If you associate art galleries with stuffy, silent rooms of drab oil paintings of long-dead men, or of pretentious luvvies who judge your every micro-expression, or of spending a fortune to see weird stuff you don’t understand, I have some excellent news for you: it doesn’t have to be like that!
My parents meant well in this respect, but a childhood of being dragged around long rooms of the aforementioned dead-men oil paintings put me off galleries for a lot of my adulthood.
My dad seemed to spend an eternity looking at every picture, and reading every information card, while we were only allowed to communicate in whispers.
I couldn’t see the appeal of any of it.
Why on earth would I seek that out when I had the freedom of young adulthood and could make my own choices about where to go and what to do?
Then, just as I realised it didn’t have to be like that, a new fear dawned. What if I turned up and everybody else understood the deep significance of a stroke of paint, or the profound hidden meaning in a squidge of clay, and I didn’t?
It would surely be clear to everybody that I didn’t belong there. It wasn’t for people like me.
This became another reason to avoid galleries. I didn’t want to have to whisper and look at identical dead old white men, and I didn’t want to show myself up as a heathen with no sense of appreciation.
It all sounded a lot like hard work, frankly. Expensive hard work, at that.
Thankfully, a few years ago now, I got over myself. A friend suggested we go to an exhibition and I didn’t have a good reason to say no. Especially once she’d assured me there wouldn’t be a single dusty oil painting in the place.
I was surprised and really, really pleased to learn that things have changed. Dead-men oils still exist, and pretentious wankers still exist, but lots of art – and lots of galleries, and lots of exhibitions – have truly shaken off that mantel.
Instead, they are bright, colourful, vibrant, joyous places. They are welcoming, they love the fact that you’ve bothered to come whether you have a working knowledge of art history and colour theory or not, and there is so much more variety than I could have imagined.
Since then, I have filled my proverbial boots with exhibitions. Especially since discovering that many are free, which means I take more chances on things I may not love.
The truth is that art exhibitions are varied and some will hit the spot while others don’t. There are still places that may not feel welcoming, or that may feel tedious, but there are so many now that are bright and airy and innovative and revolutionary.
In the last couple of years alone, I’ve been to exhibitions about the queer history of my city, about Georgia O’Keeffe, about slugs, about industry, about the Flower Fairies, and about all kinds of floral deliciousness. I’ve even had my own art in an exhibition of disabled artists’ work.
Art isn’t always about going to a special hall on a special day, sometimes it’s a local artist’s watercolours on the wall of your favourite cafe, or seeing what your local library has on display.
The Millennium Galleries in Sheffield is attached to the Winter Garden, a glass house in the city centre that’s full of exotic plants. This proximity – and it all being free – does more to make art feel accessible to the public than most things; on a rainy day, you go into the Winter Garden to take shelter and wander into the Galleries while you’re there. It’s friendly and welcoming and far more inclusive than exclusionary.
Speaking of accessibility, though, I have referenced it so far in terms of whether people feel allowed to see the art – whether we feel it’s for us, or for people like us.
But disabled access can be a depressingly significant concern when trying to visit art galleries, too. This afternoon, in fact, I headed to a gallery that looked interesting and found that there was no way for me, as a disabled person, to get into it. Pricing at certain galleries can make art financially inaccessible, and crowds or lighting or inconsiderate planning can all be major barriers that create a gulf between people who can access art, and people who can’t.
But just like museums are (mercifully!) a very different experience these days to how they were when I was a child and nothing was allowed to be touched and nobody could speak too loudly, art galleries and exhibitions are a different beast now, too, and if one doesn’t float your boat, another definitely will. And that is a wonderful thing.
Images: Philippa Willitts