(Above Sandy Nairne)
Two months ago the National Portrait Gallery welcomed a provocative, gory new £300,000 centrepiece in Marc Quinn's Self, the latest cast of the artist's own head made from 10 pints of his blood £300,000. The acquisition was made possible following an appeal by a £100,000 grant from The Art Fund and £20,000 from The Henry Moore Foundation.
Pippa Jane Wielgos talks to Director Sandy Nairne about the Gallery's acquisitions policies and the decisive criteria behind choosing non-traditional art works.
Pippa Jane Wielgos: Is competition forcing galleries to make unusual or non-traditional decisions regarding the acquisition of new works?
Sandy Nairne: No, I don't think competition is in any sense affecting how we work. We try to assess what is appropriate for this collection very carefully through our curators. For all primary collection works, we take it to the Board of Trustees.
We go out of our way to make sure that we acquire the right thing for the Gallery. If something is more appropriate for another collection, we would generally recommend it goes there.
PJW: Why did the NPG acquire Self?
SN: Because we thought this is a really important self-portrait by an artist of great interest and distinction. It is one of a sequence of works, with Marc making one every five years.
The previous three had been acquired elsewhere and left the country, so it was partly knowing this which made it important that this should stay in the country and we could acquire it. But primarily it was because we thought it was an outstanding contemporary work which speaks both to questions of self image and questions of mortality.
Marc Quinn's Blood Head
PJW: Does it reflect a departure from the usual acquisition policy of the National Portrait Gallery?
SN: It is an unusual sculpture format, made out of unusual material. We do not have any other works made out of frozen blood! But we have already had works in unconventional materials, including one by Marc Quinn.
You may know the portrait of Sir John Sulston, made up of his DNA genetic material framed, which we acquired eight years ago. It's not unknown for us to hold these sorts of works.
PJW: Has it been difficult to manage from a conservation point of view?
SN: There was plenty of discussion, but Marc has been making these blood heads for 20 years now, and there is a great deal known about the technology and freezing of blood and material of this kind. We were therefore able to give a thorough report to our Trustees on the technical aspects.
PJW: Do you consider certain acquisitions to be re-writing elements of British art history?
SN: Art history is simply doing its job. It should take a much broader span than what ends up in collections. Over the decades we have seen that what happens to be in any of the national collections is narrower than what will have been actually going on.
There are art movements which don’t appear at all – think of the more ephemeral works, parts of the Fluxus movement in the Sixties and Seventies. None of it appeared in collections until more recently, when the Tate and other collections recognised the artists and their work. Many feminist movements made important works which public galleries did not respond to at the time.
One hopes that art history in the broader sense will pay attention to what was actually happening and not simply write itself according to what galleries chose to collect.
PJW: How are audience figures making museums more competitive?
SN: Competition doesn't come in to it. We try to serve as broad an audience as we can and we are always working hard to attract a wide range of people who may have thought that the National Portrait Gallery was not for them.
A lot of museums are doing the same thing. We have 1.8 million visits annually, plus 250,000 visits to our partnership work throughout the country.
It's about being co-operative and encouraging people to go on to other galleries, whether in Plymouth or Sunderland.
