John Wilson - Documenting the City | Curatorial Reflections (2)

Curatorial Reflection | Roger Cucksey, Keeper of Art, Newport Museum and Art Gallery

The Documenting the City project was an obvious response to Newport's assumption of City status in 2002 and has provided an exciting opportunity to explore the Newport Museum and Art Gallery collections.

Our art historical journey into the making of modern Newport has been conducted over the past eighteen months against the back-drop of dramatic city centre redevelopment. It's therefore appropriate to indulge in some reflections upon the task of the Keeper of Art and the wider civic context:

The Muses that guide us

My experience as Keeper of Art at Newport Museum and Art Gallery has been enthused by two muses:

The collections - As a curator, my collections have taken precedence. The challenge of nurturing the collections in a meaningful way to reflect the wider history of Newport has always been an important driving force.

The Art College - As an erstwhile art student myself, and having benefited from the proximity of important museums and art galleries when I was at art college in Liverpool, I have been ever keen to be a part of the wider art scene. It was my good fortune that the Newport Art College offered me a lively context and professional opportunity when I first took up my duties as Keeper of Art.

That job title "Keeper of Art" has a rather feudal ring to it, conjuring up the image of a gatekeeper. But my interests, and official job responsibilities, have been to open up our collections and to engage the local art scene here in Newport and South Wales as a whole.

The stuff that dreams are made of

As Keeper of Art it has been a privilege and a pleasure over a period of over thirty years to handle, conserve, and present collections for public display. The pleasure of building such a collection is not often acknowledged, it is the stuff that private collectors often dream of. But the collector’s impulse does not come without responsibilities, to fulfil the public educational purpose of a public museum and art gallery.

Documenting the City has been a natural development of over twenty year’s collaboration with John Wilson, a freelance researcher and cultural historian. We have both shared a commitment to the historical evolution of Newport as a place, its energy and wider historical significance in terms of social history and cultural history, and the place of art and the art world within this.

Over the past few decades the local topographical collections at Newport Museum and Art Gallery have been enhanced by purchases, gifts and good fortune such as the chance discovery of works in long neglected portfolios. However, as is the dilemma of any museum and gallery small or large, resources have not allowed the pursuit of meaningful research and the production of hard copy publications to widen the presence of these works. And so in recent years we have been keen to use the new tools of the Internet and the Web to bring these works to the light of day, to provide a starting point for further conversation.

We felt that Newport's assumption of official city status in 2004 should not pass by without some reflection upon the place of art and the art world within this fascinating evolution of the city-region of Newport. Therefore it was with much excitement and some trepidation that we embarked on the idea of assembling ‘online’ images of art as a part of the story of the evolution of the city. This was a logical move after our Millennium exhibition Art and Society in Newport: Documenting the Twentieth Century where we were able to print an affordable catalogue but were not able to include the all important images.

And so we focussed our attention upon the local, often humble, collection of art works - in painting, drawing, and print; and then public art too - to enquire into the fascinating and remarkable evolution of the city of Newport: from the sleepy "Newport On Usk" town of the 1800s, whose main interest to the artist-traveller was the picturesque scene of the Castle ruins on the banks of the river; to the Industrial City of the Victorian period, epitomized by James Flewitt Mullock's commercial print View of Newport from Christchurch Hill, with the Great Western Railway train snaking its way across the new urban landscape; and up to today's fast changing City of 2007, in which even the local scene as captured by the keen topographical eye of Falcon Hildred in the 1980s is fast becoming a part of history - and nostalgia even - as the town's built environment transforms in response to new challenges and opportunities.

Hence the current Documenting the City project has allowed us to present the Museum’s collections beyond the gallery and the storage room and the temporary gallery exhibition to a much wider audience, as we take our first steps into the new information environment of the Web. As a public museum and art gallery it is always vital for us to consider new ways of reaching audiences. Especially now as it is unlikely in the foreseeable future that the institution will have the comfort of extending existing gallery space to sufficiently accommodate our growing collections and the public awareness and desire to access them.

So the dream of the curator passes to the wider cultural imaginary of the Internet. A new space in which to indulge in the always utopian project of building the best possible collection, always acquiring new historical works and insights, with full documentation and further research.

No reflection upon my Keeper of Art duties would be complete without a warm acknowledgement of the fact that much of what has been achieved over the years would not have been possible without the generous support and encouragement of many individuals and institutions in the South Wales art world. I would especially like to thank the Arts Council of Wales, the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, CyMAL, Rollo Charles, Cefni Barnett, Peter Jones, Isobel Hitchman and Valmai Ward. Likewise the many volunteers over the years at Newport Museum and Art Gallery who have provided an invaluable service behind the scenes to assist me in my Keeper of Art duties; and I'd like to acknowledge a more recent debt to Sarah Griffiths who has contributed calm editorial skills, common sense and time to this and many other gallery projects.

Finally I would like to thank John Wilson for his energy and enthusiasm. This project represents our third large scale exploration of the Newport Museum and Art Gallery collections. We look forwward to future work on the Documenting the City project online.

Newport, the place to be

When I came to Newport in the early seventies, to take up my post at Newport Museum and Art Gallery, it was plain to me that I had landed somewhere rather special.

It wasn't the beautiful Monmouthshire countryside that did its best to hide a hive of heavy industry, which captured my imagination; nor the town dissected by the River Usk. It was what was going on at the local art college, situated on the opposite bank of the river to the Art Gallery that I found exciting and absorbing.

Today the old art college building stands forlornly awaiting redevelopment. The Art College removed to Caerleon some considerable time ago and underwent a change of name. The painters, sculptors and print-makers who taught and were taught within the college, into whose company I was welcomed so enthusiastically, were replaced by artists whose attention was focussed upon the medium of interactive technology.

However the city is once again energized and transforming and, intriguingly, the Art College will move back into the city centre as a part of the University of Wales. It is my hope as the city moves forward, that both the Newport Museum and Art Gallery and the School of Art can re-engage that previous spirit of creative enquiry and solidarity of place. I also hope that our excavations of the art historical archive may provide a legacy for future generations to draw upon in their own explorations of identity and place; certain in the knowledge that their predecessors have done the same however uncertain their own present and future may feel.

I was recently taken with remarks made by Peter Jones (former Art Director, Arts Council of Wales) when attending an Arts Council retirement gathering. He expressed his concern that "history is being lost" as there has been no capturing and placing on permanent public record of the post-60s generations of the art world in Wales and the halcyon days of the Arts Council of Wales as an active patron of contemporary art.

My final musing is upon the words en passant of Anthony Stevens (Head of Fine Art, Newport College of Art, 1973-1979); may this ever be our creative challenge: "Newport was the place to be"