Chapel Gallery and Link, Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, TR1 2SJ
Tuesday 30 January – Saturday 18 May 2024
In the early 1980s David Heseltine, then Head of Art at Truro School, found himself frustrated that the independent status of the school barred it from borrowing artworks from the Cornwall Council Schools Art Collection. He was convinced that the school should begin its own Collection in order that generations of students might learn from looking at the real thing. Today, the Collection encompasses nearly 300 artworks representing a veritable A-Z of late 20th and early 21st century artists, the majority of whom lived and worked in Cornwall and some of whom attained international recognition.
The Collection is rarely seen, and it is only the second time that the Collection has featured in an exhibition at the Royal Cornwall Museum in forty years. The exhibition draws from David’s unique personal archive and anecdotal reminiscences that amplify the personal generosity of the many artists whom he visited in their studios who either gifted to the Collection or whom he purchased from. Iconic artworks from the St Ives and West Penwith/Newlyn halls of fame and Falmouth Art School tutors and alumni range across the widest of subject matter and spectrum of media as befits a ‘living’ teaching resource.
The Collection is unusually well gender-balanced and alongside Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Bryan Pearce and Breon O’Casey you will find works by Kate Nicholson, Margot Maeckelburghe, Daphne McClure, Sandra Blow and Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham as well as discovering artists whose work you might not know so well.
The Museum is open Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 4pm (admission charges apply when entering the Museum)
