Free Museum Admissions on Canada Day: Time to Step Up Beyond the Holiday

I was happy this week to hear that the National Gallery of Canada would be providing free admission to its permanent collection on Canada Day. I was also glad to hear the Art Gallery of Alberta would be providing free admission to both the collection and temporary exhibitions on July 1. I haven't done much further research on other museums that normally charge admission providing free access on the upcoming holiday, but I can only presume there are others.

Yet, at the same time as I'm glad about these patriotic public-access gestures, I feel some disappointment or disbelief--definitely, at least, some ambivalence. The collection at the NGC belongs to all Canadians every day of the year, so trotting out free access as a one-off holiday "extra" tends, in my view, to reinforce the idea that public access is really not a something the public should expect in the long term. Ditto for Albertans vis a vis the Art Gallery of Alberta's collection.

It is also disappointing to me that our major public art museums in English Canada do not, by and large, even honour the tradition of free museum admission on or around International Museums Day. Montreal has a strong program of this kind, which is no surprise, some might say, given the different ethos and funding situations there. The NGC has also stepped up, offering free admission this year on May 20. But the AGO, the AGA, and the VAG don't seem to take part in this outreach effort, let alone non-art museums like the ROM and the Glenbow. (I could be wrong, and would be happy to be corrected!)

Perhaps this lack of International Museums Day isn't a surprise given that the Canadian Museums Association itself, though giving a nod to the possibility of free admission, suggests that for International Museums Day museums should invite in a local MP rather than the wider public.

I write this post with some trepidation given that it is unpleasant for me personally to focus on such disappointments. To state the obvious, it is not always fun to be a negative voice.

This is especially true when there is a lot to be proud of in the Canadian art community--like the fact that many galleries and museums, public, private or otherwise, do offer the public free access to art every day of the year. I simply continue to feel regret when the institutions charged with growing and maintaining "publicly owned" collections fail to provide the public with adequate free access to them. I also feel disappointed that many of our institutions can't seem to get it together to do at least something along the lines of New York City's Art Museums Day (another Intl Museums Day related event).

I do wish everyone a terrific holiday! I'll be headed to the beach, hopefully.

(Photograph taken by Jared Grove (Phobophile) and posted at Wikimedia)

World's Most Visited Art Galleries

According to the The Art Newspaper 's annual international survey published in April 2009, The Louvre in Paris took the top spot as the world's most attended mus­eum, as you might expect. Centre Pompidou in Paris was second, then the Tate Modern in London, British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria was the most visited art gallery in Australia. With 1.48 million visitors in 2007-08, it also ranked among the publication’s top 25 most popular art museums in the world. Since Melbourne (3.85 million) doesn’t have the population of Cairo-Tokyo-New York-London-Paris-Mexico City, nor the history of Vienna-Berlin-Paris-Rome-Jerusalem-London, this is an impressive feat.

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National Gallery of Victoria, front entrance

When it came to individual exhibitions, Nara National Museum (850 ks west of Tokyo) won the 13th annual survey with a display of items from Shoso-in, the imperial treasure house of the Todai-ji Temple. It had an average daily attendance of 12,700 people. The Tokyo National Museum ranked second with a display of national treas­ures from the Yakushi-ji Temple. In third place was the Grand Palais Nave in Paris, a large exhibition hall which reopened in 2005 after long renovations. The Nave saw an average of 10,350 people per day for a display of digital art including film, videos and instal­lations. Madrid's Reina Sofia (which exhibition?) came next and a large-scale exhibition of Van Gogh's works made the Albertina in Vienna the next most popular gallery programme.

William Hogarth at Vauxhall Gardens: sex, art, music

London was a dirty, chaotic city in the second half of the 17th century. Vauxhall was then a rural hamlet on the south bank of the Thames, and Vauxhall Gardens was merely a square plot fringed by trees. Nothing special, except that people came out of the city to breathe the fresh air, walk and amuse themselves.

The grand walk in the centre of Vauxhall gardens

The pleasure gardens that grew up, from 1661 on, asked a fairly modest fee for admittance and entertainment. Each evening there were organised entertainments which were clean cut and fun, unlike the horrendous bear baiting and other disgusting entertainments offered in the city. However some entertainment raised well plucked eyebrows - the popularity of Vauxhall, especially its secluded paths and gardens, made it an ideal place of business for the working girls of London.

