Art and collections

Glyndebourne curates an ambitious year-round exhibitions programme of contemporary art that draws together art and music, alongside displays of unique archival material from the collection.

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 collectable covers. Concurrently, Glyndebourne began an onsite exhibitions programme that presents artists commissioned for the Festival Programme, supporting established and emerging artists within Britain.

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).