Fitzwilliam rehang aims to ‘transgress the boundaries of time and place’

Five painting galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge have reopened after an ambitious redisplay that aims to tell the “larger, more complex and inclusive story of art”.

The new thematic displays place contemporary works and lesser known rediscoveries from the museum’s collections alongside its more iconic paintings.

Featuring more than 190 artworks spanning the 1600s to the present day, the galleries are aim to present traditional art groupings, such as the museum’s Pre-Raphaelite and impressionist holdings, through a new lens that explores how art genres such as portraits, still lifes, nudes, interiors and landscapes have “conformed and challenged prevailing cultural and societal expectations at different times”.

A broader and more diverse range of artists is on show, with a particular focus on women, and artists of colour; paintings by Gainsborough, Cézanne, van Dyck and Stanley Spencer now sit alongside works by “previously under-appreciated talents”, including women artists such as Mary Moser, Ethel Walker and Winifred Nicholson.

Each gallery is focused around a theme that brings the historic, modern and contemporary together.

The opening two galleries examine how the role of women in society changed from the 18^th century, as seen through the eyes of mainly male artist, from eroticised subjects or figures of virtue to a shift in the 1900s towards representing individual women’s inner lives. 

The third gallery looks at how portraiture has historically been used as a tool to “both reinforce and subvert ideas of power”.

Well-known pictures such as Heneage Lloyd and his Sister, Lucy (1750) by Thomas Gainsborough, underline the importance of land ownership and inheritance in the eighteenth century, and are shown next to new acquisitions such as Henry Louis Gates Jr (2020) by Kerry James Marshall, in order to critically examine the “visual language of portraiture and the absence or marginalisation of Black figures”.

The fourth exhibition space examines the movement of people, featuring works by artists who immigrated to the UK, including Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Lucie Rie, Frank Auerbach, and Aubrey Williams, and depictions of Travelling and Roma communities represented in works by JMW Turner and Augustus John.  

The galleries conclude with a display dedicated to landscape and the natural world.

Romantic, Impressionist and Post-impressionist Landscapes, including Claude Monet’s Springtime (1886) and John Constable’s Hampstead Heath (1820), are shown alongside contemporary works by Veronica Ryan and David Hockney to “reveal how artists have interpreted the often complex quality of our relationship with our environments”.

The five galleries, in the Fitzwilliam’s original mid-19^th century Founder’s Building, have been refurbished with improved lighting, new silk wall-coverings and new glass in the ceiling domes.

"The Fitzwilliam is playing an important role in exploring a larger, more complex and inclusive story of art that helps us think about who we are today,” said Luke Syson, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

“This redisplay juxtaposes historic and contemporary works to offer a narrative that links past and present. We can do this so well because of the depth and range of our magnificent collection and because of some exceptional new acquisitions. Many of our most famous works of art now take their place alongside more unfamiliar pieces in a rich array that deliberately leaves space for a range of responses and asks us all to think anew.’

Rebecca Birrell, curator, writer and Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow said: “Incorporating several exciting new acquisitions, our thematic rehang will transgress the boundaries of time and place that traditionally organised these five galleries. Walking through the galleries visitors will now be able to encounter many surprising moments of correspondence and dialogue between works of art.”

The rehang was supported by the Albert Reckitt Charitable Trust and the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.