No concessions: Caruso St. John's New Art Gallery, Walsall
1 / 2How on earth did it come to be here? It would not exist at all, were it not for the fact that since 1975, Walsall has possessed the Garman Ryan collection - a personal collection of fine and ethnic art donated to the borough by Kathleen Garman - born nearby, widow of the sculptor Jacob Epstein - and her friend, the sculptor Sally Ryan. It is a relatively small, eclectic, collection, but everyone from Durer to Lucien Freud, via Van Gogh and Monet, is there, often in the form of intimate sketches. The new gallery takes this collection as its kernel, and adds big new temporary exhibition galleries, and large education and studio spaces, to the permanent collection. Thus, an art gallery of regional and national importance has been born - since it has also just been named as one of the Tate Gallery's new regional partners, with access to the Tate's massive collection.
All this is due to the drive of the gallery's director, Peter Jenkinson, and to the borough itself - which has displayed a rare degree of cross-party political unity and fund-raising nous to get it funded. Architect and director - Peter St. John and Peter Jenkinson - are both very single-minded people, amiable yet dogged, thoroughly disinclined to accept second-best. If you ask the architect whether he had to go through the usual soul-destroying cost-cutting exercises, he just says no. "Peter Jenkinson wanted the best," he says. Unusually, he got it.
Nor has this radical building been particularly controversial. Maybe everyone has got tired of dumb knitting-pattern brickwork everywhere. Maybe there's a return of the old notion of civic pride. As both Peters point out, the last time there was an important architectural competition in Walsall was for the town hall in 1902, a costly and well-made building. From then until the late 1990s, Walsall always got second or third rate architecture. That has changed, for now.
A lot of the emphasis of the new gallery will be on educational work for children - they get their own self-contained two-storey section, fitted out by designer Ben Kelly. The top-floor temporary exhibition galleries with their high-level clerestory windows are also world-class. And there is one of the highest-ceilinged restaurants to be found anywhere, right up at the top of the tower, complete with an outside roof terrace. But to appreciate the real raison d'etre of the building, you have to go to the timber-lined galleries in the middle where the Garman Ryan Collection is permanently housed.
In the Garman Ryan galleries
This part is masterly - conceived as a series of domestic-scaled rooms to house the artworks in an appropriately scaled setting. Because - rarely for a new art gallery - the building has windows, you are always aware of the town outside. The mix of natural side-lighting and artificial overhead lighting is cleverly judged. And there is a point in your progress through the building where you can pause and watch people circulating through the spaces below you. Art galleries, Jenkinson unguardedly remarks, are famous for being pick-up joints: this one should fulfil that vital talent-spotting role very nicely. Or as St. John puts it: "It was always seen as being more of a public building than as a machine for viewing art."
"We've got to regard this as just the beginning," says Jenkinson as we sit in the pub outside - which is all part of the plan, and contributes to the gallery's funds. "In the 1930s, this town had four theatres, a cinema, lots of restaurants. Now it's standard British High Street. But it's also part of the regional renaissance. It's incredible what's starting to happen."
The big provincial cities are catered for already, some better than others. But if a sub-centre like Walsall can get itself a new cultural building as significant as this one, then something really is going on. If Jenkinson's exhibitions like his opening show, "Blue" - dealing with manifestations of that colour across the spectrum of modern art - fail to draw the crowds, then Walsall's excellent new gallery will go down in history as one of the most deserving white elephants ever. But I hope Jenkinson is right. I hope this is just the beginning.
