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Visiting the Sainsbury Centre at UEA

(Image: Alberto Giacometti, with his work)

A visit to Sainsbury Centre on Friday 20th February, 2015

We had a group of seventeen fellows and friends who met up for the visit. We congregated at 10.30 for complimentary tea and coffee at the Modern Life café and then we were taken off by three guides to explore the Centre. We began with the Permanent exhibition on the ground floor and then after a short break proceeded to the basement exhibition areas to view the Reality exhibition, which was outstanding.

Curated by artist Chris Stevens, REALITY brings together over 50 works celebrating the strength of British painting with some of the best and most influential artists of the last sixty years.

The Sainsbury Centre is one of the most prominent university art galleries in Britain, and a major national Centre for the study and presentation of art.

It houses the extraordinary art collection of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, as well as the Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau and the University’s Abstract and Constructivist Collection. Alongside these permanent collections, there is a range of temporary exhibitions, with new galleries providing the largest climate-controlled exhibition space in Eastern England. Also on offer is an award-winning learning programme of gallery talks, lectures and art workshops. (See the programme of lectures, symposia and training here).

The Collections at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts represent some of the most remarkable works of art assembled in the UK. The Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection features work spanning 5,000 years of human creativity. The presentation of art from across time and place continues to inspire and surprise and uniquely presents art as a universal global phenomenon.

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Picasso, 1901-2 Femme au Cafe

The Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection
Permanently displayed in the Living Area Gallery, the collection includes major holdings of art from Oceania, Africa, the Americas, Asia, the ancient Mediterranean cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, and including a significant number of works acknowledged as seminal examples of European modern art. Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Francis Bacon, Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and Amedeo Modigliani are all represented in the collection.

The Lisa Sainsbury Ceramics Collection
Although not formally part of the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, the Lisa Sainsbury Ceramics Collection represents a major collection of 20th century studio ceramics, including a significant body of work by Lucie Rie and Hans Coper.

The Sainsbury Abstract Collection
The Sainsbury Abstract Collection includes paintings from the post second world war Ecole de Paris with a strong preference for lyrical abstraction and Tachisme, art movements that flourished in France from 1945 to 1960. Notable artists included in the collection are Jean Fautrier, Charles Maussion and Mubin Orhon.

The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau
Alongside the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection sits another principle collection; The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau, donated in 1978 by Sir Colin Anderson, a close friend of Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury. The collection represents artists working across a range of disciplines and materials such as glassware and furniture, metalware and jewelry. The collection includes pieces by leading exponents of Art Nouveau such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Emile Gallé and René Lalique.

Vorticist David Bomberg's The Mud Bath, 1914
Vorticist David Bomberg’s The Mud Bath, 1914

The University Collection of Abstract and Constructivist Art, Design and Architecture was established by the University in 1968. This Collection concentrates on the non-objective, constructive and concrete art movements of the 20th century and the related fields of architecture and design, such as the English Vorticists, the Russian Suprematists and Constructivists, the Dutch De Stijl Group and the German Bauhaus School.

All who attended enjoyed getting to know each other and spoke of possibly another visit soon. It was very much enjoyed by all and many used their ticket to linger longer in the afternoon. Also, a new Francis Bacon exhibition is coming soon. The Francis Bacon paintings are currently at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and will return for the Francis Bacon and the Masters exhibition in April.

Possibly another day out!

Christine O’Hanlon FRSA

(Public domain images are for illustrative purposes only – they do not seek to represent the collections in the narrative about this visit).

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Sainsbury Centre – a diary date

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Visit The Sainsbury Centre on-line here…

RSA East of England Visit to the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia

Friday 20 February 10.30 am to 2pm

eventbriteButton    You can book on-line here…

Fellows are invited to a guided tour of the outstanding collection at the Sainsbury Centre, UEA including the major REALITY exhibition of Modern British painting, Matisse sculptures (‘The Backs’), as well as the permanent collection (http://scva.ac.uk/art-and-artists/highlights)

REALITY brings together over 50 works celebrating the strength of British painting with some of the best and most influential artists of the last sixty years, testifying to the survival of painting as a medium and the impact of British painting today. Major 20th Century artists are represented such as Walter Sickert, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney, alongside contemporary painters including Ken Currie, George Shaw and Caroline Walker.

