Museum exhibiting exciting ambitions
ATTRACTION AIMS TO BORROW FROM TOP GALLERIES
@Hendrover
A VOLUNTEER-RUN museum has launched an appeal to help it bring bigger exhibitions to its Northumberland home town.
The award-winning independent Bailiffgate museum and gallery, housed in a listed former church in Alnwick, needs to raise £6,400 to upgrade its CCTV and security systems and build on the success of recent displays.
The upgrade will allow Bailiffgate to borrow nationally important artefacts and paintings from museums and galleries around the UK through the national Ready to Borrow Scheme.
“It will help us to put on really stunning exhibitions which people would normally have to go to a city or a national gallery or museum to see,” said Bailiffgate’s Jane Mann.
Bailiffgate generates its own income to stage exhibitions, led by a team of volunteers. Over the last two years, it has transformed its gallery space with specialist lighting and secure cabinets to showcase valuable items such as the designer shoes, handbags and diamond jewellery of the 100 Years of Fashion exhibition, which ran from April to September.
Past exhibitions, such as an Illustrating Harry Potter exhibition and a display of work by painter Stella Vine, brought new audiences to Bailiffgate and new visitors to Alnwick.
Bailiffgate’s summer exhibition for 2020 will be The Vikings: Fact and Fiction, a partnership with Jorvik Viking Centre in York.
It will see Viking objects brought to Alnwick to explore the fact and fiction, perceptions and misconceptions about the Vikings.
The museum is asking for donations for its special appeal to upgrade the CCTV and security systems before the end of the year to safeguard valuable exhibits and displays of the future. Jean Humphrys, chairperson of the museum’s trustees, said: “We are always keen to put on highquality exhibitions and we are launching this special appeal to enable us to bring exhibits from national museums and galleries to delight our local and international audiences.”
Donations can be made in person, by post or on the museum’s Total Giving page at www.totalgiving.co.uk/appeal/ vikingalnwick.
Bailiffgate will also be staging a Last Night of the Proms event at Northumberland Hall in Alnwick on November 23, with all proceeds going towards the appeal.
The current exhibition at the museum, which runs until November 3, is titled The Breath of Colour and features 30 wall hangings by Borders-based Eta Ingham Lawrie.
The work, using wool dyed with a range of vegetable and mineral colours, captures the light and moods of the hills and coastline.