to inspire. From our collection of Pre-Raphaelites to the many contemporary exhibitions that retail galleries curate throughout the year, we’re all chasing the same goal, which is to cultivate a love for the arts that transcends all genres and price points. We offer elements that retail galleries can’t, but vice versa. For example, we certainly don’t have the advantage of inviting our visitors into the museum to meet with Rossetti or Millais at an artist appearance! Who is your audience? Do you have programmes in place actively to drive diversity & widen your appeal? Our mission is to reflect Birmingham to the world, and the world to Birmingham, so we do truly consider our audience to be global in the respect. Courtesy of our touring exhibitions, people across the world will have the advantage of enjoying the collections that usually take
is sufficiently engaged with a piece it shouldn’t matter what that piece is, where it’s on view, whether or not it’s for sale and indeed who created it. It’s merely enough that it sparked a curiosity in someone, and started a conversation. Are works of the great Masters lessened through being sold at auction, are they made less credible for being in privately owned collections…? No, not at all. I prefer to think that good art is simply good art, and should be experienced and enjoyed as such. How do you feel that museums and retails galleries sit alongside each other in today’s cultural offering? In my opinion, it doesn’t matter whether someone is inspired by walking into a retail gallery on their local high street or one of the big national museums, as long as we – as an industry – continue
level of visitors engagement and learning potential. Or conversely, visitors to physical museums may dip as virtual worlds continue to develop and we need to be ready to play a different role - how can virtual reality be used to put a pre-Raphaelite in the home, for example? We are already reaching new audiences through livestream tours of some of our exhibitions and I would like to see more curated digital gallery tours and educational talks, so anyone around the world can watch and feel involved in what we offer here in Birmingham. There is quite often a divide between what is deemed fine art by the establishment, and that which is seen as being too commercial to be credible. Should retail be a dirty word in the art industry? No, I don’t believe that it should. Art by its very nature is simultaneously subjective and inclusive, and if a person
8 FINE ART COLLECTOR AUTUMN 2017
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