The tour will be followed by lunch in the restaurant. Lunch is self service but we have reserved a table, so Fellows can eat together and review the morning.

interneticon  See more details on our events page here…

Sainsbury Centre image credit: lucyrfisher via photopin cc

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Thinking about the Fellowship, 2014

Looking ahead to 2015
Looking ahead to 2015

During the summer of 2014 the Society sent out a survey to the Fellowship, seeking their responses on a number of issues and asking for their views and comments.

Below is a copy that analysis, garnered from the 29% of Fellows who responded, along with some thoughts from the conversationsEAST team as to how our contribution to the work of the Fellowship might be flexed, in response to the findings.

The summary findings from The House indicated the following…

“Overall responses to the survey were positive. Over two-thirds of Fellows join–at least partially–to support our mission, the quality of almost all of our outputs is seen as very high and by far the majority of Fellows are intending to renew their Fellowship. The Survey also generated a large amount of information that can be used to guide ongoing Fellowship development”.

Key findings included…

  • There is less satisfaction with local events compared to other areas of our work.
  • There are a large number of Fellows wanting to self- organise but are frustrated at being unable to do so.
  • There are a large number of Fellows wanting to self- organise but are frustrated at being unable to do so.
  • Some Fellows want to be more involved in the work we do.
  • There is a lack of knowledge about what we do. Across the seven RSA Projects included in the survey, `have not heard of it at all’ accounted for between a quarter and a half of all responses.
  • Younger people and females are less likely to recommend the Fellowship to suitable people than others
  • There are strong regional variations in how Fellows perceive the RSA.

(Key findings drawn from the RSA Fellowship summary report – Ed.)

Looking forward into 2015 we have recently published our ‘road-map’ as a journal, where we have been working with Tim, our new Fellowship Councillor in the East, to develop a series of gatherings to explore how Fellows can become more engaged with the Society.

pdfIcon4You can view, print or download a copy of the 2014 RSA Survey here…

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See the Survey here…

We will, as stated, pivot these, supporting Tim directly in the delivery of a series of Fellowship Councillor Surgeries across the region. This might help inform and engage the interested Fellowship directly. Offering an informal setting, with refreshments, for the survey itself to be discussed and for Tim to explain and heighten awareness of the work and input of the Fellowship Council itself. One of the findings in the survey was that many Fellows were unaware of the function of the Fellowship Council, for example.

Another way forward, we would argue, would be to foster the engagement of female Fellows, either as new Fellows, or to develop some way to engage with the Fellowship on a gender basis. We have written before in this journal and in our regional annual reports about the gender imbalances, including in the Fellowship, in our region.

(We could start an Otrera Group in every region to foster the engagement and promotion of Fellowship skills by gender, for example? -Ed.)

If this imbalance in Fellowship is ‘normalised’ across all regions, we would look to develop a campaign/project to engage by gender across adjacent regions for example. Sharing both the information in the recent survey, but garnering explicit local knowledge on gender bias as part of the project initiation work.

(Having talked so long about the matter, it seems that a short burst of positive discrimination, in terms of engagement and resources, might go a long way? -Ed.)

In our publishing activities we will develop a ‘Fellows have their say!’ web journal page. Where the Fellowship can directly contribute to the regional debate in the East. This might be particularly useful in bolstering the regional events catalogue in terms of feedback or activity recommendation. All this information will be passed directly and securely to the Eastern Region Fellowship team, of course.

We will foster and web publish a set of ‘View from the Fellowship Council’ reports. Getting Tim to write a regular review of Council activity and debate, in a generalised way, which can feed into regional meetings and, more importantly, be immediately available to the wider regional Fellowship. Helping to support and deliver a clearer understanding of its work and role.

We think the new RSA web site, arriving this month, which will enable Fellows to contact each other directly if they wish, offers an important and effective mechanism for pan regional co-operation, as well as improving inter-region project and activity development. We look forward to reviewing it on our web pages.

Also useful, we believe, will be the launch of artSUFFUSION, our sister arts focused web journal. We are refining the publication manifesto this month.

