Brotherton Gallery: New exhibition sees decapitated writer reunited with his head
A university is marking an anniversary of a special exhibition which explores identity.
The University of Leeds’s Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery will celebrate the tenth anniversary of its opening with Who am I to you?, an exhibition that uses the latest digital technology to examine the past, present and future of the University’s collection of portrait busts – and sees a decapitated writer reunited with his head.
The display explores identity, representation, and public memory, asking whose stories are told, and whose voices are missing from the conversation.
Once powerful symbols of institutional values, sculptures of subjects ranging from Marcus Aurelius and Goethe to University luminaries of more recent times have been gathered in the Gallery.
Their journeys through the University’s buildings over time, plotted in photographs and correspondence from Leeds’ Cultural Collections, reveal shifts in taste and priorities; moments of celebration and periods of relegation.
Figures who continue to inspire include novelist, journalist and campaigneer Storm Jameson – the first woman to be awarded a first in English from the University – and visionary educationalist, philanthropist and Vice Chancellor Sir Michael Sadler, who donated over 70 modernist works of art from his own collection to the University.
The bust of another benefactor, Lord Edward Allen Brotherton, has made a short journey to the exhibition from the library that bears his name.
For the first time in 70 years, this sculpture has been reunited with a bust of Brotherton’s niece-in-law Dorothy Una Ratcliffe made by the same artist, Ivan Meštrović.
Ratcliffe encouraged Brotherton’s interest in rare books, and donated her own collection of manuscripts, artworks and photographs relating to Gypsy and Traveller culture to the University Collections.
On loan from Leeds Museums and Galleries, the sculpture shows her reading, immortalised as a woman of letters.
A selection of the busts have been 3D-printed in miniature at Helix, the University of Leeds’ learning innovation hub, using high-resolution 360 degree scans.
Some 3D printing technology has also been used to reunite a damaged plaster statuette of the great Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson with its head.
Who am I to you? runs in Treasures of the Brotherton in the Parkinson Building, University of Leeds, from today to October 3.
Admission is free and open to all, with no booking required, and the gallery is open from 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Saturday.