Art

Into the Vault: Collecting artwork at the Woodstock Art Gallery

Published

1 year ago

July 20, 2023

Brynn Murphy, the curatorial and collections assistant at the Woodstock Art Gallery, enjoyed her work in helping assess donated artwork. (Submitted photo)

Have you ever wondered how an art gallery’s collection works behind the scenes? Where does the artwork come from? Who decides what ends up in the collection?

Before joining the Woodstock Art Gallery as the summer curatorial and collections assistant, I didn’t know much about how artworks were chosen to become a part of the collection. As a fine art student, I was excited to gain hands-on experience with a variety of art and learn more about the acquisition process.

With nearly 2,000 works in its growing permanent collection, the Woodstock Art Gallery follows a thorough process to decide if an artwork fits the gallery’s collecting mandate, mission and values.

When determining what kinds of artwork we should accept, the gallery has a few priorities. Artists of local, regional and national significance are essential to the collection and showcase the diversity of talent in Oxford County and beyond.

The gallery also has a significant focus on the artwork of Florence Carlyle, a noteworthy female artist who lived and worked in Woodstock in the early 20th century. Printmaking and other works on paper are also an important asset, complementing the printmaking studio in our education department and expanding on our educational material.

Artworks might be gifted by the artists themselves, donated by collectors, bequeathed or, in some cases, purchased by the gallery. But to become a permanent part of the collection, artworks must go through the acquisition process where they are assessed, researched and voted on by the collections committee.

This summer, I have had the privilege of assessing donated works and writing justifications for the committee. It has been an amazing experience to be so close to some exceptional works by Canadian artists.

When potential new artworks first arrive at the gallery, they first go through an assessment by a member of the collections staff. For paintings, this might mean checking the state of the frame and canvas, and looking for missing paint or blemishes. Works on paper, like drawings or prints, are checked for discolouration, rips, tears and smudging or other marks that are not part of the artwork.

These factors determine the quality of the work and whether it requires professional conservation before it is displayed. Assessing the artwork has been my favourite part of the job, and I have learned a lot about identifying different art mediums and their potential issues.

The next step is the research and justification for the committee. The artist, date, medium and size are noted, and the history of the artist and their work is written up. The justification consists of an artist biography, the relevance of the artwork to the gallery’s collection, a description of the aesthetic qualities of the work and all the information gained from the assessment. The justification is presented at committee meetings alongside the artwork and helps the committee decide if the work should be added to the collection.

If the artwork is accepted for the collection, it gets a designated spot in our vault and an accession number to help us keep track of it in our digital database. Everything we know about the work is captured in that database, from its exact location in the gallery to the location of the artist’s signature on the work. Our collection database is also available to the public!

Working with the collection has been the highlight of my time at the gallery and has given me many new skills, as well as a deeper knowledge of the art collecting process.

Brynn Murphy is the curatorial and collections assistant at the Woodstock Art Gallery. The Woodstock Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges the youth employment funding from Young Canada Works for this position.

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Art

40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

Published

6 days ago

November 3, 2024

Harry Miller

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate Cracked.com

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Art

John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

Published

1 week ago

October 31, 2024

Harry Miller

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 CBC.ca

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Art

A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

Published

1 month ago

September 26, 2024

Anne Joseph

LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.

More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.

The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.

They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.

“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”

It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.

Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.

“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.

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