News

The Gatsby Charitable Foundation is gifting £6m to the Royal Academy of Music, the single biggest donation in the institution's 200-year history.

The money will fund the Gatbsy Chair of Musical Theatre, the first fully-funded endowed chair at any UK conservatoire.

Two further anonymous donations are funding the Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano and the William Lawes Chair of Chamber Music.

The three endowed chairs boost the launch of the Academy’s bicentenary campaign, which aims to raise £60m to invest into facilities, staff retention and funding future musicians.

Academy Principal Jonathan Freeman-Attwood said the donations are “a truly wonderful start” to the bicentenary.

“The Academy’s bicentenary affords us the opportunity to future-proof the values which have defined our work since 1822 while offering a transformational set of opportunities for talent to thrive, regardless of background.”

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery is temporarily reopening ahead of this summer’s Commonwealth Games.

Five of the museum’s 40 displays are open to visitors with three displays, We Are Birmingham, SaVĀge K’lub and Wonderland: Birmingham’s Cinema Stories, presented as part of Birmingham 2022 Festival.

The museum shut in October 2020 for major rewiring work and will close again in December ahead of a full reopening scheduled for 2024.

Birmingham Museums Trust Co-CEOs Sara Wajid and Zak Mensah said the reopening marks “a new phase of cultural confidence for Birmingham”.

“The new displays honour the contribution of activists, reformers and creative pioneers. This is a chance to welcome old friends and new visitors from all over the world.”

A new year-long festival will encourage artists and audiences to view their cities through the eyes of their homeless residents.

Streetwise Opera will commission nine composers, three choreographers, three designers and a filmmaker to work with more than 200 people who have been homeless for the festival, titled Re:sound. 

Working in London, Nottingham and Manchester, they aim to co-create nine micro-operas to be performed in March 2023.

The charity is partnering with organisations that address homelessness to expand its reach and create connections between artists and participants. Six of the operas will be written and composed in hostels and day centres.

“Staying creative is very important when you are recovering from homelessness, because it lightens your heart and inspires you to achieve more,” said Denise Alison, a participant in weekly workshops run by Streetwise Opera at the Southbank Centre. 

Streetwise’s Artistic Director Martin Constantine said the participating artists have “the ambition to reimagine the boundaries of opera and co-create work that aims to invite audiences, especially those who may think that opera is not for them, to rediscover their cities through a different lens”.

BBC Proms will be restored to its full eight-week calendar this summer.

The 2022 programme features more performances than ever across the UK and the return of international orchestras for the first time since 2019.

The Proms is welcoming a newly-formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra which includes Ukrainian refugee musicians. A special exemption to allow military-age male members of the orchestra to participate has been granted by Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture.

Starting 15 July, all concerts will be available to listen to on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio Sounds, with 22 scheduled to be streamed on TV and BBC iPlayer.

Controller Alan Davey called BBC Proms “one of the most inclusive musical experiences anywhere”.

“This year we want audiences everywhere to know that the joy and communion of live music-making is back.”

Jerwood Arts will close its long-running exhibitions and events programme at the end of the year so it can redirect funding.

For the last 18 years, the organisation has funded three annual exhibitions of work by early-career artists at the Jerwood Space in London that then tour the UK. 

To date, the programme has shown works by more than 1,700 artists, curators and writers, commissioned more than 250 new works, and exhibited work in 75 galleries.

Artists supported by the programme have been included in major exhibition and art fairs and include the Array Collective, winners of last year’s Turner Prize.

The closure is part of a “refocused strategy” that Jerwood Arts says will support a greater number of artists and curators. 

£1m will be disbursed over three years from 2023 to support early-career artists, curators, galleries and visual arts organisations. It will include 18-month-long residencies for six early-career visual artists.

“The importance of independent funding to support artistic development and freedom of expression feels as urgent as ever,” said Director Lilli Geissendorfer, promising the refocused funding would increase opportunities for artists and curators “at a pivotal moment in their careers”.

A series of events celebrating the 18-year history of the exhibitions and events programme will be held at Jerwood Space towards the end of the year.

Sonia Boyce has won the Golden Lion award for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennale, becoming the first Black British woman to do so.

Her winning exhibition Feeling Her Way, focuses on the vocal experimentation of five Black female musicians embodying feelings of power, freedom and vulnerability. The jury said that “in working collaboratively with other black women, [Boyce] unpacks a plenitude of silenced stories.”

Boyce said: “This is momentous, and utterly overwhelming. I want to say thank you to everyone for their support. Their generosity has been beyond my expectations."

Emma Dexter, Director of Visual Arts for the British Council, which commissioned the work for the British Pavilion at the Biennale, said: “Sonia made a work for the Biennale that speaks of hope, experiment, joy and freedom, and the importance of remembering and celebrating women’s achievements and creativity. 

“It is also highly significant that an artist who was part of the Black British Art movement of the 1980s has been honoured in this way – thereby bringing this crucial part of British art history into an international spotlight.”

Past British winners include Richard Hamilton (1993), Anish Kapoor (1990), Frank Auerbach (1986), Bridget Riley (1968) and Henry Moore (1948).

A Glasgow museum has received mixed responses to a display label supporting transgender rights. 

The Burrell Collection, which reopened in March following a £68.25m refurbishment, labelled two porcelain figures of Buddhist goddess Guanyin as a “transgender icon”.

One of the labels reads “trans people have always existed and are rooted in history. Figures like Guanyin reflect this, showing that gender and identity are not always fixed”, while another says “trans rights are human rights. Be more Guanyin”.

Campaign group Women Scotland accused the labels of appropriating Buddhist art to “prop up an ideology”.

Charitable trust Glasgow Life, which oversees the city’s museums, says academic studies have long referenced Guanyin as an icon for transgender people.

“One of the aims of the refurbishment of the Burrell Collection was to work with community groups to reflect often previously under-represented histories as part of the re-display, including LGBT histories, because Glasgow Life museums are places for everyone.”