The witty worthy Whitworth
It's hard to get up early on a Sunday morning, especially when you have several hours of train travel in your immediate future. But, an early start to visit the revamped Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester was well worth it (see tweets here). It combines the best of the new wave of regional contemporary galleries with a historic collection rooted in its locality.
The Whitworth reopened in February after closing in 2013 for a £15 million extension and refurbishment. It has long been an important collection for the community of Manchester with its roots in local history. Founded in 1889 in memory of local industrialist Sir Joseph Whitworth, the collection was developed with an eye to the textile industry and the educational possibilities of a related gallery. The institution combined a gallery and park 'for the perpetual gratification of the people of Manchester'. With the extension, these three - building, park and people - have been brought closer together through MUMA's glass building. As well as expanding collection space, it extends the gallery out into the park, the large windows bringing its views and vistas inside and creating social space for visitors. It has also created a 'People's Choice' gallery to be curated by the community. The first installment has been selected through social media suggestions.
Elsewhere the beautiful Victorian building has been restored, with its features allowed the space to shine, and the 1960s refit that opened up large modern galleries has been enhanced, creating a series of flexible spaces and enfilades through the building. From its foundation, the Whitworth has built up a world-class collection of textiles and works on paper, as well as a reputation for contemporary art. All three shine in the new displays, with 13 new exhibitions showcasing hundreds of objects from the collection, alongside solo exhibitions by Cornelia Parker, Cai Guo-Qiang, Thomas Schütte and Sarah Lucas. The Portraits and Watercolour galleries are beautifully and densely hung, creating striking juxtapositions across the collections. The Textile gallery - the first you meet when coming in off the street - has been thoughtfully curated around the colour green. Again this links out into the park as well as to local histories and concerns. It is also accompanied by a guide for families that has been written by children.
The solo shows work particularly well with these displays of the permanent collection. Parker brings together known and striking work, like Cold Dark Matter, which glows with shadows in its own room, with a new piece created out of the waste paper sheets from commemorative poppy production. Spidery bronze sculptures created through casting pavement cracks join works created through extending bullets into wires, or suspending brass instruments and silver dining sets in floating circles from the ceiling. Schütte's series of prints is on loan from the Tate, and creates a unique visitor experience, hung like washing on a line in a series of criss-crossing series across the galleries. It's a courageously vulnerable way to show paper. Guo-Qiang's installation Unmanned Nature is equally striking to encounter, his monumental gunpowder drawing displayed around the curved walls of a gallery, with a shallow reflective pool at the centre. It's reminiscent of Monet's waterlilies in the Orangerie in Paris, while the work seems to combine Pollock, Serra and Richard Long in a glorious whole.
This reopened Whitworth is a triumph. Beautifully and thoughtfully but also provocatively displayed; light on its feet in interpreting the works and bringing out their history and connections to the institution and Mancunian history; consciously engaged with its communities and their joint future. It's also highly ambitious, with a collection and display plan that will need to be changed multiple times a year. I will watch with interest, how this new space grows and develops.
