Appealing and Revealing Treasuring the Past and Embracing the Future Canvas Arts & Culture by Saxton Bampfylde Welcome
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ARTS & CULTURE EDITION SUMMER 2017 CANVAS BY APPEALING AND REVEALING TREASURING THE PAST AND EMBRACING THE FUTURE CANVAS ARTS & CULTURE BY SAXTON BAMPFYLDE WELCOME Welcome to the Arts and Culture Summer 2017 edition of Canvas, the insights update from Saxton Bampfylde. Our aim is to share interesting thoughts and perspectives on topics and issues that are relevant and current in your sector. We very much welcome any thoughts, comments, or inputs you would like to share. We hope that you enjoy Canvas. CONTENTS INTERVIEW WITH DR. XA STURGIS, MAKING (GREAT) DRAMA OUT Pg 4 DIRECTOR, ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM Pg 8 OF A CRISIS – IAN SQUIRES, CURVE, LEICESTER Pg 14 KEY APPOINTMENTS Pg 15 NEWS ROUND-UP Pg 10 TEAM INSIGHT: DR. JENNIFER BARNES 2 CANVAS EDITION OVERVIEW EDITION OVERVIEW Stephen Bampfylde Chairman, Saxton Bampfylde m [email protected] he Arts and Culture sector is the founding principle and vision of Ashmolean Museum at the University of about as broad as any you each organisation, holding dear to that Oxford. Talking about the relationship can find, with extraordinary individuality, but also having a very clear between a museum and a higher depth and reach. The variety of strategy for how to stay on course to education institution, Xa looks at how Tinstitutions, venues, operational models, deliver that vision is becoming crucial. new doors and worlds can be opened cultural disciplines, skills and most The absolute need to maximise the up, whilst reflecting on the challenges of importantly people working within them assets of each organisation, and spend delivering this. is almost endless. Each with its own a far greater amount of time in engaging character, direction, way of engaging with existing, but also new and future We are also delighted to have a bylined and evolving. audiences. These are all the challenges article from Ian Squires, Chair of Curve, being faced every day in the sector. Leicester, a theatre taking its work, However, this individuality is being created in Leicester, to an audience on challenged and the ability to evolve for In a reflection of the breadth of the a global scale. some is becoming more about surviving. sector, we feature two senior figures These challenges are arising as common within the Arts world in this edition of Both bring an individual perspective, themes across this hugely broad sector. Canvas. but draw very clearly upon common Those of funding, and also of remaining themes, opportunities and ‘dramas’ for current, interesting and relevant to the Firstly, we have interviewed Dr Xa the sector as it moves forward. C public. The importance of remembering Sturgis, Director at the renowned CANVAS 3 INTERVIEW WITH DR. XA STURGIS INTERVIEW WITH DR. XA STURGIS DIRECTOR OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM 4 CANVAS Dr. Xa Sturgis discusses what makes a university museum tick; the challenges and opportunities that it affords both the museum and the Higher Education institution it exists within; and how it can change the way education is delivered by opening doors into new worlds. A museum operating within the Looking at the other side about what “We are here to Higher Education environment – what museums offer universities, they are often does this relationship mean for both the first door through which many people demonstrate how institutions? come to a higher education institution. They are an open door to the idea of higher thinking can reveal the Part of what it means for a museum is education and the individual university. world.” unquestionably a sense of security within They are very accessible and museums a larger organisation. However, with that are astonishingly popular institutions comes a degree of obligation on the part today. They have a broad, engaged public of the museum that might be different which is of great value to Higher Education that he didn’t know were next door until he from that of a national, municipal or institutions. began working here! There is no denying independent museum. For a university these objects reveal more than a photocopy museum the particular areas of obligation In Oxford, the university museums are ever can. They provide a connection to are around the focus and emphasis on particularly significant and the Ashmolean the past and to people, and a window into research and teaching. By that, I mean is one of four exceptional institutions. another world. specifically teaching within a Higher Collectively we provide different ways into Education context, as all museums see the university, reflecting its intellectual life. We recently received an extremely generous themselves as educational institutions. In a We are here to demonstrate how thinking grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation university museum there is more focus on can reveal the world. which is specifically dedicated to helping us teaching to students, undergraduate and develop the ways in which we collaborate postgraduates, within their institution and and support teaching within the university. beyond. How does this impact on the operation A key part of this is the development of a and development of the museum? new programme called Faculty fellowships, A lot of university museums were not which is geared towards ensuring sustained founded or developed specifically as There are obvious logistical and practical learning opportunities. This project involves teaching collections. Many were purely issues that relate to teaching and research. us working very closely with the IT team here seen as part of a broader cultural focus for We need study rooms, space to store the to develop better and more sustainable the institution. Our Raphael drawings for objects and of course qualified museum platforms for students to have access to and example, which form the core of our latest assistants who can retrieve objects and revise from. Whether it be 3D scans, better exhibition, were given to Oxford in the bring them to classrooms. imagery or other information, by making 1840s in the hope that they would improve all these files available online in addition the morals of the university students! We are also inviting the academics and to allowing hands on teaching sessions in Increasingly however, we are now looking lecturers into the museum, sitting them our study rooms will, we believe, greatly at our collections and thinking about how down and supporting them in ways to enhance the student learning and also the we use them in teaching the undergraduate teach from collections. We are trying to wider teaching experience. and postgraduate curriculum. do this across many areas and making links with many faculties including English, Together with the other museums at the In an institution like the University of Oxford migration studies, geography, history and University of Oxford we are also looking to which is traditionally very text based this is a the business school. We are trying hard to develop a collections study centre; a space challenge, but one that we are rising to. It is support academics and enable them to be where collections from across the University an exciting challenge. We want to share how comfortable working with objects rather will be accessible for teaching and research. the extraordinary encounter with the many than using a purely text based approach. Plans for this centre are currently being objects amongst these amazing collections developed and we are very lucky to have can open more windows onto the past or Our own Egyptian curator teaches the identified a site right in the heart of the onto ideas than any text book can. We are Egyptology course he studied when University – two large basements that used working hard to suggest different ways of he was a student at Oxford University. to be library stacks under the lawns in front thinking about a wide range of different However, at that time he sat in the school of the Museum of Natural History. subjects through these collections - helping of archaeology, right next door to the to develop possibly more empathetic, more Ashmolean, looking at photocopies of If teaching brings certain operational imaginative ways of thinking. objects that we had in the museum; objects demands, the role of the Museum as a CANVAS 5 INTERVIEW WITH DR. XA STURGIS champion of research brings others. This not only involves making our collections “There is a real focus on improving the accessible to researchers, both physically and interdisciplinary approach. Museums are absolutely virtually, but also revealing the fruits of this research to as wide an audience as possible. one of the best places in which this type of thinking Our exhibition programme is critical here and happens almost as a matter of course.” looking at our programme going forward the intention is that it will always, or as frequently as possible, be backed by new research carried out in the University or beyond. Our recent Raphael exhibition is great example of this. The sector and opportunities arising I would example through building a strong institutional outcome of a Leverhulme-funded research say that the development of academic endowment fund. Until this point I think it is project, it explored the way in which Raphael disciplines and the way in which universities fair to say that university museums have been used the drawing process as a way of thinking are being encouraged to think about teaching somewhat protected from funding cuts, but and revealed him as a far more experimental and research is a hugely exciting one for there is no denying there are storm clouds on and adventurous artist than he is often us. There is a real focus on developing an the horizon and we need to be ready for this. considered. interdisciplinary approach, with a real need to escape from silos of particular well-established “We are a universal, One next exhibition - ‘Imagining the Divine: Art academic disciplines.