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Review by Maggie Gray
In 1910 a group of influential critics, curators, museum directors and patrons formed the Contemporary Art Society (CAS); its aim, to get the most forward-thinking art of the day into the UK’s public collections. Against the odds, their rather niche philanthropic group survived - even flourished - through two world wars and more than one recession, to reach its centenary with over 8000 acquisitions for dozens of the nation’s galleries to its name. Naturally they’ve been celebrating. The society’s Centenary Programme has spanned the last two years, with exhibitions and events across the country and a bunch of new initiatives launched to pave the way for the years ahead.
‘100 Years of the Contemporary Art Society - What’s next’ Inside Public Collections’ provides a handy, necessary round-up of the entire programme. Beneficiaries of the CAS’s work were invited to mount displays looking at the subject of public collections, and so this accompanying book consists primarily of short reports and photographs from the member museums who took part, as well as texts or images illustrating the latest contemporary purchases and commissions. Transcripts of discussions between curators, collectors and artists are also printed, as are some mission-furthering introductory texts from the CAS’s leaders. The sheer number of contributors to the book means that a variety of writing styles (and levels of editing - there are a few typos) emerge at different stages, but they manage not to be at odds with one another. I found the collection of disparate voices, thoughts and snapshots to be quite effective at communicating the de-centred eclecticism of the CAS’s mission.
A many-headed organisation, the CAS supports the arts in the UK on several distinct but interconnected fronts. They actively raise funds to make acquisitions; introduce grants, prizes and public programmes in collaboration with other charitable groups; and solicit gifts from private collectors. In effect, they are a specialised networking and support system for the arts. The resulting spread of new acquisitions detailed in the book is impressive, from Hannah Rickard’s ‘Thunder’ at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness (in which a recorded thunderclap was converted into a seven-minute musical score, played by a sextet and then re-condensed back into a track of just eight seconds), to Marcus Coates’ bizarre shamanic ritual in a Liverpool council block, ‘Journey to the Lower World,’ made in 2004 and acquired for the Walker Art Gallery in 2009. I’d watched the resulting video with some bemusement once before, but a discussion with the artist, reprinted in the book, helped to open up the work. It’s this sort of document, unexpected and insightful, that makes ‘100 Years of the Contemporary Art Society’ a valuable resource. Not even the most dedicated of aficionados could have made it to every event on the programme. Photographs and transcriptions are imperfect but useful resources for the interested absentee. The book’s layout (which introduces each participant museum in turn before returning to look in more detail at their specific projects) highlights the breadth and depth of the programme, and works well provided you are happy to flick back and forth a bit.
One thing that struck me about the publication was the relative transparency with which practical and ideological obstacles surrounding collection management are discussed, particularly in the series of transcribed discussions. In most of these, today’s ubiquitous economic storm clouds loom large, threatening to rain on the parade: we hear private collectors worrying that their charitable support of the arts seems indulgent, and ominous talk of beleaguered councils trying save money by stopping acquisitions programmes altogether. Slowly, a picture emerges of the complicated balancing acts and negotiations that characterise public collection management, and the difficulties that might lie ahead.
Less explicit, but just as significant, is the question of who gets to choose the nation’s collections. With their years of experience and enthusiasm, CAS advisors naturally do a lot of legwork weeding out the most promising contemporary artists. Ensuring that the pattern of eventual acquisitions reflects the broader topography of contemporary art, and not personal tastes (either the CAS’s or financial backers’) is important: they have essentially set themselves up as the arbiters of tomorrow’s heritage. On the flip side, the CAS has not always been able to count on the enthusiasm of the public or even museums themselves regarding their more contentious purchases. In her contribution to Southampton City Art Gallery’s chapter, Liz Goodall describes how it took one failed attempt and some protracted negotiation to acquire a work by Richard Long; eventually she succeeded with the purchase of ‘Wessex Flint Line’ (1987). Independent collections naturally reflect the tastes of their owners, and works of art from a private hoard may not be bequeathed to the public for years, even decades. The benefits - immediate, early support for emerging artists, and not losing important artworks overseas - stack up nicely, but the logistics can be complicated. These are all areas that could be discussed in great depth: they’re touched upon here, but the questions raised deliberately or incidentally by the book are important ones for anybody with an interest in the future of cultural industries.
Ultimately variety is the Contemporary Art Society’s strength - that, and the on-going dialogue that it deliberately cultivates around its many projects. ‘100 Years of the Contemporary Art Society’ reflects this: it documents a large array of events and artworks, from the mouths of a comparably wide variety of people. Although obviously intended to celebrate the CAS’ own achievements, the book also champions a diverse range of institutions to people who don’t live near them, or wouldn’t know about or visit them otherwise, in an attempt to bring the debate surrounding the future of public collections to a wider swathe of the public itself. If you’re looking for an easy narrative, for a here-to-there explanation of how and why we should collect, this is the wrong book. As a multifaceted jumping-off point into the complicated world of the CAS and UK collections, this is a great place to start.
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