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What's OnExhibitions: Past
Flourish: At the FoundlingWednesday 26 May – Sunday 4 July 2010 This summer the Foundling Museum is exhibiting the finest and most exciting examples of works submitted through the Flourish programme. Curated by Beatty Hallas, Flourish was set up in 2006 as a response to the frustration voiced by looked-after artists about the lack of opportunity to show their work. It is a showcase for young artists to express themselves and challenge preconceptions of the care system.
The works displayed vary in subject matter and medium, from photography to mosaic to poetry and the age of artists represented range from 6 to 25 years old. Since 2006 Flourish has continued to champion looked-after artists’ works, inspire creativity and celebrate such colourful talent hoping to encourage confidence and skills toward creative careers.
Holding a new exhibition each year, Flourish was the first national programme to promote artwork by young people with such a diverse history of care. A Flourish board was set up in 2006 with artists, now including those involved in the first show, who select artworks for new shows and advise on policy. It asks artists to make a formal application, giving details about their work and submitting an artist's statement highlighting aspirations and telling their story. This surprising and imaginative artwork is featured in a full colour catalogue. Mat Collishaw, Tracey Emin & Paula Rego: At the FoundlingWednesday 27 January 2010– Sunday 9 May 2010 This exhibition brings together these three remarkable artists for the first time. Each artist is internationally known for responses to pain and anguish associated with aspects of childhood, motherhood, abortion and loss. Now exhibiting together in the unique and intimate surroundlings of the Foundling Museum, the artists have engaged in a dramatic visual dialogue relating to the story and themes of the Museum, which memorialises Britain's first home for abandoned children.
Tracey Emin’s series of discarded baby items cast in bronze and originally shown as part of the Folkestone Triennale in 2008 make an extraordinarily powerful and autobiographical references to loss. Equally provoking are Mat Collishaw’s presentation of a photographic series depicting Indian street children with eighteenth-century backdrops, including a lightbox image and a new snowdome work and Paula Rego’s life size figures of waif- like girls and babies depicting the violation and fall of young women.
This unique exhibition continues the legacy begun by William Hogarth in the eighteenth century inviting leading artists of the day to show new work at the Foundling, raising awareness of society’s failings towards vulnerable children and mothers. Terry Smith: The FoundlingWednesday 7 October 2009– Sunday 3 January 2010 The Foundling is a multi-discipline, video and sound installation by the artist Terry Smith, which opened at the Foundling Museum on Wednesday 7 October 2009. This major new work was commissioned by Gill Hedley for the Foundling Museum’s contemporary art programme.
The Foundling is constructed in a series of individual and related sequences that have been developed through a series of live performances that have taken place over the last year. Lost and Found for Tete a Tete Opera Festival was shown at the Riverside Studios in August 2008; Hide and Seek – a promenade piece was performed at the Foundling Museum in April 2009 and Sticks AND STONES at St Georges Church, Venice, at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
The installation is presented in the form of a series of video pieces displayed in the dedicated Exhibition Gallery and a sound work, STRING, installed on the original eighteenth century staircase. Smith has also created series of photographs taken at Ashlyns School, formerly the Foundling Hospital that closed in 1956, exhibited in the café space. Using found images and sounds as well as deconstructed scores by Handel and Vivaldi, the foundling plays with ideas of the hidden and the lost. In a year which celebrates Baroque music this piece acknowledged the active contributions that Handel and Vivaldi both made to institutions in London and Venice respectively, dedicated to giving vulnerable and destitute children a second chance at life.
The Foundling is a collaborative project bringing together musicians, composers, sound designers and writers and cinematographers. Smith’s approach to these projects is an open collaborative process. Discussions, workshops, rehearsals and performances have enabled him to construct a work that is informed and determined by the different skills and ideas of the individuals involved. The Foundling is a unique meeting of different art forms. Crucial in this collaboration is Ian Dearden, renowned composer and sound designer, Linda Hirst (vocalist), Oliver Coates (cello), Miguel Tantos (trombone) and the cinematographer Jonathan Callery. A related publication contains new texts by writer Mel Gooding.
Produced by Clare Fitzpatrick for workinprogress, The Foundling is supported by The Foundling Museum, The Arts Council of England and The Foyle Foundation, The University of the Arts, Wimbledon.
