York Art Gallery Manager, Lorna Sergeant, discusses the progress on the refurbishment of York Art Gallery.

As the art gallery moves forward on a journey of major redevelopment and transformation, the physical changes to our new building, new spaces and expansion into the surrounding garden are still ongoing.

It’s been a while since my last update; however, there has been lots of progress on site. The biggest visible difference from Exhibition Square is that the scaffold has been dropped to hoarding level revealing the refurbished tile panels and re pointing of the stone work.

The once wobbly wall is now a stable and strong fortress of brick and 21 tonnes of steel! Expertly lifted onto the building using a crane, how do they make it look so easy?

 

There has also been literally miles and miles of electricity cable and data cable installed in the gallery making it absolutely future proof IT wise.

Elsewhere the differences are more noticeable inside with scaffold again being dropped in the new reception area revealing the void space which reveals the amazing mezzanine level and CoCA galleries.

The work has gained pace there is distinct smell of paint in the air (always a good sign!) as the three ground floor galleries have their first coats applied, toilets are being tiled, new windows in both the learning room and CoCA entrance take shape and lightning track is installed.

We are eagerly awaiting the installation of the fantastic viewing window which will look out across to the abbey ruins and Kings Manor this will be happening over the next two weeks so look out for a huge piece of glass being installed which has come from Portugal.

Once this window is fitted this south elevation of the gallery will change as the new ceramic wall of tiles will be fitted.

The north elevation of the building has also been transformed with a new brick skim hiding the marks of the old archives lean to which once stood there. This will very shortly be repaved with York stone creating a fantastic walkway between exhibition square and the new art garden.

One of the most frequently asked questions of the art team over the last few months has been ‘What’ve you been doing with yourselves with no Gallery and no visitors during the closure?’ It’s a perfectly fair question. Have we had our feet up eating crisps, quaffing G&T and taking time out I hear you ask?

Far from it!

As our curatorial colleagues deal with the touring collections, prepare, plan, research exhibitions, collections and finesse the gallery installation the guiding team are busy as ever.

Julie, Hannah and Chris having just de-installed St Mary’s are currently helping pack over 2000 pots that will go into our new CoCA galleries working 2 days a week at our store over the next few months.

They will also be packing up over 80 archive boxes of important history files of archive information relevant to our painting collections.

In between meetings and site visits I am busy planning the function of the building by that I mean understanding the alarm systems, locking up procedures, BMS systems, lighting systems and levels, staffing, daily schedules and rota’s.

The guides and I have been meeting regularly and have had site visits and information days relating to the redevelopment. As a team we have been strategically planning our identity as front of house and what we do.

One of the key feedback points from our visitor comments and visitor survey was that visitors always felt welcome when they visited the gallery.

This became our focus and our outline as to what the art gallery front of house team would look like. Our aim is to polish our customer service skills, develop what we do and come up with innovative ideas on delivering a cultural concierge for York Museums Trust.

We want to build on the welcome we give to all visitors and raise our standards in quality and performance.

We want to work across sectors including health and education and support our learning team, curatorial team and volunteers in what they do.

We are currently working towards some new guided tours and talks for when we re open and have a research visit to Liverpool museums planned (The Walker Art Gallery, Museum of Liverpool and Tate Liverpool) to explore the relationship between front of house and all visitors including those visitors that may never have been in a gallery before and think it’s not for them.

It will be a great opportunity to meet new colleagues to tell them more about our redevelopment plans and learn new ways to engage with our visitors both inside and outside our new fantastic building.

The days and weeks are flying by as the building changes on an hourly basis it is a wonderful experience to be a part of as a team and we can’t wait to be back home.