Annual Report 2016-2017 Contents 2 3 Director’s Report 12 Acquisitions 17 Works of art lent to public exhibitions 19 Long-term loans outside Government 25 Advisory Committee members 26 GAC staff Cover Image: A GAC Curator talking about Yinka SHonibare’s work Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle during a public tour of the GAC HQ, London. © Crown Copyright Director’s Report 3 UK Prime Minister, Theresa May and Polish Prime Minister, Beata Szydło at a reception at 10 Downing Street. © Crown Copyright / photograph Tom Evans Once more, the Government Art Collection Selected UK displays Raleigh; and a portrait of William Shakespeare. (GAC) has witnessed, and responded to, Government reshuffles led to a number of Margaret Carpenter’s elegant portrait of Ada an eventful year. Our primary activity has ministerial visits to the GAC to select new King, Countess of Lovelace was re-displayed focused on selecting and installing a range of works for offices. For the new UK regional in its traditional location in the Pillared Room, new displays for government buildings in the display at 10 Downing Street, we arranged following its return from loan to an exhibition UK and at several diplomatic posts abroad. the loan of four paintings from the collections at the Science Museum that celebrated the Just how well dispersed GAC works are in of UK museums: Rock Garden, Cookham bicentenary of Lovelace’s birth. Portraits of government buildings, is best illustrated by the Dean (1942) by Sir Stanley Spencer from William Kent and Kenton Kouse, two architects impressive number of displays (approximately Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Sir closely associated with 10 Downing Street, 121) we have installed in the UK and abroad in John Lavery’s Twilight, Lake of Geneva (1924) were also reinstalled in the Terracotta Room. British Embassies and Residences, on nearly from National Museums Northern Ireland; every continent, in this year alone. Across Landscape in Kent (1921) by David Jones Whitehall each site, art from the GAC plays a vital role from the National Museum of Wales; and A special display of works illustrating the in providing a cultural context against which Roses a (c.1920-25) painting by S. J. Peploe history of the Whitehall Palace were installed ministerial negotiation and business activity from the National Galleries of Scotland. in the Stone Hall, an area of the Cabinet happens; while also contributing to cultural Office that occupies the original foundations diplomacy by making links between people, 10 Downing Street of the former Palace. Featured in the display places and history around the world.This year Portraits of notable Tudor figures were installed are The Old Palace of Whitehall by Hendrick we have welcomed a number of significant new in the Pillared Room in 10 Downing Street. Danckerts; a marble bust of Oliver Cromwell acquisitions into the Collection, and, as ever, Featured in this display is a rare historical oil by Joseph Wilton; a series of ten engravings have enjoyed completing a range of projects in on oak panel portrait of Henry VIII, a significant of the House of Lords tapestries showing The partnership with artists, museums, audiences, acquisition, as it is the first historical portrait of Defeat of the Spanish Armada and a portrait of funders and higher education institutions. Henry VIII in the GAC; a portrait of Sir Walter King William III as Solomon by Jan van Orley. Installing works in the Stone Hall, Cabinet Office, London © Crown Copyright 4 New Acquisition: a short history of the China trade by Edmund de Waal 5 © Mike Bruce, courtesy of Edmund de Waal Selected International Displays through the generous support of Rosamund GAC displays in British embassies and Brown in memory of her husband, Charles diplomatic buildings underpin their broader H. Brown; The Rothschild Foundation; The diplomatic function. This year some of the Sackler Trust and with help from Madeleine cities in which we installed new displays Bessborough of the New Art Centre, Salisbury. included Beijing, New York, Kabul, Tbilisi, Paris and Beirut. In August the Director visited the Following the arrival of a new Consul General Ambassador’s Residence in Beijing to oversee in New York, we refreshed the display in the the installation of works, including two major Residence with works by Cornelia Parker, Lucy additions to the Collection. On prominent Skaer and Paul Graham joining Andy Warhol’s view to visitors entering the reception hall Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom from is Isaac Julien’s No Moon Shining (2010), his 1985 series, Reigning Queens; and Map an elegiac landscape photograph inspired of an Englishman 2004, the extraordinarily by stories linking China’s past and present revelatory insight into artist Grayson Perry’s that was gifted by the artist via the Outset/ mind resembling a mediaeval map. Modern Government Art Collection Fund in 2015. prints by R. B. Kitaj, Joe Tilson and Michael Nearby in the same room is a short history Rothenstein were selected for installation of the China trade by Edmund de Waal, in the British Ambassador’s Residence in composed of a glass vitrine containing Kabul; while at the Ambassador’s Residence vessels and shards of porcelain, a material in Beirut we installed Blind (2005), an originating from, and long associated with, unusual work consisting of a found painting China. This specially commissioned work and plastic by Alexandre Da Cunha; and a for display in Beijing was made possible new display of prints by Patrick Heron. 