Terry Smith was awarded the prestigious 2008 Paul Hamlyn Award to Artists. His work was featured in this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, where he was invited to show a video work in a room curated by the artist Richard Wilson. Forthcoming shows will be a solo retrospective curated by David Thorp at the John Hansard Gallery, early 2011. He is currently the Drawing Fellow at the Wimbledon College of Art (2008/10).
In the PictureThursday 30 July to Sunday 27 September Entrance is free with museum admission Disabled children have long been almost invisible in illustrated children’s literature. “In the Picture” is a pioneering Big Lottery-funded campaign set up by national disability charity Scope to address this issue. The result is a vibrant exhibition of works by children’s book illustrators such as Quentin Blake and Jane Ray, who colourfully represent young characters with a variety of abilities, and challenge preconceptions of disability. The exhibition is accompanied by displays of artwork by children, including autistic pupils from TreeHouse School.
FlourishTuesday 7 July to Sunday 19 July 2009 Following two years of this fantastic project coming to the Foundling Museum, Flourish returns showcasing artworks by looked-after children and young people. This initiative provides looked-after artists with a chance to show their work and the public a colourful exhibition containing artworks of a variety of media. Handel the PhilanthropistFriday 16 January - Sunday 28 June 2009 "An inspiring exhibition" Richard Morrison, Critic's Choice in The Times The composer George Frideric Handel was one of the noted philanthropists of the eighteenth century using his reputation as the leading composer to support charitable causes. He was a benefactor of the Foundling Hospital, Britain’s first home for abandoned and illegitimate babies, giving regular benefit performances of Messiah in the Hospital chapel to raise significant sums of money to support the children and making the Hospital a beneficiary of his will. The Foundling is marking the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death (14 April 1759) with the exhibition Handel the Philanthropist. The exhibition is one of only two planned in London for this important anniversary and will focus on his charitable life, drawing the parallel between the eighteenth century and our own times, when philanthropy is again a significant force for social change and an activity with which individuals wish to become involved. The exhibition will draw on the rich holdings of the Gerald Coke Handel Collection at the Foundling Museum, which includes Handel’s will, with a loan from the Royal Society of Musicians of manuscript documents and art works rarely seen by the public. There will also be manuscripts and art works from the British Library; the Royal College of Music; the library of King’s College, Cambridge; the London Metropolitan Archives, the Royal Collection and the National Portrait Gallery. Items from the Foundling Museum’s collection that will be on display include the fair copy of Messiah that Handel left to the Hospital in his will as well as the modern musical chairs that visitors can relax in, listening to different pieces and genres of music by Handel. 2009 is a significant year for Baroque music; in addition to celebrating the life of Handel it is also the 350th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s birth. The Foundling has already been used as a film venue for a significant number of programmes to be broadcast at the time of these anniversaries. The Museum is a partner of the Baroque 09 group of cultural venues and organisations celebrating the Baroque era which includes the Victoria and Albert Museum, Handel House Museum, BBC Radio 3, Royal Opera House and The Sixteen who will also be performing at the Foundling during the exhibition. Handel the Philanthropist and the exhibition’s associated activities will be the most significant celebration dedicated to Handel highlighting his musical achievements as well as his personal contributions to social welfare and charitable causes. The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of diverse and exciting events which will include a fantastic programme of talks to support the exhibition, including gallery talks and lectures by leading Handel scholars. There will be numerous concerts and performances of Handel music by leading guest performers including several events as part of the London Handel Festival. A facsimile publication of Handel’s will, which includes a large number of bequests including those to the Foundling and the Decay’d Musicians, will be published during 2009 by the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation. John Kindness : An English InteriorWednesday 8 October - Wednesday 31 December 2008 Belfast artist John Kindness makes very strong tea these days; “...about 6 or 7 teabags in a half pot is sufficient.” He is preparing for his first solo show in England at London’s Foundling Museum. The tea is not for keeping him awake but is used to stain the large sheets of paper he is preparing for ‘An English Interior’, an installation resembling an 18th century wallpapered room. However this is no period reconstruction; the unmistakeable figure of Desperate Dan can be clearly discerned among the wreckage of a school he has just succeeded in blowing up. In a scene taken from a Hogarth engraving a woman is revived with smelling salts as she gives birth to a litter of rabbits. Dudley Watkins who created Desperate Dan and William Hogarth who gives us our definitive image of 18th century London, are among Kindness’s artistic mentors; “...they both have a genius for turning total chaos into brilliant pictorial order.” There will also be original works by Dudley Watkins on display, rarely available to the public kindly loaned by DC Thomson the Scottish publishers who produced the Dandy comic books in which Desperate Dan appeared. The Dandy and Desperate Dan are both celebrating their 70th year. Morris Heggie, the Editor of the Dandy from 1986 to 2006 summed up the comic strip character saying, “Desperate Dan was beyond strong, he was a force of nature, yet he had a great innocence. One morning he would defeat the massed Apaches with a frying pan, the next he would have trouble shaving”.
