Canon Barnett
was the chairman of the Board of Trustees until his death in 1913. Other
Trustees included Henrietta Barnett, Edgar Speyer, H Lawson, of the LCC, and W
Blyth, who became Secretary and Treasurer. Many prominent people, including some
local Anglo Jewish families, and the City Guilds were supporters of the Gallery.
The gallery needed an income of around £500 per year to cover basic running
costs and even with the regular donations, the gallery struggled to continue.
The prospect of relinquishing the manageemnt of the gallery to the LCC was
discussed but the LCC were not infavour but did award an annula grant from
1909.
1901 saw the
staging of an exhibition of Chinese art, organised and funded by a separate
committee, and in 1906 over 150,000 people visited the six week exhibition of
Jewish Art and Antiquities.In 1910 George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill
were both involved in the staging of the Shakespeare Memorial and Theatrical
Exhibition. However, in 1914 prposals for an exhibitian of Twentieth Century
Art, organised by Aitken and Gilbert Ramsey, who had become Director when Aitken
moved to the Tate, caused Henrietta Barnett to write to plead with the them "
not to get too many examples of the extreeme thought of this century, for we
must never forget that the Whitechapel Gallery is intended for Whitechapel
people, who have to be delicately led and will not understand the Post
impressionist or futuristicmethodsof seeing or representing things".Whether the
aims of the original Trustees- "to open to the people of East London a larger
world than that in which they usually work. To draw them to a pleasure
recreating their minds , and to stir in them a human curiosity" were being met
is a matter of debate. Whilst many local people did attend the exhibitions even
more were attracted from elsewhere. Perhaps there was value in them visiting the
East end and seeing the daily living conditions of the working classes was
equally valid.
After Barnett's death in 1913, Aitken's
move to the Tate and the outbreak of the first world war in 1914, the struggle
to finance the gallery became greater. By 1922 subscriptions had fallen to £200
and the LCC had withdrawn their grant. An appeal was launched which brought back
several previous supporters as well as new ones but the effect was short lived
and subscription income had fallen again by the end of the decade. Significant
income was raised by hiring out space within the building, £500 being raised in
1922/3. At this time, however, the gallery was meeting its original aims in that
many exhibitions showed local artists and both student and local school
children's work. The gallery was becoming to be known as the Working Man's
Gallery.
In 1939 an
exhibition, opened by Clement Atlee, which included Picasso's Guernica resulted
in enormous attendance figures and raised funds for the Aid Spain movement, to
support the Spanish Republican cause.
During the
second world war the Gallery was used mostly for war related exhibitions and
also suffered bomb damage.
In spite of the
work of Lord Bearsted, appointed Chairman of the Trustees in 1943, until his
death in 1948,and Director Hugh Scrutton to reestablish the gallery after the
war by 1949 finances were again low with less than £900 of the £5000 annual
requirement being received in assured income.
The Whitechapel
Art Gallery Society was formed in February 1948, in order to support the gallery
financially through private and business subscription and to serve as an opinion
forming body on Gallery policy. It was intended that Society subscriptions be
used to fund visible improvements to the gallery, however they tended to be
absorbed into the day to day running costs. Of greater benefit was the receipt
of grants from the LCC and the East London Boroughs and also grants from the
newly formed Arts Council.
The upturn in
the Galleries finances was reflected in more ambitious exhibition projects
attracting greater numbers of visitors. During the 1950s and 1960s, exhibitions
included works by Modernist masters such as Braque, Kandinsky, Barbara Hepworth,
Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg
In 1982 the Gallery Trustees felt the need for a separate
Trust to be created to channel non-government funding in the form of exhibition
sponsorship and donations to the gallery, and a planning group for a Development
Trust was established. This led to the formation of the Whitechapel Art Gallery
Foundation on 1 Feb 1984. At the same time an Advisory Board was set up to
provide expert advice to the gallery on areas such as advertising, marketing and
sponsorship.
In addition the
American Friends of the Whitechapel Art Gallery Foundation Inc was incorporated
in New York in 1987 to raise funds for the gallery in the USA.
The Gallery
celebrated its centenary in 2001on a more stable financial footing. Private
support and earned income (such as gallery hire, catalogues and membership
schemes) had risen to contribute 50% of the budget. Foundations, such as the
Henry Moore Foundation and the Morgan Stanley Foundation along with corporate
sponsors such as Bloomberg have given genorously to maintain the Gallery in more
recent years."
The gallery is Grade II* listed and the
entry at the English Heritage website [
visit link
]
tells us:
"Art Gallery.
Designed 1897, built 1898-9, opened 1902. Charles Harrison Townsend F.R.I.B.A.
(1851-1928), and Messrs. J. Outhwaite & Son, builders. Buff terra cotta by
Gibbs & Canning, Tamworth to the facade. Art Nouveau style.
EXTERIOR: Ground
floor has large, asymmetrically placed entrance comprising pair of openings with
double doors and wide semi-circular overlight, all under pronounced arch with
bracket voussoirs and string course at impost height across building; to right,
2 square windows then a secondary entrance; above this, wall to right of arch is
blind. Above this, narrow band of 8 small square windows set between string
courses; relief of Arts and Crafts foliage of half trees with slender trunks and
entangled roots flank end windows. Upper level has turret to each side, each
capped with pair of small steeply gabled roofs, and slightly flared to base and
with broad band of foliate decoration comprising 5 courses of thickly placed
leaves on slender trunks. Between towers is band of projecting cornice below
set-back rendered facade, with tiled band below and tiled roof above.
INTERIOR:
Entrance leads to vestibule now with gift shop then ground floor gallery, skylit
to aisles. Upper gallery has raised lantern and arched brace trusses with
slender reinforcing rods.
HISTORY: The
Whitechapel Art Gallery was opened in 1902, on land that had been acquired by
Canon Samuel Barnett, benefactor of the adjacent Whitechapel Library (q.v.),
built a few years earlier. Once additional funds were secured by philanthropist
J. Passmore Edwards, patron of the Library, and others, construction began to
the designs of architect Charles Harrison Townsend. Townsend had to modify his
original more elaborate designs that had been exhibited at the Royal Academy,
but the final effect was an innovative display of Art Nouveau design in East
London, an area of notorious deprivation but also a thriving art movement. The
Gallery housed the permanent collection and provided a meeting place for the
Whitechapel Art Group. Townsend had designed East London's other great work of
Art Nouveau architecture, the Bishopsgate Institute (q.v.) and went on to design
the Horniman Museum (q.v.). 1980s alterations by Colquhoun and
Miller.
Listed Grade II* as an important work of Art Nouveau
architecture in England by Charles Harrison Townsend, with an imaginatively
detailed and massed facade, as well as historic interest for the link with the
adjacent Whitechapel Library (q.v.), both buildings sharing benefactors Canon
Barnett and Passmore Edwards, as well as the purpose of providing cultural and
education resources for great social need in the late-Victorian East End of
London."