Kirsten Simister: Chance to shine a spotlight on Hull's visual arts

The gallery has undergone a complete overhaul of its systems for temperature and humidity control, with new lighting across site and a café and shop extension. The substantial investment into the building allows us to progress confidently longer term, in the knowledge that we can continue to protect and care for Hull’s significant collections as well as the prestigious loans we seek to secure.

This year is a major milestone for the Ferens as it celebrates its 90th anniversary.

The last six weeks have been an incredibly exciting challenge for the team. They have worked unbelievably hard to return home the 3,500 paintings and sculptures. It has been a huge undertaking but with care and dedication we have now reached a critical point in what has been an amazing journey as we open our doors to welcome the public back.

The commission of the Sea of Hull installation by Spencer Tunick was a game-changer for the city and the gallery. It was very exciting and hugely heartening that 3,200 people came together from all across the world to pose nude, covered in nothing but four shades of blue body paint. The buzz on the streets was tangible.

The results are both beautiful and spectacular works that reflect the city’s past but equally capture the huge sense of optimism for Hull’s future, as it undergoes wider economic and cultural transformation. The impact it has had on individuals has also been amazing. For many it has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will stay with them forever. We were bowled over by the global interest and exposure that the event generated and which we now hope to build upon.

There are many other amazing highlights to follow in 2017. We are working with the Royal Collection Trust who brought the hugely popular exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci drawings to Hull in 2012. We have secured a longer-term partnership and will present five standalone masterpieces, one in each year between 2017 and 2021.

The initial loan is Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Ship Builder and his Wife, which is the first ever Rembrandt to visit the city.

Artist Rooms On Tour with Ron Mueck is another major highlight that will feature stunning sculptures based on the human figure. There will be five major loans by Francis Bacon featuring some of his notorious series of ‘screaming popes’, including his acknowledged masterpiece, Head VI, on loan for a year from the Arts Council Collection. And in addition we are thrilled to present an exceptional masterpiece from the Courtauld Gallery in London; Manet’s preparatory study for Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) the finished painting now housed in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The climax of the year ahead at the Ferens will be hosting of the Turner Prize in September.

All of this is in addition to the redisplay of our permanent collection, which includes nationally significant work  by  Frans  Hals, Canaletto, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Mark Wallinger as well as newly acquired neon art and a bequest by Joseph Wright of Derby.

And above all we have been working with the Heritage Lottery Fund, Art Fund and The National Gallery in London on the Ferens major 2013 acquisition by Pietro Lorenzetti, Christ Between Saints Paul and Peter (c.1320). Staff at the National Gallery have now completed a four-year programme of extensive specialist conservation treatment and restoration. The results are remarkable and we are delighted to unveil this magnificent addition to our permanent collection. We are enormously grateful to those involved and in particular to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a very generous grant for a linked public engagement project.

The Lorenzetti was our most ambitious purchase since the acquisition of the Frans Hals Portrait of a Young Woman in 1963 and made possible thanks to the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund, the John Bradshaw Bequest and the Ferens Endowment Fund.  We are extremely fortunate to have the latter purchasing fund, established in 1928 by the local businessman, politician and philanthropist Thomas Robinson Ferens (1846-1930) who provided the funding for the building which opened 90 years ago. The Ferens Endowment Fund is dedicated to increasing the quality and range of the collection, and has in this way left a supreme lasting art legacy for the city.

Visual art is playing a major role in the UK City of Culture celebrations and we are extremely proud to be able to offer such high quality work that visitors would have to travel and long way to see elsewhere.

We look forward to building on the buzz that has already been generated from the In with a Bang, Made in Hull and Look up installations and show the world what we can offer in 2017 and beyond.

It is now our chance to shine.

Kirsten Simister is Curator of Art at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull.