New model art galleries
With prices soaring in London both for art storage and gallery space, a new model is emerging in South Kensington. Managing Director of Cromwell Place, Preston Benson has attracted investment to a renovation project, turning a terrace of Victorian houses into an art gallery hub with a difference. Architects Buckley Gray Yeoman have been commissioned to turn the project into reality.
Flexible rental of gallery space plus rooms where a community can be forged are essential elements of this new gallery concept. Museums are also being encouraged to display collections, where non-traditional approaches are married to equal standards of presentation in the best of galleries.
Preston has been speaking at our 'Art, Investment and Cities' Forum recently held at RIBA in London and joined a panel with Charles Saumarez Smith, Chief Executive of the RA, debating the rehabilitation of traditional cultural quarters in the West End.
With so much attention to the well deserved emergence of a strong creative industry in the East of London, some commentators have remarked that efforts need to go towards supporting cultural activity in the west of the capital.
Preston received high-level interest at the forum on this new business model from the audience of developers, museum leaders and city council heads of culture.
Perspective rear view of Cromwell Place (Buckley Gray Yeoman)