John Kindness has recently been commissioned to design the mosaics for St. Patrick's chapel at Westminster Cathedral, and is currently working with RIBA award winning architects Twenty Two Over Seven on a monument to the late George Best in central Belfast. An English Interior was curated by Gill Hedley. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Giuseppe Fioroni: Myths Fairy Tale, Reality and IllusionThursday 19 June - Sunday 14 September 2008 An exhibition of colourful works by Italian artist Giuseppe Fioroni, this show is a celebration of childhood fantasy inspired by the medieval age and Modern masters. Paintings of oil and multimedia on canvas express Fioroni's fascination with personal themes of Umbrian tradition, religion and folklore spanning the last thirty years. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Secret StaircaseTuesday 8 April - Saturday 14 June 2008 A collaboration between artist Caroline Isgar and writer Michele Roberts inspired by the tokens at the Museum, exploring the abandonment, loss and grief felt by an adult daughter as her mother goes through the process of dying. The resulting artists' book includes a sequence of rewritten nursery rhymes, and a woodcut block inspired by the tables from the refectory of the Foundling Hospital. The book was exhibited with the wood block, the original artwork and the text. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Where I Live: A collection of art by children around the world.Thursday 27 March - Thursday 3 April 2008 The children have taken pictures no visitor could get, because their subjects are themselves, their families and their friends. The results have an intimacy, familiarity and humour that give real insights into their lives. Artworks in this exhibition are for sale. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Thursday 6 - Saturday 22 March 2008 This is the second year that the Foundling Museum is showing a selection of works submitted through the Flourish programme. This exhibition celebrates the creative output of young people who have been in care; a showcase for young artists to express themselves and challenge preconceptions of the care system. Flourish is not a competition but aims to encourage artists to partake in creative activities and challenge the mindset that prevents them from doing so. All of the artists included in this exhibition have been cared for in some way; some are cared for by grandparents, some are residents of care homes, some have been young offenders and some have foster carers or are adopted. The works displayed vary in subject matter and medium and the age of artists represented range from 6 to 26 years old. The initiative started in 2006 as a one-off exhibition and has grown to incorporate a board of artists, including those involved in the first show to select pieces for this exhibition. Flourish 2006 was the first national exhibition to include works by young people with such a diverce experience of care and has continued to champion their works and inspire creativity and emotional responses to the issues dealt with through these collections of works. It is therefore fitting that the Foundling Museum is the venue for this exhibition, continuing in its tradition as the first public showcase for art in Britain, established to raise awareness of children in care through creative endeavour. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Handel and the Crystal Palace23 November 2007 - 2 March 2008This exhibition explores the development of the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace in the nineteenth century and the major role they played in the cultural life of nineteenth-century Britain. Handel was the first composer in Britain to be celebrated with major commemorative concerts, first in 1784 (believed to be the centenary of his birth) and again in 1834. In the 1850s preparations were made for a celebration to mark 100 years since Handel’s death in 1759. The opening of the Crystal Palace as a major cultural venue in the same decade provided an opportunity for Victorian Britain to celebrate their adopted composer on a grander scale than had been possible in the past, and also marked the start of a Handel Festival tradition which was to last well into the twentieth century.
The Crystal Palace was originally built for the ‘Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations’. Six million people visited the exhibition – equivalent to about a third of the population of Britain at the time – and its image and reputation were well-known from contemporary publications. The building in Hyde Park was later moved and re-erected in a greatly enlarged form at Sydenham in south London, in an area that was renamed Crystal Palace; it was eventually destroyed by fire in 1936. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Foundling Tales20 November to 31 December 2007 in the Coram Cafe and online galleryThe poet Subhadassi was The Foundling Museum’s writer-in-residence throughout September – November 2007. He took stories from the museum as a starting point for his own writing, and used them to inspire local students and residents to create their own unique work, combining text, photography and performance.
