Co-production at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts

Q: What are the aims of the Gender Gap project and what were its origins?

Flora Kay (FK): The Gender Gap at The Barber Institute of Fine Arts is an ongoing project involving artists, teachers, and communities, which interrogates the underrepresentation and undervaluation of women artists within gallery spaces and collections. [1] There is currently an overwhelming imbalance of representation within the Barber’s collection and, as of January 2024, there are only ten women artists, represented by seventeen works. [2] Most of these works, including those by Gwen John, Käthe Kollwitz and Tess Jaray, have only been acquired within the past twenty years under the directorships of Nicola Kalinsky (Director 2013-2022) and Jennifer Powell (Director 2022- present). The Gender Gap project has resulted in new research, events, resources, artist collaborations, conversations and projects with our audiences, which we hope will positively influence the Barber’s future by highlighting women artists and underrepresented voices.

The Gender Gap was borne from a separate project, the National Gallery’s Fruits of the Spirit: Art from the Heart (2022). This project twinned nine works from the National Gallery’s (NG’s) collection with nine works from regional collections. At The Barber we were given the theme of patience and our artwork The Reader, (1817) [fig.1] by French artist Marguerite Gérard was paired with Anna and Blind Tobit, (1630) by Rembrandt van Rijn. As part of this project, I was tasked with interrogating the work and considering how we might draw new perspectives through this curatorial lens. The NG intended there to be two written outcomes from the collaboration: one from a curatorial perspective and one from an engagement perspective. These were then unified into an online exhibition catalogue intended to encourage different ways of looking at art. [3]

The Reader was only acquired by The Barber in 2020, and when the NG project started in 2022, we had not yet had time to explore this work with audiences or to consider how we might support its interpretation. It is one of the few works by Gérard still surviving or known to be fully attributed to her. Inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch painting the work raises a multitude of questions: who are the depicted figures? What is their relationship? How do the objects depicted represent the woman’s status and trade? What does it say about the place of women in society?

The NG project also provided the opportunity to look beyond Gérard, and further explore issues of gender in The Barber’s collection. As part of this we collaborated with Jane Nicol, then Associate Professor of Adult Nursing at the University of Birmingham, a registered nurse, and nurse-in-residence at the Barber for our Barber Health programme. [4] With Jane we explored the theme of patience and the proverbial phrase ‘patience is a virtue’.[5] This spurred a discussion about gender roles within parenthood and professional environments, informed by Jane’s role as a healthcare professional.

In late 2022, I approached Round Lemon, a Birmingham based art collective that focuses on emerging artists, collaborating with others, and encouraging creativity through learning. Round Lemon’s Andreea, Bethan, and Carmela quickly gave energy to the project and began to shape it. Using the NG project as a starting point, they quickly generated ideas about how we might research The Barber’s women artists, examine the social and cultural environments that they lived in, and give voice to their stories.

Q: How did you use co-production in the Gender Gap project?

FK: The Gender Gap involved public workshops and the creation of a new collaborative resource that audiences could use to interrogate disparities in the representation of gender in the gallery space [figs.2 and 3]. Co-production was key to these activities, empowering different voices and giving a platform for different perspectives and ideas. Traditional spaces like The Barber often feel inaccessible to many people and I believe it’s my role as a learning and engagement professional to support others in gaining access to the gallery, our research, and our resources. Over the past two years, The Gender Gap has engaged a wide spectrum of audiences: adult groups, university students and staff, artist collaborators, artist educators, and school students, in the hope that it will bring a multitude of perspectives to the project. [fig.4] Without co-production the work wouldn’t have felt so creative, fluid, or encouraged such pathways of possibility.

To support co-production, I wanted to make sure there was sufficient time and space for collaborators to develop and talk through ideas, access artwork together, and create shared documents: something which is often overlooked during these projects. For example, when we planned group work or events, we made sure that we organised workshops at different times and on different days in the hope that students or working adults might be able to attend easily.

Creative processes and making are also important to me and I feel that encouraging people to make or respond visually can be the most important thing in co-creation/production. We’re currently working to create a publication of all the school students’ artworks which will include their voices, responses and reflections from the wider schools project. 

