Presentation, 25th February 2009, University of Leeds

‘Do Universities Need Galleries and Archives, and if so how?’
Presentation by Judit Bodor
‘Promoting Models of Arts and HE Collaboration’ Symposium
University of Leeds
25th February 2009

My name is Judit Bodor. Recently I started to work as freelance research consultant and curator but my background is in art history, arts management, curating and lecturing within the HE sector. Since moving to the UK from Hungary in 2004, I have been developing a portfolio practice often brokering relationships between HEIs and the arts sector. Today I would like to present and reflect on some of the projects I have been involved in the past years while also pointing out some of the issues I had to deal with and that might be interesting to discuss later.

As the Curator of the Gallery and Award Leader of MA Curating at Dartington College of Arts, Devon, between 2006 and 2008 I have initiated and delivered several collaborative projects with Spacex, an RFO in Exeter. Among them was an international artist-in-residence project organised in conjunction with FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange) and HIAP (Helsinki International Artist-in-residence Programme). In this residency, I hosted Finnish artist Eeva Mari Haikala at Dartington College of Arts to provide a context where she could develop new video work for an exhibition at Spacex.

I adopted a similar strategy in hosting a curator-in-residence project also in collaboration with the Curatorial Network, a network initiated in the South West dedicated to development of curatorial practice through critical debate, collaborations and exchange. This residence saw Sergio Edelstein, Director of CCA, Tel Aviv deliver a professional development research project and an international symposium on issues concerning globalisation and the development of biennial culture in the visual arts.

In both these cases, the HEI provided opportunities for professional development, networking and social interaction through direct exchange between invited artists, curators, academics and the wider audience. The presence of the international practitioners at the same time helped developing further opportunities for exposing student’s works through curated exhibitions. These initiatives also raised and strengthened the profile and awareness of the region’s organisations in relation to internationalism in their programming and outlook. These projects shared Arts/HE resources including space, equipments and staff and institutional capacity to deliver in the most effective way. The HEI offered living, studio and seminar spaces, free usage of technical equipment, resources and staff time while also offering a vibrant intellectual community to help development, discussion, realisation and reflection on these projects. The art organisation provided a dedicated professional team, access to arts related and wider public and connection with a network of other individuals and organisations.

Compared to these short-term collaborative projects, an attempt to develop a jointly delivered MA Curating course with the idea to gradually involve both institutions in design and delivery of a named award was less successful. Although the project had great potential to develop a stronger and more connected regional arts community that could also support graduate employability and continuing professional development, it seemed an unprecedented attempt at the time with few points of reference. True, the college faced the upheaval and uncertainty of a sudden merger with another institution that influenced the future of the collaboration at a very early stage of its development.

However, apart from these structural changes within the HEI, I can in retrospect recollect other problems in the collaboration that emerged mainly due to changes in leading personnel in both organisations and workload problems regarding the extra care and time that regular contact with students needed. After the first year, the partners also realised difficulties with developing a curriculum that would provide enough time for professional and academic training but would not put too much pressure on the partners. Furthermore, the gradually increasing involvement of the art organisation in curriculum design and assessment became more difficult and continued to rely upon academic development and support by the HEI.

These problems underline the importance of understanding and respecting the difference between different Arts/HE organisations’ administrative structure, management, and operational methods. Equally important is taking time and care in initial negotiations to produce very detailed partnership agreements with realistic financial and time requirements. It is also very important to never forget that collaborations and partnerships are the results of ideas by individuals and not the institutions they represent therefore ensuring that the organisations are capable to follow-up projects in case of changes in personnel is crucial.

It might be also interesting to point out that delivering the projects was probably helped by my position both as a lecturer and the curator of The Gallery, which was a small but nevertheless public venue within the HEI. This, I believe, enabled me to easily connect with both the academic and the arts sector. Further to this, I had a physical venue, The Gallery to offer for experimentation and innovation while keeping both the needs of the public and the academics in my mind. Sometimes it became an artist’s public studio and peer learning space that helped develop new work, providing interaction with the artistic community of the HEI through discussions or exhibitions.

At other times, the Gallery was a space for presenting students and staff works outside their studios for a wider audience and involving students in the actual design and installation of their exhibition as part of their studies. Other times it was simply a social space for networking events, artists’ talks, book and website launches etc. Slowly, apart from just thinking about it as a physical venue for exhibitions, strategic thinking about its role within and beyond the HE community as platform for social interaction, teaching and disseminating practice, commissioning and research began to emerge.

