For the first time, the Tate is touring works from its national collection directly to the UK's regional communities in a newly conceived "mobile museum". The Tate has with partnered with the French organisation Art Explora to launch the initiative in the UK. The museum, which is attached to a cargo lorry, will initially take an exhibition on a ten-week tour (until 29 April) across the five boroughs of the Liverpool city region. The project will act as a pilot scheme for further participatory projects that hope to "arrest issues of attendance at our national museums,” says Helen Legg, the director of Tate Liverpool.
The mobile museum is taking an edited version of Radical Landscapes, an exhibition first shown at the Tate Liverpool in summer 2022, on the road in a bespoke truck which is currently parked in Sefton, Liverpool. The museum will visit locations in St Helens, Knowsley, Wirral, Halton and the centre of Liverpool. The exhibition includes pieces by J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, John Nash and contemporary artists such as Veronica Ryan and Ingrid Pollard. Primary school children, care home residents and community groups from diverse backgrounds will have the opportunity to view the exhibition and participate in art-making workshops inspired by the works.
At remarks given at the opening of the exhibition, Legg said: “The mobile museum is unique. It goes directly into communities. It allows us, as a museum, to meet people on their own terms.” The project will reach more than 500 school children across Liverpool, Legg added. On 22 February, a class from Netherton Moss Primary School in Bootle, Liverpool, were the first people to see the mobile museum. Asked why they shouldn’t touch the artworks, one nine-year-old girl said: “Because they're expensive and you don’t want to break them or put fingerprints on them because other people want to see them too.” The exhibition opens with the 1918 painting The Cornfield by John Nash, the British artist who served in the army in World War One before becoming an official war artist for the UK government. The Cornfield was the first painting Nash made that did not depict the subject of war.
The Art Explora's founder, Frédéric Jousset, says, "We wanted to go to people's homes and knock on their doors." "That's what our work is all about." The Mobile Museum is a non-profit project that is backed by Art Explora and funded by the public through Arts Council England and the National Lottery. Peter Kennard, a British artist whose work is in the Radical Landscapes show, was at the opening of the museum in Sefton and made art with the schoolchildren in a workshop. Jousset said, "That was very moving." "We don't want to make an exhibition where people just watch. We want children to grow up to be artists. So, to meet someone like Peter Kennard, work with him, ask him for advice, and talk with him is a powerful thing. Art Explora is currently working on a partnership with the British Museum in London. This partnership, says Jousset, will let "hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren from all over Britain" see the museum's collection without having to pay for travel or lodging.
Nicolas Sarazin