Image:Artist Rooms Winning formula … Damien Hirst’s Grey Periodic Table, part of the invaluable Artist Rooms collection. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, because it really matters: the Artist Rooms collection, founded in 2008 through the generous vision of the art dealer Anthony d’Offay, is a startling national asset. As it begins a fourth successive tour of galleries throughout Britain, this public collection of contemporary art is changing the very fabric of our visual culture.
There is only one contrast, one conflict that matters when it comes to art. Modern versus traditional? Don’t be daft. Painting versus installation? Yawn. The only struggle that matters is the timeless war between good and bad art. In Britain, because of prejudices rooted deep in our history, museums have long possessed plenty of examples of great Renaissance or Romantic art, but few masterpieces of modernity. This distorts our entire experience of art: it makes arguments about artistic value oddly thin and ideological, because people are unfamiliar with first-rate examples of the art of the past 50 years.
Artist Rooms is changing all that. This collection could easily fill a museum of its own, and would be a major national attraction if it did. But it is being used in a far more radical and liberating way. With the support of the Art Fund, its outstanding examples of works by the best artists of recent times are shown in rotation in public galleries around Britain. Museums get a boost, and audiences everywhere are introduced to top-quality modern art. In the latest round of exhibitions, there is even a game to make it still more accessible to a young public.
I have to pinch myself when I read, say, that an exhibition of the great German contemporary artist Anselm Kiefer will open this winter in Llandudno. For me, based on childhood memories, this seaside town means an Edwardian pier and a sea full of jellyfish. Now it has a fine modern gallery that is showing, wow, Kiefer, thanks to Artist Rooms. It is the same story elsewhere. In Hull you can see Andy Warhol next year, while Belfast will get Robert Therrien and Robert Mapplethorpe will be showing in Dunoon.
It is an enriching feast of excellence. The difference between a great and an ordinary work of conceptual art is as deep as the difference between a good and bad painting. Museums that collect old and new art equally offer a richer experience than museums that just do one or the other, but token collecting of hot names in current art is a flawed strategy, doomed to age badly. Instead, our public collections should put quality first and insist on fine and inspiring modern works for their collections. We need the treasures of our time in British galleries, not the run-of-the-mill stuff. That is why Artist Rooms is so important.
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