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York Art Gallery

One of the main projects at York Art Gallery has been the refurbishment of the South Gallery. During this work the exhibitions continued as usual despite the refurbishment inevitably causing some disruption to our visitors. The front of house staff managed the situation extremely well and our visitors were sympathetic to what we were trying to achieve. We were also able to install a lift for disabled visitors and we removed the failing stair lift, improving both access and the appearance of the stairwell. This was made possible with the help of the City Archives who allowed us to use part of their stores for the lift shaft.

The summer exhibition in the main gallery was Painting the Summer: Henri Fantin-Latour which featured works from the collection by Fantin Latour and his contemporaries with loans from other collections. This was followed by Marking Time, which used the theme of time to link a variety of paintings from our collection, alongside timepieces from York Castle Museum.

In the Little Gallery we showed Mad Man and the Minster which told the story of how Jonathan Martin set fire to York Minster. This was followed with a show by the contemporary artist Tracey Emin selected from a private collection in Yorkshire. The third exhibition displayed new acquisitions by John Sell Cotman.

Passed as Present, which opened in January 2008, continued the contemporary art theme in the Main Gallery juxtaposing the contemporary works selected from the Lodeveans collection with historic works from our collection.

At the beginning of 2008, author Tracy Chevalier became our writer-in-residence for the year. A programme of events began early in the year with a book signing, an evening talk and meeting the public in the gallery.