25 years on: how Somerset Home grew to become a centre for modern artwork – The Artwork Newspaper

As London’s Somerset Home gears as much as have fun the twenty fifth anniversary of its public opening, in Might, its director Jonathan Reekie says that the constructing has been reworked from a “museum” attraction right into a centre for modern artwork and the inventive industries.

It might come as a shock that Somerset Home claims to have attracted 2,728,000 guests in 2023, not far beneath the three,097,000 who went to the Nationwide Gallery on the different finish of the Strand.

The Somerset Home determine contains these going to exhibitions organised by the Somerset Home Belief, attending festivals run by exterior organisations, café and restaurant clients, and people merely having fun with the courtyard. It additionally contains 235,000 who went to the Courtauld Gallery, which rents house.

Somerset Home, with its wings enclosing a big courtyard, was designed by William Chambers within the 1770s and prolonged within the mid-Nineteenth century. It was constructed for presidency workplaces and discovered societies, together with the Royal Academy of Arts (which occupied it till 1837). With the phased departure of civil servants from the Nineteen Nineties, the courtyard wings began to be opened as much as the general public in 2000. The federal government handed over the lease to the charitable Somerset Home Belief for a peppercorn hire, however the belief is chargeable for the appreciable upkeep payments.

Reekie factors out that the museum mannequin of Somerset Home within the early 2000s did not be viable. “It doesn’t work except you could have an unbelievable assortment that folks wish to come and see,” he says. The constructing had opened with two main points of interest, which had been run independently: the Hermitage Rooms and the Gilbert Assortment. Customer numbers rapidly fell and 7 years later each closed.

Somerset Home’s subsequent mannequin was to change into a “kunsthalle”, the German time period for a venue which presents altering exhibitions organised by exterior our bodies. Though some proved profitable (such because the 2013 present on the style editor Isabella Blow), it continued to be troublesome to draw adequate guests.

Reekie, who arrived as director in 2014, felt that exhibitions in fields similar to vogue and images “competed with the Victoria & Albert Museum”, so he launched “a totally totally different mannequin which would offer a programme that was very distinctive”.

He cited final yr’s exhibition Cute (on “cuteness” in modern tradition) and the present exhibition Soil: The World at our Ft (till 13 April), which aren’t the type of reveals that may clearly be programmed elsewhere. Soil, for instance, offers with each science and artwork.

For these within the visible arts, the principle attraction stays the Courtauld Gallery, which moved into the north wing in 1989. With its entrance off Aldwych, it’s barely separate from the remainder of the advanced and is run independently by the Courtauld Institute.

Multipurpose constructing

The gallery house of Somerset Home represents solely 13% of the realm of the massive constructing advanced, a lot of it on the courtyard stage. On the River Thames finish, there’s additionally the Embankment exhibition gallery on the decrease stage. And on the Aldwych finish there’s the spacious Courtauld Gallery on one facet, with the tutorial Courtauld Institute on the opposite.

Above and beneath the courtyard there are tons of of workplaces, workshops and studios, which the belief rents out to tenants within the inventive industries and humanities. Some are let at business rents and others are subsidised, with the earnings serving to to fund the general public programme of exhibitions and occasions. This makes Somerset Home self-funding: its revenue in 2023-24 was £25.5m.

Reekie says that the two,000 tenants additionally assist drive Somerset Home’s cultural programme for the general public: “Our mannequin differs from the normal curatorial one, the place you could have just a few individuals who sit on excessive above everybody else.” The neighborhood of tenants “helps us have a look at the world in a really interdisciplinary manner, with inventive pondering and various views”.

In consequence, Somerset Home now has a customer profile which is way youthful than when it opened with its “museum” points of interest a quarter-century in the past.

What occurred to the unique museum points of interest?

When Somerset Home opened in 2000, its hosted two collections. The Hermitage Rooms offered a venue for non permanent exhibitions from Russia’s State Hermitage Museum. It closed after simply seven years, as a result of the St Petersburg museum ended most worldwide loans after there was a menace of seizure ensuing from a commerce dispute with a Swiss-based firm.

Nevertheless, the Hermitage Rooms confronted additional issues. Its inaugural sponsor was the Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was imprisoned for fraud by Vladimir Putin’s authorities in 2005 (the Russian president pardoned him in 2013). Though the Hermitage Rooms’ first exhibition on Catherine the Nice was extremely profitable, with 198,000 guests, its final present managed to draw solely 9,300 guests.

The opposite museum show at Somerset Home was of the Gilbert Assortment, principally gold and silver objects donated by Arthur and Rosalinde Gilbert. It did fairly properly in its first yr, however failed to draw adequate repeat guests. In 2008 the gathering was moved to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the place it has a devoted gallery.

The 2024 hearth

A critical hearth broke out on 17 August 2024 in a roof void of the west wing of Somerset Home. This a part of the advanced housed workplaces and thankfully was a substantial distance from the Courtauld Gallery. Though there was water injury and some workplaces had been destroyed, most tenants had been capable of regain entry inside just a few days.

The reason for the hearth continues to be below investigation, though arson and constructing work are believed to have been dominated out. In depth repairs are actually being undertaken, due for completion in 2026. The prices are being met from insurance coverage.

Soil: The World at Our Ft is at Somerset Home, London, till 13 April