We hope that by combining the arts, crafts and making into one energy stream in the region, whilst connecting new conversationsEAST social enterprise start-up projects, we can also help convert our Society’s brilliant research papers and mission into real world examples of sustainable community business and social outcome funded projects.

We look forward to 2015, hoping that our readers will come along with us?

The conversationsEAST team.

Article image credit: David J. Thomas via photopin cc

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Seasonal Greetings
to everyone…

Christmas card 2014 image

We hope that all our readers, subscribers and site visitors enjoy a warm and happy seasonal break, wherever you may be?

Thank you for your support and interest in the East of England regional activity in 2014. Below is our conversationsEast road-map for 2015. A short list, but with much energy and enthusiasm behind it.

  • Launch of our sister site artSUFFUSION.org in the first quarter 2015 (…putting the arts back into the RSA regional profile?)
  • Beginning our ‘guerilla gatherings’ programme, with some test ‘get togethers’, initially focussed on spreading news and information about the Fellowship Council. (A sort of Fellowship Councillor surgery programme in the East really).
  • Finally publishing our web and project support offer in a formalised and structured way to help regional projects build a web presence or develop a project plan.
  • Making our news feed a simple subscription based print edition, so that the lack of technology is not a bar to receiving our news.

As with all our conversationsEAST sponsored support – publications, events, coffee and buns are always free at the point of delivery.

Updated: 26th December 2014: Provided you don’t have Google code blocked in your browser, you can now translate all our content on individual article pages into many languages…including Latvian and Igbo, for example. Click the headline, and use the Google Translate drop-down box on the top right of every web page. Making the RSA more accessible…

Some of our most read articles in 2014, in case you missed them…

Licensed to create – a new model for teaching? Read more here.

Getting behind British Science – new funds for 2015. Read more here.

Chelmsford Remembers – Essex at War. Read more here.

Women in the Tech Industry. Read more here.

Happy New Year.

The conversationsEAST team.

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Shakespeare TV?

The Globe Theatre in London has just launched a new electronic service. The Globe Player.

It is part subscription service, partly an encyclopedia of reflection about Shakespeare and his work, but mainly it is a delight to discover the Bard whilst seated at your own screen and keyboard.

The service enables you, after registration, to rent or buy over 50 films of Shakespeare productions at The Globe Theatre.

You can also explore the Muse of Fire resource. This is a film in itself, but is made up of extracts from a wide variety of interviews with major Shakesperean actors of our day.

The interviews are available on the globeplayer.tv web site and offer fascinating insights into both the deep knowledge of the actors, but also their subtle and insightful take on the works they interpret.

One interesting part of the site content is access to performances of The Sonnets, but set in contemporary New York settings…

The project piece above is an interpretation of Sonnet 3, set in Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn. A great way to listen to the language of Shakespeare, but framed by immediately recognisable modern contexts.

This service is truly ‘…a window of thine age…’.

Whether you are a long time resident in the world of Shakespeare, or just beginning to explore the universe of love, loss, drama and comedy that The Globe creates, then we think this is a wonderful resource.

William and the Web. Perfect partners in the 21st Century?

Being a creative person…

In his recent RSA Annual Lecture, Matthew Taylor espoused creativity. How the RSA should exist to ‘…empower people to be capable, active participants in creating the world we want to live in…’

See the movie on YouTube See the original film on YouTube here…

phoneIcon You can listen to a full audio broadcast of the event here too…

In his lecture Matthew argues that we stand on the edge of a vast plain of opportunity. Social, technological and philosophical changes in the last century have the potential to enable every person to be creative, in the widest sense.

His core argument cites Amartya Sen, amongst others, who have argued that with the creativity that education and open-ness deliver, runs alongside a reliance on resources. These must be garnered, deployed and accounted for too.

He does stress that in this century those resources are, or can be for most, free. This journal, for example, is a product of imagination and the utilisation of Open Source software to create and deliver information and opinion to a social network.

Although we would bind ourselves to the argument it does not fully extend itself, yet, into the sphere of hardware. The technology we need to deploy free assets still comes at a cost, a la Amartya Sen.

Matthew also presses us to the concept that creativity is not the sole remit of high culture alone. For a creative individual, it is perhaps starting a new socially focused enterprise, writing and publishing new works or working with others to deliver societal change.

