Everyone’s Art: getting our art out of storage and on view

In Britain our public art collections contain over 600,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, and other art forms. The Government Art Collection has over 15,000 art works in total, including sculptures, watercolours, textiles, photographs, videos and prints. Its oil paintings range from  artists including Marcus Geeraerts the Younger’s jewel-bedecked Queen Elizabeth I to works by Lowry, Stanley Spencer, Laura Knight and Chantal Joffe.

But where the Government is sharing its collection through partnerships, public exhibitions, and loans to institutions, approximately 80 per cent of public art in over 3,400 British institutions is held in storage - much of this wonderful work will never see the light of day because of a number of issues including the lack of space in galleries and the money needed to arrange exhibitions.

Artists can slip into oblivion for a number of reasons and it has little to do with their quality of work so getting an opportunity to see very good work by lesser-known painters and sculptors is extremely rare, this is often because exhibitions have to make a profit and unknown artists will rarely bring in crowds of people.

‘On Top of the Wolds.’ Alfred East c1890

This is why I have launched ‘Everyone’s Art’. The simple premise is to get publicly owned works of art  out of storage from museums and public art galleries across the country and put it on show in community centres, libraries, churches, village halls and schools; almost everywhere people gather.

The ambition is to promote the understanding, knowledge and appreciation of well-known artists  lesser-known works and works by lesser-known artists to as wide an audience as possible. Each of these pieces of art tells a story about who made it, the time and place where it was made and what it represents.

 Alongside the exhibitions we will run a research project written by the people who live in the communities the art work will be shown in, so the history of the many thousands of artists and the work they created will endure and flourish as a book. 

It is a huge project and I need your help. We are emerging from being a small endeavour into a national organisation.

If you would like to help to arrange an exhibition; you are a curator who supports what we are doing, if you are interested in becoming a board member or trustee, have in mind a venue where you think art can be displayed or can donate money to our cause, please contact me at the address below.

Generations of people will thank you for it.

richard@richardmorris.org