6 Acquisitions To mark the UK’s participation at the Rio This year we continued our partnership 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we with Outset, an independent international purchased The Official Prints for Team organisation founded in 2003 to support the GB at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, a production and promotion of new art within portfolio of prints produced by eight artists the public arena through private funding and Counter Editions. Artists featured and philanthropy. The aim of the Outset/ in the set include David Shrigley, Sir Government Art Collection Fund is to add 12 Howard Hodgkin and Sarah Jones. works of art to the Collection over three years. This year’s work gifted to the GAC was Anne Loans to public exhibitions Hardy’s large-scale photograph, Detached, a Committed to making GAC works of art as mysterious scene depicting a workspace filled accessible as possible to public audiences, with objects, cables, diagrams and charts. this year the GAC continued to loan works to New Acquisition: Angelic Conversations by Derek Jarman temporary public exhibitions in the UK and © The Estate of Derek Jarman Courtesy Wilkinson Gallery, London Other new works acquired for the Collection around the world. Two important paintings of this year include Angelic Conversations (1982) the 1930s by Paul Nash, Event on the Downs by Derek Jarman, Hendrick (2016) a bold and and Nest of the Siren, featured prominently quirky painting by Cornelia Baltes; five new in Tate Britain’s major touring retrospective paintings from 2016 by Mary Ramsden; and exhibition that opened in October. In Dublin, Raft (2016), a striking digital print and drawing High Treason, Court of Criminal Appeal: the gifted to the GAC by Cathy de Monchaux and Trial of Sir Roger Casement 1916, a significant her son Felix in memory of the MP Jo Cox, oil painting by Sir John Lavery, was loaned who was killed in 2016. to the National Gallery of Ireland for its New Acquisition: Detached by Anne Hardy © Anne Hardy 7 A conservator working at 10 Downing Street on behalf of the GAC. © Crown Copyright 8 exhibition, Creating Histories: Stories of Ireland Conservation and worked from the mid-1960s until his in Art. Gillian Wearing’s 1994 video, Dancing Our conservation programme continues both death. International conservation activities in Peckham, and her later photograph, Me locally and internationally. Over 200 works were undertaken in Santiago, New Delhi, as an Artist in 1984 were loaned to Behind received treatment this year. Among the Mumbai, Tehran and Cairo. Among the Masks: Claude Cahun and Gillian Wearing, works in the UK were: Charles Jervas’ portrait works treated were Jean Baptiste Borely’s an intriguing joint exhibition at the National of Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg- portrait of Charles Leonard Irby (1889) and Portrait Gallery. Other exhibitions loans Anspach for inclusion in the exhibition at the David Austen’s Cairo Painting (1998). this year also includes On Board (2010), Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA a perceptively witty photograph by Mel - Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Framing Brimfield to Double Act: Art and Comedy, Charlotte and the Shaping of the Modern This year over 400 works were framed or a group show at Bluecoat, Liverpool. World; Ian Davenport’s painting Poured glazed. The early portrait of Henry VIII by Lines: Light Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, an anonymous artist of the Anglo-Flemish Barbara Hepworth’s iconic sculpture Yellow, Red which underwent conservation School received a new, reproduction Tudor, of 1937, Conoid, Sphere and Hollow III treatment following its return from the parcel gilt frame with a fretted, pierced and travelled abroad to the Arp Museum Banhof Organisation of Economic Co-operation carved pattern. Other newly framed works Rolandseck in Germany, as part of the and Development offices in Paris; and Victor include a series of 14 aquatints by Graham touring wing of Tate’s Hepworth exhibition. In Pasmore’s Development in Green & Indigo Sutherland; a series of 34 prints from Folio, the USA, three historical works by William No 2 which returned to the UK after more the Shakespeare-inspired portfolio produced Hopkins, Charles Jervas and Valentine than 20 years on view in Malta for exhibition by the Royal College of Art in 2011; and Green featured in Enlightened Princesses: in Towards a New Reality at the Djanogly Mango, a hand-coloured print from 1990- Carolina, Augusta, Charlotte and the Shaping Art Gallery, Nottingham.