Click on the links below to see a selection of work by Subhadassi, students at Westminster Kingsway College and La Sainte Union School, and young people from Somers Town involved with the project Scene and Heard.
Foundling Tales is part of the Arrivals programme – a major events programme celebrating the opening of St Pancras International and the arrival of the first Eurostar. The project was managed by literature consultancy UrbanWords. Subhadassi’s Commissioned Poem Text and Images from Westminster Kingsway College Poetry from La Sainte Union School - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - RSVP: Contemporary artists at the FoundlingSeptember - November 2007 Fifteen contemporary artists from the East of England have been invited to create works inspired by the art and social history collections at London’s Foundling Museum. Their responses – including a cascade of kinetic sculpture, a wallpaper of children’s names, and a lollipop opera based on Handel’s Foundling Anthem - will be on show in a seven-week exhibition and programme of public events this Autumn at the Foundling. The RSVP artists are Matt Cook, Tom Cox-Bisham, Lorrice Douglas, Sandra Flower, David Kefford, Simon Liddiment, Nicola Naismith, Alex Pearl, Emily Russell and Kristian De La Riva, Sarah Sabin, Rob Smith, Townley and Bradby, and Zory - Farngis Shahrokhi. They are all participants on Arts Council England East’s Escalator Visual Arts programme, initiated and developed by Commissions East. Commissions East has a track record of commissioning contemporary art in historic locations, most recently at Wymondham Abbey, Felbrigg Hall, Orford Ness, and Dunstable Downs. “The collaboration enables artists based in the East of England to work with an internationally renowned venue,” says David Wright, Director. “A previous project, Stay, in 2005 at the Great Eastern Hotel, London, involved eleven artists, such as Susan Gunn, and Richard DeDomenici, who successfully used the opportunity as a springboard for their careers.” RSVP will be the first major contemporary art show at the Foundling Museum, continuing the tradition begun by Hogarth to encourage emerging contemporary artists to submit their work for display. Gainsborough, himself from the East Anglian town of Sudbury, produced his first well-known work The Charterhouse (1748) for the original Foundling exhibition at the age of 21. Now, nearly two centuries later, we are once again bringing new artists to public attention. Throughout the exhibition there will be opportunities to engage with the artists and their work. Please see our events pages for further details. Gill Hedley, previously Director of the Contemporary Art Society, is curating the exhibition, and leading some of the tours. “I have long been fascinated by the Foundling story, not least because artists at the time the Foundling Hospital was set up – such as Hogarth and Gainsborough - supported the charity as well as cleverly creating a platform for their own works of art. It's a real pleasure for me to work with these contemporary artists to stage an exhibition which will respond in a variety of ways to the fascinating history and collections of the Foundling Museum.” Rhian Harris, Director of the Museum, sees the new works as “a powerful, contemporary counterpoint to the Foundling’s historic interiors. They will bring a new audience to the Museum, who will be both excited by the exhibition and moved by the stories of the Foundling children and the people who came to their aid.” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Foundling LivesJuly – September 2007 An exhibition focussing on the lives of four foundlings, each from a different era, providing an inside glimpse into the lives of the children cared for by the Hospital. Through photographs, film footage, artifacts and personal memories, the exhibition showed how the Hospital and attitudes about child care have changed over the centuries. Two eighteenth-century children came to life in the exhibition. The first was Paul Holton who became a successful business man and community leader and the second was Mercy Draper, a blind girl, who went on to become a successful singer before being committed to a lunatic asylum. They were followed by John Brownlow, a nineteenth-century child, believed to be the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ “kindly Mr Brownlow” in Oliver Twist. He was used as a focus for exploring Dickens’ relationship with the Foundling Hospital and the exhibition features some never-before publicly shown Dickens memorabilia. The final child of the four, Joe Ormiston came from the end of Hospital’s institutional life bringing the exhibition into living memory with an at-times difficult and heart-rending personal story. The exhibition concluded with a look at the twenty-first century and the work of the children’s charity Coram which continues the Foundling Hospital’s groundbreaking work with vulnerable children and young people. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hogarth's ChildrenMarch - July 2007 William Hogarth is most frequently associated with incisive social satire as seen in works such as his Rakes Progress, and his devotion to the Foundling Hospital may seem surprising. This exhibition examined the little known charitable aspect of Hogarth's character. Hogarth was involved as a Governor of the Foundling Hospital from the beginning. He served as an active member of the Court of Governors as well as of the General Committee. He supported the Hospital by designing the children's uniforms and the Foundling Hospital seal, acting as a foster parent for foundlings and even volunteering to inspect the conditions of the homes of wetnurses hired by the institution. Hogarth's Children provided further insight into the motivations and passions of a dynamic and remarkable man and the catalogue can still be purchased from the Museum Gift Shop. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Guercino: St Francis recoveredNovember 2006 - January 2007 This was a rare opportunity to view the recently recovered Guercino painting of Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, which was stolen from a church The painting, which had never been on display before in this country, was exhibited together with drawings and the documents relating to its finding and extensive restoration. A limited number of copies of the beautiful and fully-illustrated catalogue for this exhibition are available for sale in the Museum Gift Shop. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 12 minutes of black and whiteOctober 2006 - November 2006 An exhibition of photographs by Peter Lamb in the Coram Café. Peter Lamb’s 12 minutes of black and white comprises a dozen images from around the world, twelve moments in life.
