TWO connected art galleries in Penzance and Newlyn have been chosen as partners in a special venture with the Tate.
Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange, Penzance, were among 18 galleries picked to be part of Plus Tate, launched at Tate Modern by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt recently.
Director James Green said: "We may be one of the smallest but it's an honour to be one of the 18 of the most dynamic art organisations in the UK chosen to be part of this new major collaborative arts initiative.
"Being among the big boys can only be of benefit to us."
Membership ranges from the Arnolfini, Bristol and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge to the Mostyn, Llandudno and The Piers Art Centre, Orkney.
The selection comes after Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange spent the past two years working with Tate Connect, the pilot scheme for Tate Plus.
The collaborative project has explored everything from new ways of increasing generated income to the setting up of staff training and placement schemes, from the sharing of audience research to joint business models.
At the launch Mr Hunt, said: "Plus Tate is an outstanding example of initiative, creative thinking and collaboration. Its pooling of resources will benefit all concerned."
Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, added: "Plus Tate is central to Tate's vision.
"Working in partnership, collaborating closely with leading organisations that have high national and international profiles and strong links to their local communities means we can support their further development and strengthen their hand by sharing with them Tate's resources and collections."
Welcoming the proposed future collaboration rather than competition between art organisations, Mr Green, said: "As one of the founder members of the partnership we've experienced, first hand, the value of collaborating with other organisations throughout the UK and, as a result, feel much better equipped to face the challenges that we, and the whole of the arts sector, now face."
Aware of the financial cuts that will surely come, but optimistic about the future, he added: "We realise we now have to be as entrepreneurial as we possibly can be, and to this end we have recently appointed Norman Macleod as our development director. Already making a difference, despite the recession, we are currently 20 per cent up on last year."
While he admits that much of his time and energy is spent on fiscal matters he is, of course, closely involved with the programme of events at Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange, Penzance.
He is now happy to announce that, in recognition of its historical past, the focus on works to be shown in Newlyn Art Gallery in future will be on painting.
In January of next year, Newlyn Art Gallery will be hosting an exhibition with a joint purpose, that of marking the centenary of the birth of the abstract painter Roger Hilton, and the centenary of the death of the great public benefactor John Passmore Edwards whose generosity in 1895 made the building of the gallery possible.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN