3 Days at the NPG 20th Century Gallery.

I've had a very interesting 3 days at NPG, looking at the values inherent in the 20th Century Gallery.  It quite surprised me!  When I first went to the newly rehung gallery in November 2017, about 6 weeks ago, I was quite impressed. I thought it was an improvement on the last hanging.  Now I am not so sure.

I have gathered data about values I perceive (as a white, straight, middle aged, urban woman, previously working in manual industry, with a broad knowledge of the arts) in the images shown, and from the artwork statement alongside.  I gathered the data on Schwartz's Table of Basic Values, in a scattergram format.

Schwartz's Table of Basic Values

What I have found is a huge tendency for the values identified, to cluster on the left hand side of the table, whether the sitter is male or female.  I've not analysed the data yet, so I can't say whether there is a tendency for the gender of the artist to impact on this.

I noted a couple of anomolies in the artwork descriptions - for example, the terms Actress and Actor were used to describe female sitters.  Sometimes women were described by, and made significant, by the men they were associated with, but men were not made significant by their women!

I had a chat with a museum attendant, Ben.  (Young, white, male, fine art graduate).  He said the portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst had been moved the previous day, to be part of an exhibition about Votes for Women (opening 23 Jan - must attend).  I asked him about selection criteria for the new hanging.  He did not know.  I mentioned that Beatrix Potter had been removed, and Roald Dahl was newly hung.  I noted their similarities and differences - both children's authors, each with a significant other contribution to society (BP was a founder of National Trust, major landowner in the Lake District and  environmentalist; RD was a wartime RAF pilot).  Her image was soft focus and outdoor, made her look something like Mrs Tiggywinkle, and rather like the illustrations in her books.  His image was in harsh, bright colours, and in uniform, indoors.

I asked Ben about whether he thought any art media were gendered.  This puzzled him, but when I asked him whether he thought cigarette cards were gendered. (There was a selection of cigarette cards depicting WW1 Victoria Cross holders).  He said he had studied cigarette packaging as a student, and that women had always been used in artwork to promote sales.  He seemed to completely miss the point that cigarette sales in the early 20th C were targeted at men, and the cards were promoting the achievements of men, in this exhibition.  This exhibition also made the point that for women to be seen smoking in the early 20th C was seen to be very daring.  It is my opinion (not yet backed up by data) that cigarette cards are gendered male.  I suspect (but not yet backed up again) that the people who commissioned the cards, and the artists of the cards, were men.

Ben said the NPG was a conservative organisation that was unlikely to be innovative.  I found this quite astonishing.  I said they had had Grayson Perry's Who Am I? exhibition that had dramatically increased footfall, and that museums were striving to increase footfall.  The big museums were partly Government funded and employed policy makers. So therefore their policies should be moving away from the conservative end of the spectrum, towards the innovative.  I think I scared him!!

OK.  Now to turn the raw data into some tables and scattergrams.  The hard work begins.