As a specialist in Modern British Art trying to manage what is largely a collection of 17^th and 18^th century British and European fine and applied art, I do like to make the most of the moments when we are showing something I can actually talk about with some semblance of authority. When I was appointed to the Holburne, there were anxious murmurs that I would naturally bring lots of modern British art to the museum. As it happens, I have not, largely because we do not programme simply according to one person’s predilections but in response to our audience and according to what seems to speak to the museum, its collection, history and site.

Our founder, Sir William Holburne, loved small, precious things – jewels, gems, cameos and so on – and much of the Holburne collection display consists of small things in small spaces. In response to that, we instigated a strand of exhibitions of intimiste art – small works of intimate subjects – such as early Vuillard, Gwen John and now Henry Moore in Miniature.

This latest show, which includes a beautiful lead Mother and Child sold at Dreweatts after its re-emergence a year or two ago, is a retrospective of Moore’s sculpture, from the early 1920s to his last years, in which everything is under nine inches. The key aim is to show how, in contrast to the monumental works known the world over, at the heart of Moore’s art is the intimate, hands-on experience of the artist with his medium. It reveals a poignancy that comes from the immediacy of that moment of Moore alone in the studio modelling the clay or plaster or chipping away at a small stone or piece of wood. It is no more powerfully seen than in a group of nine terracotta heads – never before exhibited – in which the artist’s fingerprints are clearly visible. We feel at just one remove from that powerful moment of creation.

The show, we hope, speaks to and amplifies the intimacy that is a key part of the Holburne experience. Our exhibition programme, consisting of several small shows at any one time, aims to do just that, to open up aspects of our history and collection, as part of our ambition to make the place accessible and relevant. Of course, contemporary art does an especially good job at that mediation for a current audience. Alongside Moore, we are also showing a young artist known as Mr Doodle and suddenly the museum is full of young people – not just children with their families but young adults.

So, we try to use the art of our time to bridge the gap between our historic collections and current audiences. One of the Holburne’s masterpieces is Thomas Gainsborough’s The Byam Family, a wedding portrait to which the couple’s daughter was later added. In 2021 it provided a context for a show of a sporadic series of sculptures made from the 1970s to that moment by Nicholas Pope as portraits of his marriage. Similarly, a show about Rossetti’s women was accompanied by another of photographs by Sunil Gupta of queer relationships in India, made as part of a campaign to repeal a law criminalising same-sex relationships that had been introduced to India in the nineteenth century by the British.

Like many well-to-do families at the time, much of the Holburne family’s wealth derived from sugar plantations in the Caribbean which depended on slave labour. We have pursued several projects to address those histories and to bring them to the surface to be scrutinised under a contemporary lens. Most particularly, Alberta Whittle produced an exhibition in direct response to that aspect of the Holburne’s past. Like many organisations with their roots in the eighteenth century, the Holburne has a problematic past that we should confront and discuss. I also look forward to working with artists to respond to more positive aspects of our history.

In 1914, the Holburne moved into its current building which had been erected in the 1780s as the entrance to Bath’s main Pleasure Gardens and we hope to commission work that references that more light-hearted past, responding to the fact that our building was originally established – as it should always be – as a place of pleasure and entertainment.

The Holburne is not unique in bringing contemporary practice into dialogue with the art of the past but, to work, such programming needs to be true to the specific location and circumstance of its setting. We are very proud to be bringing great modern and contemporary art to the UNESCO World Heritage City of Bath to open up dialogues with its past and to help stimulate a lively contemporary cultural scene alongside the artefacts of the past.

Henry Moore in Miniature | Exhibition Details

Friday 3 May - Sunday 8 September 2024

Opening times:
Monday - Saturday: 10am-5pm (last admission 4.30pm)
Sunday (and Bank Holidays): 11am-5pm (last admission 4.30pm)
The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath, BA2 4DB

Admission:
Your ticket includes entry to the collection and all exhibitions.
Adults: £11 | £12.50 (including donation)
18-25 Year Old: £5.50 | £7 (including donation)
Under 18: Free

Learn more: www.holburne.org/