Project masterpiece
What does it take to put on an art exhibition, from concept to welcoming the public through the gallery doors? Emma De Vita meets the curators and managers at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and National Galleries Scotland to discover how they mastermind these unique artistic projects
Kettle’s Yard: Curating a living artist
Kettle’s Yard art gallery in Cambridge is a modern exhibition space, a stone’s throw from the River Cam. Curator Amy Tobin is a week away from installing the gallery’s Linderism exhibition, which explores the work of British post-punk photo-montage artist Linder Sterling. Unlike with retrospectives of artists long dead, Tobin gets to deal with a contemporary artist who is producing new work for her own retrospective.
“We do think of the exhibition as a project. It has a timeline, and it has to be delivered by a certain date to a certain budget,” says Tobin, who has a full-time assistant curator to aid her. “We plan our exhibitions three years in advance. That’s the negotiation stage, getting the artist on board and usually the commercial gallery who represents them.” Tobin stepped in as lead curator in January 2019, overseeing the exhibition timeline, the logistics and the budget, which covers everything from insurance and framing to freighting.
With one year to go, the curatorial team decided to commission Sterling to make new works related to Kettle’s Yard, which will include a series of three photo-montages and a performance. “Usually exhibitions have either a retrospective element or a commission element, so this is quite novel. It’s a big project to have both running simultaneously,” says Tobin. “On the one hand my role as the curator of a retrospective is selecting the right works. On the other hand, it’s the commissioning – doing the exciting stuff, working with the artist and thinking creatively about what we can do in the space.”
Two weeks before Linderism opens, Tobin is feeling “a little bit stressed”. What characterises working with a living artist, she explains, is that, while as curator she has the ultimate say, she has to keep numerous stakeholders (like Modern Art, the commercial gallery that represents Sterling) on side. The same applies to her director and senior management team.
The key stakeholder, clearly, is Sterling herself. “What does she want to show? What doesn’t she want to show? It’s about getting your story straight – what do you want the exhibition to do? If you have a clear idea of that then you can convince people,” says Tobin, who is being kept on her toes, with new works produced by the artist a mere six weeks before the show opens.
Pulling off a project like this requires good communication and a strong relationship with the artist. “You need to be able to judge what kind of artist they are pretty early on. Some artists really would hate to work to the last minute, and some people won’t make a decision until the work is in the gallery, so you have to understand that about them and create a structure that can contain that without it impinging on the budget or your staff’s time,” explains Tobin.
She uses a simple Excel spreadsheet to project manage the exhibition timelines but admits to a preference for Gantt charts. Building in contingencies for an unpredictable artist is part of the job. “You have to be flexible and open-minded with artists, but it’s not a negative thing, it’s part of the joy of working with them. Everyone who is in curatorial roles or gallery management understands that and appreciates it. It’s a positive. With Linder, it’s having someone who is a constant interlocutor with the exhibition – it’s not like that on other kinds of projects,” Tobin says.
The final two weeks leading up to an exhibition are extremely busy for the team. Tobin is making sure she has all the works, that they haven’t been damaged in transit and that the hang (done alongside the artist) is right. “You can prepare all you want – we do 3D architectural models – but it’s always different in the flesh,” she says.
“Sometimes it can feel like you are unorganised when you are working with an artist, but I think it is useful to bear in mind as a project manager that it’s a lot about trusting your judgement. Sometimes you have to go back on what you thought and change it. That’s a lesson of humility.”
Linderism runs until 26 April 2020 at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge
The Scottish National Gallery: Titian masterpieces reunited
Aidan Weston-Lewis has been a curator at the Scottish National Gallery for 27 years and is currently ploughing his energies into the gallery’s summer show – the first time Titian’s original cycle of paintings of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, commissioned by King Philip II of Spain, will be together since 1704. Weston-Lewis regards his role “as a collaboration with multiple departments, but the curator is the linchpin”.
Like with other sectors in the creative industries, he is finding that artistic projects are becoming more rigorous in the way they are being organised, with more structures and processes. “Project management is a term that is applied,” he explains. “The work we do gets packaged up as a project with an attached budget. In the interests of accounting, things are more rigorous.” He is using relatively new processes that have been put in place for the delivery of the project – one in the first tranche of shows to go through these processes. “Things used be done in a more ad hoc way, with the curator leading; now there is a lot more collaboration – it has become a cross-departmental operation,” he says.
The Titian project is being led by the National Gallery in London and is a collaboration between a number of international galleries. “Some of the paintings have never been lent before, so it’s a special reunion. The Rape of Europa is being fully restored especially for the exhibition in Boston. It’s a once-in-a-generation event,” says Weston-Lewis.
There have been complications. Where the paintings were going to be hung was one. An octagonal room that would have been ideal was put out of action because of a capital project running on the gallery building. Scotland, originally the first host of this touring exhibition, then became its second after the gallery decided to swap with the National Gallery in London to time its show with the surge of visitors in July for the Edinburgh Festival.
At the start of February, Weston-Lewis says he is finding the project “slightly daunting”. As the project lead, decisions lie with him: “Over the next two-to-three months, we will nail it down.” It’s important to manage visitor expectations, especially for a show with so few pictures. Although Titian’s masterpieces will be the core of the exhibition, Weston-Lewis is choosing to present them with much in-depth context, including background on the artist, the original commission and the history of the artworks, which will be supplemented by works from the National Gallery’s permanent collection, a new documentary and an audio guide.
“The show needs to be well received by everyone who comes, although there are always complaints about ticket prices or the size of the text,” he adds. His objective? “That people are left feeling they have had a visual feast and are stimulated and inspired by the show.” Personally, he says a high point of the project will be “as an art historian, the prospect of seeing these paintings in one place”.
