Cuts storm in Stoke
Plus: The Louvre is creating a Mona Lisa immersive experience
Today's edition is presented with The Brunel Museum’s Tunnelling Through Time
Good afternoon - it’s Friday! Are we all off to Downing Street tonight for a knees up? It’s Bring Your Own Suitcase.
A big thank you to the Brunel Museum for sponsoring both this week’s editions of the newsletter. Their (award winning) new virtual escape room is definitely worth checking out, as is the Museum itself. Sponsorship is so important to keep this newsletter going and to ensure all six editions each month remain free, so do please support our sponsors.
And don’t forget to catch up with my first interview of 2022 which I sent earlier this week. It’s all about a new pop-up artist studio and the intriguingly named Extruder machine coming to London next month. Read it here
Now for the news!
Maxwell
Put your clue cracking skills to the test with the Brunel Museum’s epic time travel virtual escape adventure, Tunnelling Through Time. Travel back in time from the comfort of your chair and be entertained with true stories of the Thames Tunnel, the world’s first successful underwater tunnel. Working with your virtual guide, Joey Beamish you’ll need to unravel clues and solve puzzles to complete this award-winning game.
This week’s top story
20,000 people have signed a petition to prevent a Stoke-on-Trent museum closing for five months of every year. The local council are proposing shutting the Gladstone Museum in winter in order to save cash and to maximise commercial revenue by hiring the space out for TV filming and events. This plan is part of the council’s proposals to see savings from its museums service of £560,000, and which also include cutting the opening hours of the nearby Potteries Museum and Art Gallery to five days a week and axing 19 full time posts. BBC News
This story provoked a big response from the museum world on Twitter, a lot of it coming from an erroneous article and tweet which suggested that the two museums were closing for good with the entire staff sacked. The article has since been heavily amended, and the tweet deleted but long after thousands had already interacted with it under the false assumption it was the end of the road for the two museums. The local paper - the Stoke Sentinel - came to the rescue with a detailed article setting out the actual proposals, including the info that a number of staff were being retained and that 5.5 roles were being created (including a commercial officer). The Council were clearly irked too, and hit back with a statement making clear that the media reports were “simply not true.”
Stoke’s museums must be treasured, and the loss of staff should be closely scrutinised. But unfortunately public funding is only going in one direction, with local authority museums particularly hard hit. To remain financially sustainable venues need to redouble efforts to raise more of their own cash. At least these plans acknowledge that. But this is also a reminder that there is often more to a story than a 280 character tweet on a platform that profits from strong reactions.
This week’s other stories
Three new portraits of HRH the Duchess of Cambridge have been released to celebrate her 40th birthday. Paolo Roversi captured the images which will join the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery where she is a royal patron. They’ll go on display when the Gallery reopens after restoration in 2023, but in the meantime will go on show in three locations across the UK as part of their Coming Home touring project. The images - described as “dazzling” by USA Today - made a major splash, appearing on the front pages of nearly all the UK papers last Sunday. PR gold. Vanity Fair
The Serpentine Sackler Gallery is officially no more, as the Gallery has had the controversial Sackler name removed the its façade. It comes a year after the space was first rebranded in marketing materials (maybe they couldn’t find a stepladder). It’s now called Serpentine North, which sounds like a railway station. The Art Newspaper
A “truly remarkable find” of a carved wooden figure from the early Roman era has been unearthed in a waterlogged ditch in Buckinghamshire. It’s been discovered as part of the dig along the 150-mile HS2 rail route and the lack of oxygen in the ditch helped prevent rotting over many centuries. What a brilliant discovery. The Guardian
Tracey Emin has won this year’s Art Icon award from the Whitechapel Gallery. She’s the ninth artist to receive the prestigious prize, and the Whitechapel’s Director said Emin’s “pioneering portrayals of love, loss, happiness and hope will resonate with artists and audiences for years to come.” Oh and Emin’s buying a haunted pub, as you do. Artlyst
The immersive art ‘experience’ trend continues apace as the Louvre announce they’re creating a digital light show about the Mona Lisa. The Museum has teamed up with the Grand Palais for the project which will open in Marseille. The Grand Palais is so committed to the immersive digital experience that the venue will soon have an entire dedicated space for such multimedia exhibitions. artnet news
A damaged Georgia O’Keeffe painting is back on display after conservators spent 1,250 hours restoring it. It was the biggest restoration project the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum had ever worked on. The cause of the problem? Water damage caused by a TARANTULA tunneling through the roof. *shudders.* The Independent
Residents in Ashford in Kent have said a new piece of public art in the town looks like “a giant dog poo.” And it does. Indy 100
And finally
2022 is going to be a bumper year for brand new museums and major expansions. The Art Newspaper round up the most exciting, from Oslo’s National Museum to Glasgow’s Burrell Collection.
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