After months of planning, and two years) of researching and acquiring artworks (thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund Collecting Cultures grant!), the exhibition Football Is Art opened to the public on 5th April 2019.
Continue reading “‘Football Is Art’ exhibition.. and goodbye!”
As part of my role as Art Research Officer at the National Football Museum, I keep up to date with upcoming auctions and private sales of any football artwork which might be relevant to the museum collection. Recently, a colour lithograph came up for auction – ‘Goal!’ by Clifford Fishwick, 1953. In a similar situation to the Peter L. Peri print we acquired previously (see this post), the museum does already have ‘Goal’ in the collection, but this is a loan. By purchasing one of these lithographs, this would become a permanent addition to the museum’s collection. So I put in a commission bid with the auction house – this meant the auctioneer could bid on my behalf up to a certain amount (works the same as an eBay maximum bid!).
Following a bit of a break, a new Art Research Officer has been put in post for The Art of Football project. Hi! I will be working at the National Football Museum on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, looking at what art works are currently in the museum collection, identifying the gaps we hope to fill, researching what art works are currently for sale and those in upcoming auctions etc. I will be using the sale catalogue for the 1953 Football and Fine Arts competition as my starting point (not this delicate copy, I must add!).
Initially, I have been getting to know the rest of the team here at the National Football Museum, reading up on the project’s outline and progress so far and doing the slightly less glamorous, but highly important jobs such as setting up budget spreadsheets and project timelines. Continue reading “Getting the ball rolling again…”
A selection of highlights from the National Football Museum’s surprising art collection have gone on display in Manchester for the first time.
Exhibited as part of the Heritage Lottery Fund Collecting Cultures project ‘The Art Of Football’, this small selection of highlights from the museum’s collection features a range of art that takes football as its inspiration.
A number of artworks displayed are from 1953; the same year L.S. Lowry’s iconic Going To The Match won the inaugural Football And Fine Arts competition arranged by The FA and the newly-formed Arts Council.
On Tuesday 14th of April Sally Hawley and John O’Shea travelled to Bristol’s Royal West of England Academy to meet with Gerald Cains – painter of “Saturday Taxpayers”.
Using a small digital sound recorder we conducted some oral history recordings relating to:
The interview took a little over an hour and the resulting recordings have been added to an archive folder on our server for further research. Published below is is short excerpt where Gerald Cains describes his initial inspiration for the work Saturday Taxpayers”:
Continue reading “Gerald Cains on Saturday Taxpayers (1953)”
Having engaged with a range of works on display (see Art History Primer – Part 1) the second part of the day involved a much closer examination, with members of the NFM Collections Team (Dr. Alex Jackson and Sally Hawley) of an item which had been specially brought to Manchester from museum’s collection, (the majority of which is held in Preston).
Gerald Cains’ “Saturday Taxpayers” is a painting which was created for the 1953 “Football and the Fine Arts” exhibition, a collaborative between the Football Association and the newly formed Arts Council of Great Britain and a seminal moment in the history of “football art”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/saturday-taxpayers-228850
On 23rd of March Dr. Mike O’Mahony brought a group of undergraduate Art History students from University of Bristol to the National Football Museum (NFM) in Manchester. Mike and our guest, painter Dominic Heffer, initiated our programme of staff training by facilitating a series of informed discussions between the art history students and NFM’s collections team.
Sally Hawley, Collections Officer at National Football Museum has been assigned as the main point of contact between the project and the NFM collection and has begun some preliminary research in order to:
The Art of Football 