Exercise: Exploring Function

New Art Gallery Walsall

 

"Gallery spaces are successful when the space is not the primary focus. The role of the gallery is not to compete with the artwork, rather to create a blank space, which allows the artist's work to dominate the space." Virgil Dudley, http://www.ehow.com/how_5456086_design-art-gallery.html

The Requirement

Light, above all, to see the artwork.  Natural where possible, supplemented by diffuse artificial light, eliminating dark shadows, and avoiding reflections.
Plain, vertical walls to hang pictures on.
Open spaces for sculpture and installations.
Available but unobtrusive services: additional lighting and power.
Flexibility; the capability to open out or close in spaces for particular works or exhibitions.

A gallery has different functions.  Birmingham's Museum and Art Gallery is painting-oriented, mostly designed around a permanent exhibition of large oil paintings.  Walsall seems more flexible.  When we visited, there was a travelling exhibition of works by Damien Hirst, including a trademark sheep in formaldehyde.  A door had been closed off and a temporary wall built in the Garman Ryan Galleries, on which to hang his Trinity - Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology, 2000.
 

The interior of the New Art Gallery Walsall is all white walls and varnished planks.

It's an intricate and beautiful, clever building, and this risks overshadowing the art for which it exists.

The top floor was designed as a restaurant and has large windows, giving views over the town.  It's now used as a display space, and the lovely large windows do some of the artwork no favours...

Though they enabled me to take this self-portrait.

 

But the designed spaces work well.

This is the image I've selected to illustrate the success of the gallery design.  It's half of the large Garman Ryan gallery and is subdivided into two bays by a large cabinet with glass both sides.  The windows, supplemented by artificial light, adjustable on tracks, provide illumination without causing reflection.  Small sculptures and artifacts are displayed in the cabinet, whose glass allows light to pass between the two bays.  It looks a little cluttered now; this is because the scupltures that are normally scattered through the whole space have been moved to make room for the Damien Hirst exhibition. 

The photograph was taken from beside Damien Hirst's preserved sheep.  No photographs are permitted of the Hirst works; the chair is for the gallery employee who supervises them, and is normally out of the way against the wall, right.
The sculptures, and the paintings on the right wall, are by Jacob Epstein.