Firth Hall, the main 'ceremonial' hall of the University, has been under refurbishment over the summer. As a result the portraits that hang there have been removed. I have mentioned an issue about the portraits before, in a blog of 2011 - the fact that they are all of men, all but one of them dead.
The Hall is now starting to take shape again, and I looked in today to see how it is getting on. The portraits are not there (yet), but I reflected that I actually like the Hall better without. The portraits clutter it up a bit. It has simpler lines without them, and a cleaner feel. (I have been reassured that when the portraits come back they will have been cleaned - but I'm still happy without them.)
What are portraits in public or semi-public spaces (such as Firth Hall) for? I can think of two overt reasons, and one that is perhaps subliminal. My two overt reasons for having them there are:
1. Because they are intrinsically good and interesting paintings in their own right. How many portraits can be claimed to fill that criterion? Very few in my view. How often one wanders through the portraited rooms of a stately home passing dozens of dreary pictures of the dead ancestors of the family, none displaying any flair or artistic merit.
2. Because they are of interesting people who onlookers will want to see and consider.
In relation to portraits in a university hall such as Firth Hall, I would observe that few portraits have any artistic interest, and that most of those depicted are also unlikely to create any glow of recognition or interest in the onlooker. I have hosted alumni events where some of the older graduates present have reminisced about a particular vice-chancellor who presided over their graduation ceremony, but were we only to retain portraits of figures for whom that could be said we would now discard the paintings of those who presided over the university before about 1940.
I was thinking about this when I came across an article in yesterday's 'Guardian' newspaper about the Oxford college I attended - Hertford. They have just taken down all the portraits from their Hall. They found that they didn't even know who some of them were of. In my view the College owns three portraits that merit display - but probably no more. Two are of interesting and famous people (men) who were students of the college or its forerunners - William Tindale (the first translator of the Bible into English) and John Donne (the cleric and poet). The third (which does not hang in the Hall) is of a recent Principal of the college - Geoffrey Warnock, the philosopher - painted by David Hockney. To my way of thinking that would get in on artistic merit.
So what has Hertford College hung in its Hall instead? It has put up photographic portraits of women associated with the college in the 40 years since it led the way to co-education in Oxford colleges by admitting women in 1974. And therein lies the subliminal message that portraiture can convey - a message about what matters and is thought worthwhile. All the Firth Hall portraits to date have been of men - former Vice-Chancellors of the University of Sheffield and others associated with its foundation. I am delighted that we are about to unveil at least one portrait of a woman - but they will still be very much in the minority. That doesn't seem to me to be a very appropriate subliminal message conveyed through the pictures on the wall. (I will observe, before anyone points this out, that Sheffield does possess an excellent collection of portrait photographs of women, but they need seeking out.)
Putting on one side the former women-only colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and some gender-segregated universities elsewhere in the world, I wonder what the overall male / female balance is in university portraiture. Should we take that for granted, or think of new curatorial policies, and possibly new commissioning exercises?
The Hall is now starting to take shape again, and I looked in today to see how it is getting on. The portraits are not there (yet), but I reflected that I actually like the Hall better without. The portraits clutter it up a bit. It has simpler lines without them, and a cleaner feel. (I have been reassured that when the portraits come back they will have been cleaned - but I'm still happy without them.)
What are portraits in public or semi-public spaces (such as Firth Hall) for? I can think of two overt reasons, and one that is perhaps subliminal. My two overt reasons for having them there are:
1. Because they are intrinsically good and interesting paintings in their own right. How many portraits can be claimed to fill that criterion? Very few in my view. How often one wanders through the portraited rooms of a stately home passing dozens of dreary pictures of the dead ancestors of the family, none displaying any flair or artistic merit.
2. Because they are of interesting people who onlookers will want to see and consider.
In relation to portraits in a university hall such as Firth Hall, I would observe that few portraits have any artistic interest, and that most of those depicted are also unlikely to create any glow of recognition or interest in the onlooker. I have hosted alumni events where some of the older graduates present have reminisced about a particular vice-chancellor who presided over their graduation ceremony, but were we only to retain portraits of figures for whom that could be said we would now discard the paintings of those who presided over the university before about 1940.
I was thinking about this when I came across an article in yesterday's 'Guardian' newspaper about the Oxford college I attended - Hertford. They have just taken down all the portraits from their Hall. They found that they didn't even know who some of them were of. In my view the College owns three portraits that merit display - but probably no more. Two are of interesting and famous people (men) who were students of the college or its forerunners - William Tindale (the first translator of the Bible into English) and John Donne (the cleric and poet). The third (which does not hang in the Hall) is of a recent Principal of the college - Geoffrey Warnock, the philosopher - painted by David Hockney. To my way of thinking that would get in on artistic merit.
So what has Hertford College hung in its Hall instead? It has put up photographic portraits of women associated with the college in the 40 years since it led the way to co-education in Oxford colleges by admitting women in 1974. And therein lies the subliminal message that portraiture can convey - a message about what matters and is thought worthwhile. All the Firth Hall portraits to date have been of men - former Vice-Chancellors of the University of Sheffield and others associated with its foundation. I am delighted that we are about to unveil at least one portrait of a woman - but they will still be very much in the minority. That doesn't seem to me to be a very appropriate subliminal message conveyed through the pictures on the wall. (I will observe, before anyone points this out, that Sheffield does possess an excellent collection of portrait photographs of women, but they need seeking out.)
Putting on one side the former women-only colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and some gender-segregated universities elsewhere in the world, I wonder what the overall male / female balance is in university portraiture. Should we take that for granted, or think of new curatorial policies, and possibly new commissioning exercises?
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