2008 Annual Review

The Holburne Museum Annual Review 2008 Contents Chairman’s Introduction 1 Director’s Report 2 Building for the Future 4 Caring for the Collection 6 Exhibitions and Events 10 Learning 12 Fundraising 16 Statement of Financial Activities 18 Financial Overview 19 Officers and Management 20 Professional Advisers and Bankers 21 Donors to the Museum and Appeal 22 THIS PAGE Detail of the Witcombe Cabinet, c.1695, allocated to the Holburne Museum as part of the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme and recently restored by the Wallace Collection, London Chairman’s Introduction ‘I am thrilled that the Trustees have decided that the re-opened Holburne will be free to enter. This historic step will transform the Holburne’s relationship to its public, allowing the Museum to play a far more vital, familiar and approachable role in the life of the region’ It has been a tumultuous year. The benefit to the city and region. But it is parent and partner universities in Bath chaos of the financial markets and the role it can and will play in enhancing and Bristol. It was also wonderful to see the developing recession have shaken the region’s cultural life that we have in the building teeming with students and us all but especially those who, like our sites. The pleasures of art are vital their work – fresh and optimistic – in the Holburne, depend upon charitable ones and need to be made available our grand if slightly shabby galleries. grants and donations, endowment and accessible to everyone; perhaps revenue and government funding. particularly in times like these. From I am confident that our spectacular this point of view the Holburne’s modern extension which is now taking In this climate of financial anxiety, development and what it hopes to shape behind our wonderful eighteenth- closing the Museum to embark upon achieve could not be better timed. century building will create some of this our development project has required same energy within the Museum, but it us to hold our nerve and redouble our Against this background and with is the activity inside – our exhibitions efforts. That we have done both is these goals in mind I am therefore and workshops, our displays, lectures shown by the fact that construction thrilled that the Trustees have decided and concerts which will ensure our work has now started and that, during that the re-opened Holburne will be success and it is as a record of this the year, we raised almost £1.8 million free to enter – with no admission charge activity over the last year that we towards our project and over £220,000 to look at the collection. This historic present this Review. for our ongoing activities and costs. step, as has been shown so many times Both these figures speak loudly of the elsewhere, will transform the Holburne’s The development project requires a strength of our support and the belief relationship to its public, increasing major commitment from the staff and that people have in the Museum’s future visitor numbers but also allowing the also a great deal of time and effort and its ambitions. I was particularly Museum to play a far more vital, familiar from trustees who have given their happy that we received a grant of and approachable role in the life of the time so generously. We have also £200,000 from Bath & North East region. A free museum becomes, far has the support of many consultants, Somerset Council, a welcome more naturally, a place to drop into for notably from Eric Parry and his team demonstration of their commitment to a moment’s peace or to meet a friend; of architects who, despite many our success and their understanding of to take your parents or your children; disappointments in the planning the benefit a renewed Holburne Museum to see a new display or revisit an process, have never let us down. will bring to the city and the region. old favourite. I thank them all. But there is another side to this story, We had a taste of this enticing future for while bleak news emerges from the during June, when we opened the markets a rather different tale is being Museum free of charge, albeit emptied David Posnett told on the arts pages. More people are of most of its objects, and took CHAIRMAN visiting museums and galleries than advantage of the empty galleries to ever before. As recession casts its host work from the degree show of the shadow people turn to the pleasures Bath School of Art and Design. This that museums and art afford. Of course was a fitting manifestation of our status we know that a successful and vigorous as a University Museum and reflects Holburne Museum, attracting visitors our determination to develop the ways from far and wide to its ambitious in which our collections and resources exhibitions, will bring economic can support Higher Education with our 1 Director’s Report ‘All of us at the Holburne are working away to ensure that when, after two years absence, our public and Collection meet again it will indeed be surprising, stimulating and exciting and that we will be making all kinds of new introductions’ A year in which we emptied the Museum The year had many highlights both RIGHT FROM TOP and closed its doors to the public for the significant and incidental. Among the Packing up the Collection first time since the Second World War most memorable was the arrival in the The Holburne Museum as it was originally displayed can scarcely be described as run of the Museum of the two wonderful portrait in its first home in mill. 2008 was another momentous year drawings by the youthful Thomas Charlotte Street, c.1895 for the Holburne, but it was essentially Lawrence, the long-wished-for first one of preparation and transition. works by the artist to enter the Early in the year the Heritage Lottery Collection; the development with the Fund granted us our stage two pass, University of Bristol’s History of Art confirming their major grant of almost Department of a new MA course £5million towards our development focussed upon the Museum’s collection project. Just under a year later, in of Renaissance Maiolica, offering January 2009, having met all the students valuable and rare experience conditions of the grant, they awarded of object-based learning; a wonderfully us our “Permission to Start” giving the energetic family workshop producing green light for work to commence. As wildly imaginative cityscapes in the I write, men in hard hats swarm over empty galleries as part of the national the site starting the hard work of Big Draw celebrations and the award building for the Museum’s future. of our fourth Holburne Portrait Prize to David Fisher by an enthusiastic Between these milestones there has and distinguished panel chaired by been an enormous amount of activity, the artist Humphrey Ocean. Among much, but by no means all of it, taking the year’s unexpected pleasures was place behind the scenes. In April we the discovery, in a wooden box in the shut our doors as, with a stalwart team basement, of a set of hundred-year-old of volunteers, we carefully packed up glass negatives showing the Holburne and carried away every one of our many Collection crammed cheek-by-jowl thousand objects not to mention all our into its first home in the Savings Bank office equipment and accumulated building in Charlotte Street. At the time files and books. Looking back at the the photographs were taken, early in year, the surprise is that, despite this the twentieth century, the Trustees complicated operation and the other were working to find a new home for aspects of preparing for the the growing collection which eventually development, we also mounted four led them to converting the Sydney Hotel successful exhibitions, ran an ever into our present home. One hundred expanding education programme and years later many of the same problems a continuing series of popular events, of lack of space and facilities have concerts and lectures. Encouragingly, led to our current project – a means even though we were closed for eight of securing the Museum for the months of the year, we attracted twenty-first century. over 20,000 people to our exhibitions, workshops and events – figures that certainly bode well for the re-opened Museum. 2 I am now in the peculiar position of overseeing a shut museum. Peculiar because although all the work of planning for exhibitions, displays and publications continues, although we continue to run creative workshops in schools and colleges and in our outpost in the Gardener’s Lodge and although the relentless task of fundraising carries on unabated, we do not have daily contact with the two essential elements that brought us to work in museums in the first place: the Collection and the public. The work of museums is, in essence, to bring their public and their collections together and to make the most of the encounter. The most successful museums make this meeting a thing of excitement, pleasure and inspiration, through imaginative and beautiful displays, exhibitions, events and the whole wide-range of interpretation. All of us at the Holburne are working away to ensure that when, after two The excitement of all these years absence, our public and Collection developments has of course been meet again it will indeed be surprising, tempered by the inevitable sadnesses stimulating and exciting and that we will that accompany the end of any era. be making all kinds of new introductions.

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