These experiences provided background to my current research project, ‘Do Universities Need Galleries and Archives and if so how?’ as Creative Fellow in York St John University’s HEFCE funded C4C (Creativity for Collaboration) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning .
(http://www2.yorksj.ac.uk/default.asp?Page_ID=5877)
This Fellowship began last September and takes forward my investigation into issues around university galleries as public venues while at the same time evaluating the needs of York St John University in particular.

As this title suggests I am as interested in archives as in galleries. Galleries, however, represent the most obviously public face of the HEI in terms of outreach and scholarly activity and given too that YSJ - whose needs I am evaluating - have recently launched their own digital repository, the core emphasis of this period of research has come to concern the clear potential of the gallery in terms of Arts/HE collaboration. Moreover, as our business today concerns the Arts/HE interface I will dedicate my presentation to that aspect of provision. I intend to look more specifically at the particular issue of artists’ archives in further research building on this fellowship. I also wanted to note here that Julia Smith’s presentation later about C4C in general and the different ways of how the institution uses C4C to encourage collaborative projects, will give you an idea of the wider context within which I am working.

The starting point of my research was the realization that universities are becoming increasingly accountable to a range of stakeholders and must find ways of evaluating their operations, justifying the investments needed to sustain them. Simultaneously, arts funding provision is changing and the current economic situation will likely lead to structural changes in funding and delivering visual arts activities. Partnerships, networks and collaborative projects will be essential to rationalise and reduce workload, share resources, increase audience numbers and ensure alternative funding. For the HEIs, the biggest challenge is how to prepare future graduates in relation to needs of industry, while providing widely accessible opportunities for learning underpinned by values of scholarship and research.

In reviewing provision, HEIs will re-assess the priority and manner of the public outreach activities supported through their university galleries. But how do different HEIs think about university galleries? Are they part of the university’s core business in terms of recruiting, teaching, learning and research or are they extra facilities that are dead weight and financially difficult to maintain? How can they help developing ongoing collaboration between HEIs and the arts sector involving both arts organisations and practitioners? My fellowship addresses these questions by using different methodologies: an independent consultation investigating wider aspects of the ‘university galleries’ question across the UK, and a collaborative project as a response to the specific situation at York St John University, which currently has no university gallery itself.

Given the lack of publicly accessible written reports, my initial research questions concern: How HEIs consider the role and the strategic importance of their university galleries? What is the historic, current and potential role of university galleries within the wider arts sector? How are HEIs considered across wider professional and public domains? By seeking detailed response through questionnaires, interviews and desk research I hope to understand much more about the potential of university galleries in developing strategic partnerships between HEIs and the arts sector. This research is also supported by a blog (http://universitygalleries.blogspot.com/), which I have only recently started, to share my findings and gather material that contextualise the research.

So far, I have discovered that the role of university galleries in the UK is neither clearly defined nor articulated. While HEIs do fund operational costs of these galleries, they are often not regarded as essential strategic provision in terms of public interaction, recruitment, curriculum enhancement or professional development. Problematically of course, university galleries are also not often regarded as publicly accessible art organisations and have often not eligible for regular public funding. There is also often a lack of appropriate financial, administrative or technical support from the HEI, creating problems for curators thinking about audience development, capacity for fundraising, delivering educational programs.

Given these circumstances, one of the main problem I identified so far is that university galleries can easily find themselves trapped by not being eligible for public funding but at the same time not being supported and therefore being undervalued by its own institution. According to my plans, this part of my fellowship will finish in August with a research report offered to help York St John University evaluate its own strategy of estate and academic development. The written report will also be available on request to anyone participating in the research and for reference for developing future networks and collaborative projects that strengthen the status of contemporary university galleries in the UK.

In this absence of university gallery in York St John University, as the collaborative part of my project, I work with artists connected to MA Fine Art and MA Performance programmes investigating the development of an online platform to exchange ideas and information with the wider public. This project is at its very early phase. At the moment we as a group with the help of an artist are looking at different models of web platforms that on one hand disseminate artists projects and works through portfolios, on the other hand can be used by the artists to develop research material around the work that help contextualising their work.

While the website will not and cannot replace the physical presentation of the works, it will give another context to think about dissemination and interaction with the public. The website will be launched in November 2008 and will be accompanied by a public event discussing the process of developing the website and its future importance within the course. Although I cannot give a summary for my project at this stage, I appreciate the opportunity to present my research at this stage. I welcome any questions or information you might have today or through subscribing to my blog.