Night in the Museum

The Arts Council Collection is delighted to announce details of a major new touring exhibition which sees leading British artist, Ryan Gander, selecting work from this world-class national collection of modern and contemporary British art. This exhibition has launched at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park as part of the celebrations for the Arts Council Collection’s 70th anniversary, which include the launch of the National Partners Programme and a rich programme of new commissions on show across the UK. One of the commissions, As old as time itself, slept alone (2016) by Ryan Gander, is on display for the first time as part of this exhibition. It is the latest in an ongoing series in which Gander re-imagines Edgar Degas’ famous work The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (1880-81) in different scenarios, always paired with a blue cube and a white plinth.

Born in Chester in 1976 and now based in London and Suffolk, Gander avoids a recognisable style, preferring to work with many different materials and ideas to explore new approaches to art. For Night in the Museum, Gander has positioned a range of figurative sculptures so that they can gaze at artworks featuring the colour blue—a colour which is important in Gander’s work, and which for him represents the abstract ideas often found in modern and contemporary art. The figures contemplate a wide selection of post-war British art encompassing different styles and periods. In presenting works in this unusual way, Gander disrupts the role of the curator as a mediator between art and the public. He invites us to look beyond traditional themes and histories and to consider new narratives and relationships.

"There is something about switching the roles of the spectator and the spectacle that is fascinating. When I look at sculptures of the human figure I am frequently left thinking of all the things that they’ve seen: the visitors to the museum, school children and art students attempting to earnestly recreate them in pastels and charcoal, the other artworks that surround them, artists and technicians installing, their maker perhaps, discreetly calling in on them with proud eyes. This is the world of the silent onlooker." 
–Ryan Gander

Night in the Museum presents over 30 works by artists including Liam Gillick, Roger Hiorns, Henry Moore, Angela Bulloch and Wolfgang Tillmans and provides an opportunity to view this internationally significant Collection through the eyes of one of the country’s best loved artists. The show is accompanied by a fully-illustrated book produced by Hayward Publishing and designed by Daniel Streat. The book features new texts by Ryan Gander and the writer and critic, Ossian Ward, author of Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art (2014). 

Tour
November 26, 2016–February 12, 2017
The Gas Hall, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

February 25–May 21, 2017
The Attenborough Centre, Leicester