debate about the Wyvern Group which is increasingly neglected.  With two major historic public buildings in Swindon in a state of perilous neglect it is hoped that the talk will promote a wider appreciation of the Wyvern Group so that it does not suffer a similar fate to those Victorian buildings.'

 Michael started with the history of architecture, beginning with Corbusier in the 1930s. He had an excellent Power Point presentation to illustrate his talk, I have photographed some of the slides, to show the plans drawn up in 1966 when towns and cities all over the country were encouraged by the Wilson government to foster the arts and were given funding to build the necessary infrastructure to support this. The original plan suggested demolition of the Town Hall and retention of the Tabernacle, in fact as we now know, the Tabernacle was demolished and the Town Hall retained. I have photographed some of the Power Point slides starting with the Civic Centre Master Plan from 1966:

The Civic Hall, at the top of the picture was not built when the Wyvern Theatre was built, it would have provided a larger space that would seat 1000 people, it was going to be built in the second phase of building, but this never happened because of shortage of money.

 Above shows how the Civic Hall would have looked, and below an artist's impression of the Civic Hall from the Wyvern Theatre

 This charming photograph shows the opening in 1971, the Queen has her own umbrella, the Mayor has his umbrella held for him and the Duke of Edinburgh doesn't have an umbrella at all.

 This photograph shows the Wyvern looking rather splendid

I also took a couple of photos of the audience

 and in this one, Michael can just about be seen

 The future of the Wyvern Theatre as we now know from the council's recent announcements, is now uncertain. It was very interesting to find out the history behind the whole area, and why the car park remains a vacant space.

Wine Tasting at Magnum WineShop

Our first event of the year was held last Friday, it was a wine tasting at Magnum WineShop. The evening started with an Emiliana organic sparkling wine from Chile, followed by three white wines of increasing flavour.
Then came a bit of food in between wines which was really welcome; by 8pm  I was starting to feel hungry. Cornish Brie was served with bread after the white wines, then we tasted 3 red wines with Double Gloucester, Ardenne Pate and Taw Valley Cheddar between them, and the Harros 10 year Tawny Port from Portugal which was served with handmade coffee and walnut cake.

Brian Saunders kept up an informative dialogue about each of the wines, the area they came from and anything else he thought we might need to know about them.
It was a very enjoyable evening, here are a couple of photos of those who attended:

 We held a raffle and overall raised a magnificent £459 for the Friends' projects, thank you to all those who attended and helped make the evening such a fantastic success, and to all those at Magnum Wineshop for hosting so magnificently and helped us raise such a marvellous sum.
Here's the tasting menu:

Ceramics Lunchtime talk

Sophie Cummings gave a wonderful lunchtime talk on ceramics on Friday 8 February to  a group of about 22 people. It's lovely to see these talks so well attended because a lot of thought obviously goes into preparing the talks, and they are always very entertaining and informative.
Sophie started by giving us examples of different sorts of ceramics using these pots as illustrations of what she meant:

 She talked about the fact that pots can be made from coils, from putting your thumb into clay and making a pinch pot, there was an example of one of these pots which was so smooth and symmetrical that it was hard to believe it was a pinch pot. Pots can also be made on a wheel. A variety of different clays including earthenware, porcelain and stoneware, these are fired in a kiln after drying, and often glazed to give them colour.
Peter Burgess, the Head of Ceramics at the Swindon School of Art, advised Swindon Museum and Art Gallery on making additions to a fascinating studio ceramics collection which was begun in 1965.

 Here is a photo of Peter Burgess with one of his ceramic pieces.

It ends with ' His primary interest is the relationship of glaze with the form'.
Sophie also reminded us with this old photo of a potter taking things out a kiln that the practice of making ceramics has not changed over the years. Once a piece goes in the kiln, it's a bit of a hit and miss process and the results are not always what one might expect.

There was also a photo of a potter with a large pot. It's possible to see pots like these being made on a wheel at Whichford Pottery a fascinating experience.

Sophie then talked about the ceramics on display in the cabinets and in the gallery. I'll include a couple of photos of the audience:

 And who knew when people were able to put milk in tea after the tea had gone into the cup? It was when porcelain was used to make cups because it could stand a hotter temperature than the stoneware ones.

 And remind you that the next free lunchtime talk is at 12.30pm on Friday 8 March on 'This Woman's Work' exhibition

Lunchtime talks at SM&AG

Many of you will know that curator, Sophie Cummings. gives free lunchtime talks on certain  Fridays. These highly informative, informal talks are well worth attending. They start at 12.30pm and last for half an hour, no booking is required, just turn up on the day.
A list of the lunchtime talks, along with Friends' evening talks appears on the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery website, please look at that for more details, in the meantime, here's a quick synopsis of the talks:
Friday 18 January Gifted! a talk on the new exhibition
Friday 8 February a Ceramics talk
Friday 8 March talk on This Women's Work exhibition
29 March talk Artist and Model exhibition
5 April talk on David Bent's 'Out of the Box' exhibition
I'm highlighting the fact there's a talk this Friday 18 January on the new Gifted! exhibition.

Gifted! - new exhibition in the main gallery

Or to give it the full title: Gifted! How gifts and donation have shaped the Swindon Collection of Modern British Art, I've copied what they say on their website about the exhibition:
Gifted! explores the gifts, bequests and donations that have helped establish Swindon’s collection as one of the most important collections of modern British art outside London. From early benefactor Jimmy Bomford and Frederick Phelps, to the longstanding support of the Contemporary Art Society and Art Fund, the exhibition explores how gifts have shaped the collection and provided Swindon with some remarkable and challenging works of art.
The exhibition includes paintings by LS Lowry, Graham Sutherland and Alfred Wallis, along with more recent work by Nicola Tyson, Eileen Cooper and Allen Jones.
As well as exploring the legacy of major gifts and benefactors, the exhibition also shines a light on some lesser known contributions from the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Soroptimist International.
The exhibition is fantastic, some of my favourite paintings are on display. It's well worth having a look at the exhibition which runs until 16 March. I've picked out a few  examples of work in the exhibition and taken a few general overviews of the gallery.

 I'm starting with George Downs, 'Landscape' because it looks so fantastic after it's conservation which the Friends supported, the odd angle is an error in my photography.

 Another painting the Friends helped conserve, and which is consequently now sparkly bright is Jack Smith's 'Night Sky' which looks fabulous.
I know from time spent on the front desk, that people who come to visit Swindon Museum and Art Gallery love to see the really famous artists' work we have, so I know they will be flocking to see the two LS Lowry paintings which are hung together:

'Winter in Pendelbury' which was one of the original Bomford gift paintings, on the left and 'A Procession' on the right which was bequeathed by Anthony Carlisle through the Art Fund in 1993.

 Here are some general views of walls to whet your appetite, I want you to come and see the exhibition, so this post is intended as a taster

 It's looking great isn't it? Three of my favourites below. How does Ronald Ossory Dunlop produce such memorable portraits?

 Isn't it wonderful to see Mary Fedden's 'Spanish Chair' on display again?

 And on display for the first time in the gallery, 'Regent Circus' painted in 1945 by Harold Dearden and purchased with the help of the Friends.

A reminder that the Art and Conflict exhibition is on until Saturday 19 January