Q: What challenges did you encounter during the Gender Gap project?

FK: There are always challenges with co-production, but I like to rename them as ‘areas of opportunity’. For me, one ‘opportunity’ was that this work relied on funding, and I was lucky with a successful audiences’ grant, generously funded by West Midlands Museum Development, that allowed the schools' engagement and development work to take place.

Another ‘opportunity’ was that, at the time, research around The Barber’s women artists was limited, and it took some time to unearth material and connect things together. Equally, we had to carefully consider how to make the information accessible to the public – was the website the best way? Should we make all the resources digital? We were competing with gallery closures and other programming commitments. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but this isn’t necessarily a barrier. As a learning professional you’re used to adapting content for different audiences and asking lots of questions. I’m naturally very reflective, so I think my love of collaborating and working with people allows me to not let everything feel ‘finished?’ at a certain point and to keep developing the work.

Q: What are the outcomes of the Gender Gap project?

FK: Round Lemon, the artists, and all involved felt invested in the potential legacy of this project. This bought up a lot of questions about outcomes: How can we create an offer as part of our schools’ programme that highlights women artists? How could we influence the school curriculum and which artists are celebrated and studied? Could this influence how we might work with women artists in the future or any further collection acquisitions?

Our work on the Gender Gap inspired the development of a large school project in Autumn 2023. With the support of teachers and students from George Dixon Academy and artist-educator Polly Brant we adapted the Gender Gap resources into workshops, where secondary school students applied questions and perspectives on the gender gap to their everyday life and their school curriculum. This has led to the creation of new resources for our core Barber School programme, as well as a change in curriculum focus for George Dixon Academy to include more women artists in their lessons, and new interpretation and research around key works in our collection.

The project has brought a lot of energy to inspire more collaborative and co-produced projects across our whole programme, and I hope these will begin to influence how we work curatorially and with research. It would be amazing to think we could make a positive impact on the galleries, highlighting more of the hidden stories within The Barber’s collection.

Q: What does co-production look like to you?

FK: I always enjoy projects and working with the collection, particularly when I’m working with artists to either reinterpret or reframe it, as this allows me to access research in an engaging way that connects with others. Co-production within the Gender Gap project meant giving space to artist collaborators by asking how they wanted to work with the collection and what they were interested in. It felt important for me to support and connect them with different audiences they might not usually have access to in The Barber community, such as adult groups, or university and school students, so they could also be collaborators. For me, it’s never about the number of people we engage with, or about specific set outputs, it's about creating space for something to feel genuinely collaborative and inspiring.

Q: To what extent is traditional curatorial or art-historical research useful to co-production projects?

FK: I think this links back to what I was saying earlier about how spaces like The Barber can feel inaccessible to many people. Especially being part of a university campus, as the concept of academic research can feel quite abstract or intimidating to many. But curatorial and academic research were vital to this project, and we worked hard to facilitate this. For example, we worked with the curatorial team to offer our collaborating artists access to object files and research resources as well as support with the formal processes around curatorial study.

Notes

[1] The Gender Gap, online zine, https://barber.org.uk/round-lemon-the-gender-gap/, [accessed March 2024]

[2] Women artists represented in the Barber collection: Elisabeth Frink, Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Gwendolen Mary John, Käthe Kollwitz, Magdalena van de Passe, Marguerite Gérard, Maria Tassaert, Rosalba Carriera, Tess Jaray, Lotte Laserstein

[3] Susanna Avery‐Quash, Helen Cobby, Jane Nicol, and Flora Kay, ‘Patience’, in Susanna Avery‐Quash (ed.) et al, Fruits of the Spirit: Art from the Heart, London, 2022. Digital Edition https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/research-resources/exhibition-catalogues/fruits-of-the-spirit-art-from-the-heart/patience [accessed March 2024]

[4] Barber Health is the Barber’s flagship programme, supporting research and programmes connecting audiences to the collection through arts, health, and wellbeing.

[5] Avery‐Quash, Cobby, Nicol, and Kay, (2022)