Art and collections
Learn more about Glyndebourne's visual art exhibitions
Situated on a site of great architectural interest, Glyndebourne now curates year-round exhibitions of contemporary art and sculpture drawing together art and music, alongside displays of fascinating archival material drawn from the collection.
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Exhibitions programme for 2023
We are delighted to present an array of art at Glyndebourne for you to enjoy during your visit and online throughout the year. This year our exhibitions include Lubaina Himid: What Does Love Sound Like?, Staged Nature and our annual exhibition Fair Ground.
History
The publication of the first Festival Programme in 1952 encouraged the first collaborations with visual artists. Inspired by the season-long programme book of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, industrialist Miki Sekers suggested to opera manager, Moran Caplat, that something along similar lines would be ideal for Glyndebourne. Cover designs were initially created by in-house designers, from Oliver Messel and Osbert Lancaster to Hugh Casson, and often illustrated the stage sets or characters from the productions that year. More recently, eminent artists including Howard Hodgkin, Eileen Cooper, Anish Kapoor, David Hockney, Grayson Perry, Fiona Rae and Chris Ofili have created designs for these collectables covers.
As well as artists, Glyndebourne has also worked in association with galleries and curators, including a two year partnership between 2015-2017 with world-renowned contemporary art gallery, White Cube. During this time, London-based architectural studio Carmody Groarke created a temporary structure on site that housed temporary exhibitions of works by Georg Baselitz (2015), Raqib Shaw (2016) and Rachel Kneebone (2017).
Gallery 94
Gallery 94 is Glyndebourne’s purpose-built exhibition gallery. Renamed in 2019 in honour of the building’s foundation year, the gallery presents an annual programme of curated contemporary exhibitions and displays that are open during the Festival season. The gallery is well known for exhibiting the work of British artists, from celebrated figures such as Mary Fedden OBE and Ken Howard OBE RA to works by local Sussex-based painters and printmakers. As the gallery grows and develops, it continues to commission work on a yearly basis that reflects on Glyndebourne’s history and culture. This year it has also introduced an exhibition catalogue for the first time. All works are for sale through the Glyndebourne Shop.
Sculpture
The gardens and walkways of the theatre building have always been home to sculpture and numerous leading sculptors have had works exhibited on-site, including Peter Randall-Page, Tony Cragg, Barry Flanagan, Anthony Gormley, Lucy Unwin, Nick Hornby and Nicholas Hare.
Alongside temporary installations, the grounds also feature a number of permanent sculptures. The horse head sculpture near the box office is by Nic Fiddian-Green. The diver by the lake is by Carol Peace and has the title ‘Possibly’. Finally, ‘Draped Reclining Woman’ by the pioneering 20th-century sculptor Henry Moore, has been on long-term loan from the Tate since 1994 and can be seen in the Figaro Garden.
Image: Halima Cassell sculptures in the gardens during Festival 2021, photo by Ben McKee