It’s a bit off the beaten track in terms of London’s art
scene, but the Whitechapel Art Gallery is not difficult to reach and it offers
a fresh perspective on contemporary art.
A potted history of the Whitechapel Art Gallery
The Whitechapel Art Gallery, in London’s East End, was the
result of a well-meaning attempt to bring culture to the working classes at the
turn of the 19th/20th centuries. This was a desperately
rundown area in which it was thought by some people that the low morale of the
population was because they were deprived of the finer things in life that
people in other parts of the capital took for granted, including art and
culture.
The developing Arts and Crafts Movement, led by William
Morris, had a local presence in that C R Ashbee set up his Guild and School of
Handicraft in Mile End Road, which is the eastward continuation of Whitechapel
Road. It seemed an obvious step to set up an art gallery in the area, and this
was done in 1901, in a building designed in the Arts and Crafts style.
The gallery was hugely popular from the outset, with some
200,000 people attending the original exhibition that included works by John
Constable, William Hogarth and the pre-Raphaelites.
The gallery had a major extension in 2009 when the next-door
Passmore Edwards Public Library closed and the Art Gallery was able to take
over its space (the frontage remains as it always was).
Visiting the Gallery
Access to the Whitechapel Art Gallery is very easy, given
that one of the entrances to Aldgate East station, on the District Line, is
literally next door to the Gallery. Access is also made easy by the fact that
admission is free, just as it always has been, although donations are gladly
accepted!
One huge difference between the experience of today’s visitor
and that of an original 1901 patron is that there are no Constables or Hogarths
on show. For one thing, the gallery is devoted to contemporary art, and for
another it does not have a permanent collection, being instead a set of display
spaces for temporary exhibits.
The Whitechapel Art Gallery consists of a linked set of
rooms of different sizes, with the usual arrangement being that an artist can
exhibit their work in an appropriately sized space that is not shared with that
of another artist.
The visitor who is used to galleries such as the National
Gallery will find their expectations challenged when visiting the Whitechapel Art
Gallery. That is because the media on display go beyond just paintings on walls
or free-standing sculptures. Images may be displayed on screens, or videos
looped on TVs or smaller display units, with the sound available via
headphones. When you stop to watch and listen to a video you may become part of
an art installation yourself, as your presence will then be visible to other
visitors as you sit in the middle of a gallery floor or on a dais.
The exhibitions generally remain in place for several months
at a time but do not change all at once. This means that there is always
something new to see if you visit at different times during the year.
The experience of visiting the Whitechapel Gallery will
certainly be memorable, especially if it challenges the visitor to revise
his/her assumptions about what constitutes art. It is unlikely that one will
leave the building without having had one’s perceptions challenged, even if one
has not fully understood, or even liked, everything that one has seen.
© John Welford
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