Titian: Love, Desire, Death will run from 11 July to 27 September 2020 at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh
Royal Academy of Arts: Putting on a blockbuster show
You don’t get many artists bigger than Pablo Picasso. And for Idoya Beitia, exhibitions manager at the Royal Academy, its Picasso and Paper blockbuster show is, as a Catalan native, close to her heart. One day ahead of opening to the public, she explains that: “For me as a project manager, the measures of success are that the exhibition has opened on time and looks effortless.” She can tick both these boxes.
Picasso and Paper has been four years in the making. Beitia worked closely with curator Ann Dumas and her assistant Rhiannon Hope to “make the idea of the curator a reality”. Her job is to deliver the exhibition concept, project managing the logistics, the artwork loans, a team of 10 within the RA and contractors and partners outside the gallery. She has to manage many different relationships – with owners of the work, art institutions, sponsors – and is responsible for costing, negotiations and budgeting.
While Beitia doesn’t have any formal project management training, she uses a lot of project management tools, particularly workflow charts. “It’s important to use tools that other people find easy – there’s no point organising yourself with tools that other people don’t understand,” she advises. Constraints on the project include tight budgets and an immovable deadline.
Dealing with artworks that are extremely fragile (and worth hundreds of millions of pounds), she is dependent on the willingness of lenders to part with them. “This requires a huge amount of negotiation on the part of the curator and exhibitions manager, because you are dealing with people’s most precious assets,” she explains. While the Musée Picasso-Paris lent 85 per cent of the artworks, the remainder needed to be framed and restored by private collectors.
Getting to the point of the exhibition’s installation in January required negotiating contracts and sponsorship deals, designing a catalogue and understanding what the ambitions for the show would be (visitor targets are critical).
The installation is the central point of the project when everything comes together. “We work long hours dealing with problems. You need to be able to think on your feet,” she says. Artworks need to have a 24-hour acclimatisation in the gallery before being unpacked, so any transport delays have a major impact on the schedule. There might be conservation problems if the art has suffered damage in transit – or if an artwork has been framed and the curator doesn’t think it looks right. Representatives of the lenders (known as couriers) watch the installation to make sure the works are treated as expected. For this show there were 80 couriers.
“We have to plan well in advance and be quite strict,” says Beitia. “You can’t have dust in the galleries. For any delays in the build we have to increase the number of hours that we work and have more people. With the Picasso exhibition, we had 10 days for the installation, with a free weekend in the middle – we leave the Saturday free as a contingency.”
Hope assisted Dumas, who worked alongside curators from partner institutions the Musée Picasso-Paris and the Cleveland Museum of Art, where the exhibition will tour. “The scale and scope of the exhibition makes this a special one for the RA,” Hope says. “Our aim was to put together the most comprehensive display of [Picasso’s] work on paper.”
Hope’s role was to support the curators with the design layout, key list of works and researching potential works to be included. She also oversaw all the graphics for the exhibition.
“As the project moves closer to installation, pragmatism comes to the fore,” says Hope. “There are more than 320 works and you need to be on top of everything.” While they have a very set idea of how things should be, works can be moved around in the hanging. “There were one or two changes within each gallery,” she reveals. Because the works are so fragile, the team had to be extremely careful with light levels. “The levels are high when we are hanging and then the works are covered with protective tracing paper and stay like that for two weeks. You don’t get to see the full exhibition until all the paper is taken off.”
Project managing an exhibition like this takes strong people skills. Beitia reflects that: “In this business, you must be extremely diplomatic and have very good negotiation skills.” It’s also important to be a good team leader and communicator, valuing people’s strengths and working to them. “You need to be able to delegate very effectively and trust the team and their abilities,” she says – good advice for any project manager.
Picasso and Paper runs until 13 April 2020 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art: A project management first
Lee Haldane is National Galleries Scotland’s first ever project manager of an exhibition. She is responsible for the delivery of Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which opens in May. Harryhausen was the film special effects superstar behind the legendary stop-motion animation in films like Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
“This particular exhibition requires a project manager because of the many external contractors involved. Traditionally a member of the curatorial team would lead on the exhibition, directing the exhibition content and shaping the exhibition’s character and any necessary design interventions,” Haldane explains. “The Harryhausen exhibition has from the outset been conceived as having greater complexity due to the range of exhibits and the embedded multimedia nature of his work. We realised a range of specialist contractors would be required to maximise the potential of the exhibition content. In turn, we realised a dedicated project manager would be required to manage the design and delivery of the exhibition.”
The core project team includes colleagues from curatorial, visitor experience, IT, learning and engagement, press and marketing, digital, and conservation and art handling teams. The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation is a close partner, as are many design and delivery companies.
Haldane’s role is diverse: connecting internal operations, coordinating external consultants and exploring third-party opportunities. “Ultimately the role is about embracing the exhibition concept, seeing the opportunities to add value, guiding the process and making the exhibition as good as it can be,” she says. “I don’t have any formal project management training but have built up a depth of experience managing projects in my role as marketing manager within National Galleries Scotland,” from which she is currently on secondment.
It’s the beginning of February and three and a half months until the exhibition opens. The project has reached an exciting stage, as all its key external contractors are now on board. “We’re in the midst of building the various elements which are needed for the exhibition, developing digital content to appear in the show and working with a great lighting designer to ensure we really deliver a great experience for our visitors,” says Haldane. It’s lights, camera, action.
Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema runs from 23 May to 25 October 2020 at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh
0 comments
Log in to post a comment, or create an account if you don't have one already.