Charleston has announced the appointment of Kim Jones OBE, Creative Director of Dior Men and Fendi Womenswear and Couture, and Sigrid Rausing, publisher of Granta Magazine and Granta Books, as Vice Presidents.
Jones and Rausing will join the current President Virginia Nicholson, Vanessa Bell’s granddaughter, and its patron Her Majesty Queen Camilla, as passionate ambassadors of Charleston as it celebrates recent successes including the opening of the charity’s new cultural centre in the heart of Lewes.
Swedish philanthropist and publisher Sigrid Rausing is a long-standing supporter of Charleston. She previously served on the Board of Trustees of the charity and, in 2023, her publishing house Granta worked with the Estate of Virginia Woolf to republish the five-volume Diaries of Virginia Woolf that had been edited by Olivier Bell, Vanessa Bell’s daughter-in-law. These reissued diaries contain new introductions by Siri Hustvedt, Olivia Laing, Margo Jefferson, Adam Phillips, and social historian Virginia Nicholson, President of Charleston and Olivier Bell’s daughter. To mark its publication, Charleston and the Granta Trust commissioned a dramatic performance of the diaries at Charleston Festival in 2023, featuring readings by award-winning actors Joanna Scanlon, Anjana Vasan and Miranda Richardson.
Sigrid Rausing said:
Charleston to me is a space of creative contradiction; a museum dedicated to preserving the memory, home, art and artefacts of a circle known, above all, for their innovation and transgression in all the varied fields they engaged in – literature, art, philosophy, economics, and ideas about how to make a family and a home. That the museum and festivals have succeeded in staying true to that spirit of innovation, while also commemorating it, is a testament to its governance and leadership, and I am delighted to become a Vice President.
Kim Jones’s involvement with Charleston began when he visited the house as part of a school trip. Since 2018, he has worked closely with the Charleston team to help acquire objects for the house, including a fire screen which was once in John Maynard Keynes’ bedroom. He arranged a Vogue photoshoot with Kate Moss to mark his first womenswear collection for Fendi and the reopening of Charleston post-pandemic, and, in 2023, took 12 drawings from Charleston’s archive and turned them into the summer menswear collection for Dior which was revealed in front of an almost life-size replica of the house during Paris Fashion Week. His support of Charleston’s artistic programme includes appearing in conversation with his friend and collaborator, the photographer Nikolai von Bismarck, alongside actress Demi Moore, at Charleston Festival in 2022. For Charleston Festival 2024, he designed the costume for a unique commissioning of ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’, danced by Reece Clarke and choreographed by Russell Maliphant. He has previously given a career talk for local students, the first visitors to Charleston in Lewes; and has announced his intentions to donate his Bloomsbury collection and library to Charleston to make it accessible for broader audiences.
Kim Jones said:
The impact of Charleston never left me after I visited the house for the first time when I was fourteen years old. The work of the artists, writers and thinkers associated with Charleston and the Bloomsbury group has since become a life-long passion and it is an honour for me to be an ambassador for this remarkable house and cultural centre. I’m very grateful to join the Charleston team as Vice President and would like to deeply thank Vanessa Bell’s Granddaughter and President of the charity Virginia Nicholson for her trust in appointing me.
Since 2018, Charleston has been on a journey to transform from a seasonal heritage attraction into a vibrant cultural centre with a year-round offering. The completion of the Centenary Project in 2018 delivered new galleries at Charleston in Firle, alongside the restoration of the barns which today house the café and an events space. Simultaneously, the house opened to visitors during the winter months for the first time. The opening of Charleston in Lewes in autumn 2023 significantly increased Charleston’s gallery space and has facilitated the re-establishment of a learning and participation programme. Visitor numbers in 2023 numbered over 81,000, a four-fold increase since 2016.
Today, delivering eight exhibitions and four festivals annually, Charleston continues to grow its ambitious artistic programme, including a contemporary commissioning strand that has in recent years included new work from artists including Somaya Critchlow, Harold Offeh, Linder Sterling and Osman Yousefzada. Charleston Festival has delivered original productions including a unique staging of the jazz masterpiece ‘Black Saint and the Sinner Lady’ in collaboration with Nu Civilisation Orchestra and Clod Ensemble in 2023, and this year, a recreation of the legendary 1965 debate between civil rights activist James Baldwin and William F Buckley, performed by actors Omari Douglas and Russell Tovey.
Now, plans are being put in place for the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the charity that saved Charleston. This includes the ‘50 for 50’ campaign, a global hunt for the very best Bloomsbury works still in private collections; the establishment of a £13m endowment to safeguard the future of the charity; a commitment to a 2030 net zero target; and, significantly, the creation of a new National Bloomsbury Centre including a collection store at Charleston in Lewes in 2026, which will be delivered in partnership with Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A.
Virginia Nicholson said:
I’m absolutely delighted to welcome Charleston’s two new Vice Presidents, Sigrid Rausing and Kim Jones OBE, to their roles. Both are long-term supporters of the charity and have already demonstrated their commitment and belief in the organisation over many years. Sigrid is famous for being an enterprising champion of literature and art, whose intelligent goodwill and philanthropy have actively benefited Charleston’s conservation and curatorial programmes, while Kim’s spectacular creative talents have shown the world his passion for Bloomsbury, bringing in new audiences. Both have now agreed to become Vice Presidents of Charleston, to celebrate and spread the word about the charity as it looks towards an exciting future
Charleston is a place that brings people together to engage with art and ideas. The modernist home and studio of the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Charleston was a gathering point for some of the 20th century’s most radical artists, writers and thinkers known collectively as the Bloomsbury Group. It is where they came together to imagine society differently and has always been a place where art and experimental thinking are at the centre of everyday life. Today, we have two locations, the house, garden and galleries at Firle and our new venue in Lewes, and present a dynamic year-round programme of exhibitions, events and festivals. Charleston believes in the power of art, in all its forms, to provoke new ways of thinking and living. charleston.org.uk