This notion of ‘the social’ is a strong theme in the lecture. Matthew argues for the collapse of ‘Fordism’ and traditional passive consumption of services in the local authority arena. The social transaction in the workplace and wider civic society itself undergoing dramatic change at the social/technological interface. This change, the lecture makes clear, is still under way. Destination unknown.

In the final part of the lecture we hear of two key restraints on creativity.

One is the ever increasing ‘gap’ to reach those who enjoy privilege and wealth. Matthew cites Thomas Piketty’s recent argument that the traditionalist, narrow pyramidal social and economic structures of the past continue to eat into the resources, and undertake exploitation of, the majority in the present. The spectre of Marx is at the feast, even for Piketty.

Secondly, the Weberian notion of ‘splitting’ is a key restraint argued for by our lecturer. ‘Social pyramidism’ is reflected in the largest corporations, whether in the civic domain or in private hands. Where individuals are completely constrained by function and hierarchy…to the detriment of their own creativity.

We would probably extend this argument slightly further, in that the traditionalist, elitist and pyramidal organisation creates a culture of fear, not of creativity. All creative people recognise the tone of those emails, the sense of ‘beyond my pay grade’, that any attempt at initiative and new thinking can create.

This personal creativity is fostered, we would argue, in the private, domestic domain to the disregard of the corporate structures that the individual labours under….perversely perhaps, in order to acquire the technology to be properly free.

In conclusion, the lecture pitches us into the argument of ‘civic effects’, where success for a creative society will be an ad-mixture of engagement in civil society, the activation and support of creative ‘doers of things’ and the press to change entrenched behaviours, in order to disrupt the traditional pyramidal approach.

It’s a powerful argument from and for the RSA and should be heard widely.

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A new Arts amalgam…

In the last two weeks the BBC have launched a new set of web pages and content dedicated to the arts. The material , as you would expect from the Corporation, is diverse and stimulating, with a fresh feel in terms of web layout and visual impact we thought. It draws upon television, radio  and web outputs to create a new miscellany.

Below are some of the items we have found interesting at conversationsEAST this week.

Both are of a historical bent, with historian Niall Ferguson opining on how young students now see and re-act to the First World War. A topical segment from the 2014 Hay Festival, with brief contributions from Rosie Boycott and Kate Adie.

Niall Ferguson, ever controversial, begins by describing the teaching of history about the First World War in the UK as, essentially, education about the Home Front. The lack of familial links for young people to the events of 1914 onwards make the story of the Battle of the Somme as relevant as the Battle of Thermopylae, thus the concentration on social history.

The Ferguson thesis on how students see The First World War is encouragingly developed to include how contemporary learners, Ferguson argues, are now very interested in strategic calculation and miscalculation.

This is a credible argument for a return to interest in the prevailing political frameworks by students of 1914. The less comfortable summation is completed by references to the teaching of the impact of the First World War as a video game…perhaps something of an unfortunate trivialisation of all the stories of loss, destruction and bravery that will emerge as the centenary of the conflict is remembered this year?

Have  a look at the clip above and see if you agree?

You can see details of Changing Chelmsford’s First World War: Then and Now programme on our projects page. This is a Lottery funded project between RSA Fellows and the local Civic Society which pertinently concentrates on the historical context of the Home Front, under-scoring the very real social and economic impact of war to the Fellows credit…despite the Fergusonian treatise on domestic history above.

We also found on the new BBC Arts site a page link dedicated to the Scottish novelist, Denise Mina, who has created a social history film about her family, inviting them all to see the finished output at the Glasgow Film Theatre. See more here on this BBC Scotland web page.

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See Scottish novelist Denise Mina talking about her film project here…

We loved the fact that the project was filmed on a smartphone, with very modest funding. The finished piece will be premiered today at the Go North Festival in Inverness.

We thought what a great project, harnessing the power of ubiquitous modern technology, to create a story about a community. An ideal medium for a local arts/history project for Fellows in the region perhaps? Detailing the currency of everyday lives, to to be made enduringly available on the web.

We warmed to the new BBC Arts amalgam and will revisit its news feed regularly. See more here…

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Image credit:

News Desk image by Markus Winkler, Creative Commons, Unsplash...

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