Welcome to the 24 Hour Museum news in brief page for the week ending October 14 2007.
12.10.2008 - Tate has a busy time at Frieze Art Fair
A selection of works by contemporary artists have been acquired by Tate Modern (pictured) at this year's Frieze Art Fair.
Thanks to the £150,000 Outset/Frieze Art Fair Fund organised by the Outset Contemporary Art Fund to benefit the Tate Collection, works by Pawel Althamer, Mauro Restiffe, Andreas Slominski and Armando Andrade Tudela have been purchased.
The works encompass mixed media, sculpture, photography and slide projections.
Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate said: "Limited public funding for acquisitions makes the purchase of contemporary work increasingly challenging. We are particularly grateful to the continuing support of the Outset/Frieze Art Fair Fund which has enabled Tate to significantly extend its collection of work by new and emerging artists."
11.10.2007 - Midlands stately home scoops HLF grant for granary restoration
The National Lottery, through The Heritage Lottery Fund, has confirmed a grant award of almost £1 million to assist with the first phase of the restoration of the redundant Granary building at Weston Park, the 17th century stately home on the Staffordshire borders.
A total award of £975,000 has been granted to assist with the repair and restoration of the North face of the Grade II listed building and to help provide a new sustainable use for the building. Plans include the development of a food shop and gallery space and an increase in public access and learning for the Weston Park Foundation charity.
"This is the culmination of over two years of planning endeavouring to develop a project that enables Weston Park to restore the last unused building on the Estate," said Colin Sweeney, Weston Park Chief Executive.
The Granary building ceased being used for agricultural purposes in the 1960s. The original North front will be the focus of the restoration in phase one and is the original great barn built in 1767 during the Sir Henry Bridgeman's era. In its time it would have been at the forefront of agricultural building technology.
10.10.2007 – MoD underground facility at Corsham to be examined
Oxford Archaeology have been commissioned by English Heritage to build up a thorough picture of the development of an until recently top secret MoD underground facility at Corsham, near Chippenham, Wiltshire.
The site has a fascinating history, beginning as a 19th century stone mine taken over by the military in the 1930s. Since then it has been used variously as a massive underground aircraft factory, and in the Cold War, the potential site of the central government and Royal Family nuclear bunker (allegedly).
The 286-acre site is a labyrinth of tunnels including 26 miles of subterranean roadways. The mess hall and recreation areas are decorated with murals by the artist Olga Lehmann.
09.10.2007 - £400,000 Transformation underway at the Harris Museum
A major redevelopment project has started this week which will dramatically transform the first floor of the Harris Museum & Art Gallery and enhance one of the most striking architectural spaces in the city of Preston.
Whilst still open to the public, museum staff are now carefully packing away objects from the first floor decorative arts display in order for the first phase of the £400,000 capital project to begin.
Stunning state-of-the art cases will display hundreds of items from the Harris’s ceramic and glass collection, including pieces that have never been on display before, whilst digital audio-visuals will bring stories behind the objects to life through interactive games and mini-documentaries.
The space is also being thoroughly redecorated under the advice of English Heritage and new lighting installed.
The project, which will be completed in the spring, has been funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Aven Central Regeneration Partnership (Single Regeneration Budget) and Renaissance North-West.
09.10.2007 - Scottish National Portrait Gallery unveils Forth Bridge artwork
A dramatic visualisation of one of Scotland’s iconic industrial landmarks, which has recently been acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland, has been unveiled as part of a new exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG).
Dieter Appelt’s large-scale photographic montage of the Forth Rail Bridge will be the focus of a fascinating exhibition, which runs at the SNPG until January 6 2008.
Dieter Appelt | Forth Bridge: Cinema, Metric Space will present recent work by one of the most significant German artists of the last 50 years, and will examine the relationship between photography, engineering and contemporary art.
08.10.2007 - New moat bridge for Threave Castle
A new oak footbridge has been built which improves access across the moat and into the main tower of Threave Castle in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.
The 14th century tower stands on an island in the River Dee and staff at Historic Scotland had to ferry the heavy oak beams used in the constrcution of the bridge using a local farm tractor at low tide.
"It was great for us to have modern machinery and the farmer’s help to get the oak planks and other materials over the river," said Bob Hislop, Historic Scotland District Architect.
"It really brings home what an achievement it was for the medieval builders to move the vast quantities of wood and stone that were needed to build the castle we see today."
The massive tower was built by Archibald the Grim, Lord of Galloway. Later the stronghold of the Black Douglases, it has at its base an artillery fortification built before 1455 when James II besieged the castle.
08.10.2007 - Council cleaners mistake art for graffiti in Brighton
Council cleaners in Brighton have removed the words 'Portslade Massif' from the front window of a gallery in the city after they mistook it for graffiti.
The owners of Brighton's Ink_d gallery were shocked to discover the name of their new exhibition had been blasted away by a cleaning crew hours before the show opened on October 5.
The gallery is currently hosting new art by ex-KLF frontman James Cauty based on his four year stint in nearby Portslade. He has called the show ‘The Rize and Fall of the Portslade Massif’, and part of the show’s name had been painted on the front window in bold white letters.
“Brighton and Hove City Council like anywhere have problems with graffiti gangs but this is private property and my problems with the cleaning crew doing this is more about freedom of expression," said studio director Dan Hipkin. "If we’d written the words in neat writing they wouldn’t have touched it. They obviously thought they were ‘helping’ but they weren’t.”