The work is the culmination of a project exploring the aesthetic spectrum of one camera and one lens (a Leica M6 Rangefinder and a 50 mm Summicron). (Above image © Peter Lamb) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Handel's 'Giulio Cesare': From Egypt to EnglandMay 2006 - October 2006 In 1724 when Handel staged ‘Giulio Cesare in Egitto’, he presented the London audiences with a portrayal of the Roman dictator quite different to the familiar historical, Shakespearean figure. The original libretto on which the opera is based is a light-hearted affair, written for the Venice carnival season in 1676: the details of the plot, which focuses on the love affair between Caesar and Cleopatra, are largely fictional.
Handel’s score added depth to the characters, creating a more dramatic work and some of his most challenging roles, for which he enrolled a star studded cast providing them with some of his best known melodies, including ‘Piangerò’ and ‘Va tacito’. “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” was pivotal in the rediscovery of Handel’s operas in the 20th century.
© Royal Opera House Collections Numerous recent productions have gone from reconstruction of baroque staging, to dinosaurs in Munich, to the most recent Bollywood-style reading of the Glyndebourne production, which is to be revived at the 2006 Glyndebourne Festival. The exhibition traces almost 300 years of Giulio Cesare’s performance history in England through documents and images and in its historical context. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A Seven-day: Artists BookNovember 2005 - February 2006
This exhibition, the first collaboration between the Slade School of Fine Art UCL and the Foundling Museum, examines the roles of the image and the written word, bringing together artist and writer through the medium of the artists' book. Artist Caroline Isgar worked with writer Jane Borodale and artist Eddie Farrell to collaborate on this project through their shared interest in the Foundling Hospital. The project integrates Borodale's interest in both the concerns of eighteenth-century illegitimacy and the immediacy and brevity of the journal form, with Farrell's fascination with a worn brass plaque in a stretch of pavement marking a boundary of the original Foundling Hospital. The result, their Artists' Book, was launched at the Slade School of Fine Art prior to the exhibition at the Foundling Museum and further projects between the two institutions are anticipated. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Invisible imagesJune 2005 – October 2005 Invisible images is an exhibition by artist-photographer Ted Duncan. Ted was brought up in care and also lived with various foster families during the 1970’s and early 1980’s. The exhibition is an emotional journey through Ted’s childhood memories and feelings of abandonment culminating in her acceptance of herself and her ‘inner’ child. Invisible images is Ted’s family album of herself as an adult coming to terms with her childhood experiences – she has no family pictures of herself as a child and the exhibition represents her “family-less album”. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Moses in the BulrushesNovember 2004 – January 2005 |
 Saint George Legend by Giuseppe Fioroni, 1983, mixed techniques on canvas, 50x40cm @ The artist |
 The Secret Staircase, 2008, detail study for woodcut by Caroline Isgar 80cm x 290cm © the artist |
  The Return of an Officer and a Gentleman, 2007, Culture Vultures with artist Othello De'Souza-Hartley |
 Charity Schools Concert at the Crystal Palace in 1858. |
 Participants in the Foundling Tales writer in residence project, from Kingsway College. |
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in Italy in 1973 and found 25 years later in Switzerland.
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