Ceredigion Museum’s ground-breaking ‘Sheep’ exhibition has been shortlisted for the Museums & Heritage Awards 2020 ‘Temporary or Touring Exhibition’ category.
Ceredigion Museum is the only museum of the six shortlisted that’s located outside London. The Museum will be up against stiff competition, including the Royal Collection Trust’s ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Life in Drawings’ and Tate’s ‘Steve McQueen Year 3’ exhibitions. The winner will be announced at a virtual ceremony on the 22 September.
Catrin Miles, Councillor Catherine Hughes, Cabinet Member with responsibility for Porth Ceredigion, Early Intervention, Well-being Hubs and Culture said: “I am delighted that Ceredigion Museum have been shortlisted for this award, and against fantastic other museums located in London. All staff at Ceredigion Museum should be incredibly proud of their hard work. This is a tremendous achievement!”
Carrie Canham, Curator of Ceredigion Museum, said “We’re thrilled beyond words, we’re so proud of this achievement and I’m particularly pleased for my colleague Alice Briggs, Assistant Curator, who curated the exhibition. But she couldn’t have done it without the support of the whole team of staff, volunteers and project funders and partners, so it’s a feather in all of our caps.”
The exhibition, which ran between April and June 2019, looked at the history, heritage and culture of sheep farming communities and their wider relationship with the land and landscape in Wales. It represented a huge gear change for the museum by being the first to feature high value loans from a national institution, thanks to grant funded upgrades in security. It included three Henry Moore drawings and other artworks from Tate, which offered an exciting opportunity to see Welsh artists exhibit their work alongside internationally significant works of art as well as Ceredigion’s own collection. Contributing Welsh artists included Ffion Jones, Miranda Whall, Christine Mills, Morag Colqhuon, Carwyn Evans, Marian Delyth and Short and Forward.
The exhibition was accompanied by the ‘Future Landscapes’ symposium, which brought together artists, curators, academics, farmers, environmentalists and others to discuss the issues around the heritage and future of Ceredigion’s uplands. The legacy of this ground-breaking event is ongoing; the Museum hosts monthly ‘Peoples’ Practice’ meetings, virtually during lockdown, to keep the dialogue open.
The exhibition was supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund; created by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Art Fund, the Weston Loan Programme is the first ever UK-wide funding scheme to enable smaller and local authority museums to borrow works of art and artefacts from national collections. Further funding was provided by Arts Council of Wales, The Ferryman Project: Sharing Works of Art which is supported by National Lottery players through the Heritage Lottery Fund, the John Ellerman Foundation and Art Fund.
