ONE of Scotland’s finest historic art schools hopes to welcome the public this spring as part of an ongoing £11 million restoration.
While Glasgow’s renowned art school remains ravaged by fire, the once equally important Hospitalfield school in Arbroath has been brought up to date for the 21st century and has announced an ambitious artistic programme for this year to coincide with the opening of the freshly restored 19th-century fernery, a new garden and a glasshouse café.
Some of the artists will be seen in Scotland for the first time and represent a broad range of disciplines from those working with moving image, sound and performance to choreography, illustration and sculpture.
Hospitalfield director Lucy Byatt said the pandemic meant it had never been so critical for arts organisations to find ways to continue to facilitate space and time for artists to develop new work.
“I very much look forward to welcoming old friends and new to Arbroath this spring and to see the first of our commissioned projects for the year ahead and to explore this beautiful region of Angus,” she said.
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The programme will launch with a new work by Mick Peter opening on April 24 – subject to government restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic – with further exhibitions, performances and screenings throughout the year. Peter’s work is the Hospitalfield Annual Sculpture Commission for 2021.
Hospitalfield has also announced the opportunity for Scotland’s art school graduates to have a year-long association and mentorship, following one of the most difficult years on record for those graduating from college and university.
The re-opening in April will see the completion of the first phase of the restoration. Supported with £5.5m funding from the Tay Cities Deal, the second phase will include a new building that will increase the residential facilities on the campus, restore the existing 19th and early 20th-century artist studios and the development of a new 21st-century studio.
A further phase will include the renovation of the historic house and new study centre that will hold the archive, collections and gallery.
Hospitalfield sits on the site of a medieval hospital that supported pilgrims making their way to Arbroath Abbey. The house as it exists today was the vision of the 19th-century artist
Patrick Allan-Fraser and his wife Elizabeth. Between 1843 and 1890 they created an alluring and highly crafted building that they intended as their legacy to support artists of the future.
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From 1901, following Patrick’s death, Hospitalfield operated as a residential art school, described by the then trust as “the great experiment”. It flourished for two decades before being restructured. Then, through close affiliation with the four Scottish art schools in Dundee, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow, it became a postgraduate school and a meeting point for many generations of artists, teachers and art students from across Scotland and beyond.
Today, as a cultural institution blending contemporary art, performance and heritage, the programmes are structured to meet the needs of artists and audiences in a very different context in the 21st century but with graduate residencies still focused on the fragility of artists just as they leave art school.
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