With the unexpected closure of Inverleith House in Edinburgh and The New Art Gallery Walsall currently under serious threat, these are grim times indeed for the UK’s public art galleries. How cheering then, amidst all the general gloom, to be able to report some good news. It was announced last night (15 November) that the internationally renowned artist Glenn Brown—whose works can make more than £3m at auction—is giving the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle an important new painting made especially in response to the gallery’s collection.
In the end we all succumb to the pull of the molten core (2016) marks the first donation to be made through the Contemporary Art Society’s (CAS) Great Works scheme, supported by the Sfumato Foundation, which aims to tackle the absence in UK museums of works by major British artists over the past 20 years. Astonishingly, this is the first work by Glenn Brown to be placed into a UK museum collection, underlining the discrepancy between the international profile of so many British artists and their institutional representation at home.
The magnificently titled painting has come directly from Brown’s studio and overlays the heads of two men taken from images by Tiepolo and Andrea del Sarto. According to the artist, it “is about being young and old, ageing and looking to the future and to the past. And doing all these things at once, with a constant sense of both growth and decay”.
Brown grew up not far from Newcastle and from childhood was a regular visitor to the Laing Art Gallery. He also revealed that this immensely dynamic work pays oblique homage to the apocalyptic scenes by John Martin in the Laing’s collection, as well as referring to “the molten core of iron which lay at the heart of Newcastle’s prosperity”.
In our current and far from prosperous era, such acts of generosity—matched by proper public support—are crucial to enable the Glenn Browns of the future to be similarly inspired by their local museums and galleries. Bravo to CAS, and here’s to many more Great Works being placed in public spaces nationwide!