Clearly Spring Garden, as it was first called, must have been a great place for entertainment. This was where Samuel Pepys made his choice of the Ladies of the Night and where King Charles II courted his mistresses (sequent­ial­ly?). It is not hard for us to imagine enthusiastic crowds, squashing onto the river boats every summer evening, holding the shilling entrance fee in their sticky hands.

My earlier post, on pleasure gardens and the society that frequented them, started in 1729 when the young businessman Jonathan Tyers (1702-67) took over the lease to Vauxhall Gardens. He wanted his pleasure garden to become an elegant, civilised and civilising environment.

Tyers transformed what was essentially a plantation of trees into a space for performance and display, with specially designed pavilions, grottoes, sculptures and illuminated serpentine walks. Masquerades, gymnasts and magicians were impressive. Fireworks displays apparently stopping street-smart Londoners in their tracks.

The octagonal Orchestra was a building designed for the performance of music in the open air that opened in 1735. Around it in colonnades, Tyers built rows of supper-boxes where people could enjoy the music while eating and drinking. With 100,000 visitors each season, the gardens offered musicians their first mass audiences.

With Hogarth's (1697-1764) help, these green, clean pleasure gardens became egalitarian spaces where the middle classes could mix with the intelligentsia and the minor nobility. And the not-so-minor nobility; Frederick, Prince of Wales and his entourage loved going to Vauxhall.

People could enjoy in supper alcoves, decorated with contemporary paintings and sculptures. Why did Hogarth make the art choices? Because Hogarth, who was a friend of Jonathan Tyers, had recently married and moved to lodgings in South Lambeth!  Hogarth wanted to help decorate Vauxhall Gardens, giving other artists invaluable public exposure. Tyers was delighted, and in return he presented Hogarth with a lifetime pass to the gardens.

The relationship seemed to work well. David Coke (History Today, May 2012) was convinced that Tyers became one of the greatest patrons of contemporary British art and music. He argued that Vauxhall Gardens were central to the dissemination of Rococo in the public mind, at least in London. Tyers selected architecture, paintings, sculpture, furniture, tableware, lighting and music such that his gardens actively promoted the British rococo style. The artist who most benefited from Hogarth's campaign was Francis Hayman, who had four rococo paintings commissioned by Tyers for the Prince's Pavilion.

For Londoners from 1730 on, it must have seemed like stepping into an ethereal dream world, with wafting music and 20,000 glittering oil-lamps in the trees. I like the saying: music, wine and moonlight. They should have added “sex”, both paid for and free.

Music room in Vaux Hall Gardens by H Roberts, 1752. Photo credit: History Today

Now comes the interesting part. Hogarth understood that art was became increasingly commercialised, viewed in shop windows and taverns, and sold in printshops. New customs were emerging. So Hogarth’s idea was to paint and engrave modern moral subjects; to treat the canvases as his stage and the models as his story's characters. It must have been successful since today Hogarth is best known for his modern moral subjects, of which he sold engravings on subscription.

I understand why Hogarth would want create series of tragic and funny moralising stories, but did the sexy and glittering society who frequented the pleasure gardens give a fillip to his popular Modern Moral series? If Vauxhall, the very place Hogarth had helped make popular and successful, was one of the sources of his vigorous satirising of the manners and values of the day, it seemed strangely like biting the hand that fed him. Nonetheless the dates of these “moral lectures” were intriguing. Harlot's Progress prints appeared for the first time in 1732. The Rake's Progress prints were delayed somewhat but appeared in 1735. Marriage à la Mode appeared a few years later.

one print from William Hogarth's series called Harlot's Progress

Tyer and Hogarth died almost at the same time (1767 and 1764 respectively), so their careers overlapped perfectly with the greatest decades of Vauxhall’s long existence.

The most useful reference is David Coke’s essay "Vauxhall Gardens" in Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth's England, published by the Victoria and Albert Museum London, 1984. Also see Vauxhall Gardens: A History, written by David Coke and Alan Borg, and published by Paul Mellon Centre in 2011. The Works of William Hogarth: in a series of engravings, by John Trusler 2007, is wonderful.