More finds from the nearby Roman settlement of Tripontium, recently donated by Rugby Archaeological Society who excavated the site over a forty year period.
𝐔𝐍𝐕𝐄𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐃: The Rugby Art Collection in Full
In this unique exhibition, every artwork from the extensive Rugby Collection is brought together in a rare and powerful moment in the life of the collection.
The exhibition presents over 250 works spanning eight decades of modern and contemporary British art.
With works by internationally recognised figures such as Paula Rego, Lucian Freud, L.S. Lowry, Lubaina Himid and Gillian Wearing, as well as quieter, surprising works from less celebrated artists in their formative periods, this exhibition offers an encounter with a carefully curated collection like no other.
Born in the aftermath of the Second World War, the Rugby Art Collection was shaped not by private wealth but by civic belief. The conviction that art belongs to everyone and has a vital role in public life.
UNVEILED traces post-war optimism, shifting social values and emerging voices – in a collection built on courage and long-term vision rather than fashion or fame.
To find our more, please visit: https://www.ragm.co.uk/unveiled-the-rugby-collection
Art Talk – Laughter and Loss: British Artists in World War Two
To coincide with this exhibition, we are hosting a series of Art Talks focusing on artists with works that feature in our Collection.
Join us from 6.30pm – 8pm, £5 per ticket. Refreshments served from 6pm
Laughter and Loss: British Artists in World War Two
James RussellThursday 19 March
Explore the remarkable achievements of Britain’s official war artists with a lecturer who has curated major exhibitions on two of them: Eric Ravilious (1903-42) and Edward Bawden (1903-89).When Kenneth Clark set up the War Artists scheme in 1939, he hoped to employ British artists and keep them safe. In this wide-ranging lecture we follow the fortunes of those chosen, from Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Edward Ardizzone to Laura Knight, Stanley Spencer and Graham Sutherland. We will see how the experience of war inspired different artists, examine some of the striking artworks created during the conflict, and commemorate the lives of those who did not come home.
To book, please visit: http://ragm.co.uk/unveiled-the-rugby-collection
Art Talk – Barbara Hepworth: Drawing and a particular kind of ‘bite’
To coincide with this exhibition, we are hosting a series of Art Talks focusing on artists with works that feature in our Collection.
Join us from 6.30pm – 8pm, £5 per ticket. Refreshments served from 6pm
Barbara Hepworth: Drawing and a particular kind of ‘bite’
Dr Stephen FeekeThursday 16 April
Being primarily a carver of stone and wood, Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) liked to draw on surfaces that had ‘bite’, which she scraped and rubbed as if they were a sculpture. Until relatively recently, Hepworth’s paintings and drawings have been comparatively neglected aspects of her practice amongst scholars and curators. Yet working in two dimensions was fundamental to Hepworth’s œuvre and she produced more than 500 examples at various moments across her career, including some of the most inventive and surprising pieces she ever made. Starting with Ruby’s Three Groups of Figures on a Pink Ground (1949), in this lecture I shall focus on some such examples from the various thematic groups Hepworth explored, including figurative life studies, abstractions and landscapes and will consider how they related to her main preoccupations and concerns.
To book, please visit: http://ragm.co.uk/unveiled-the-rugby-collection
Art Talk – Seeing Ways: Artist Chris Orr in Conversation with Richard Davey
To coincide with this exhibition, we are hosting a series of Art Talks focusing on artists with works that feature in our Collection.
Join us from 6.30pm – 8pm, £5 per ticket. Refreshments served from 6pm
Seeing Ways
Artist Chris Orr in conversation with Richard DaveyThursday 14 May
Sketchbooks offer a fascinating insight into an artist’s working practice. More than a finished work, they can reveal the disparate ways an artist translates what they see or imagine into a visual language where a grammar of marks and colours stand for movement, time, space and physical presence.Join the writer Dr Richard Davey and the artist Chris Orr RA, in a conversation that will explore this visual language and discuss how Chris’s use of it in his drawings and prints brings insights and meanings that expand and contribute to his distinctive narratives.Dr Richard Davey is a Senior Research Fellow in Historical and Critical studies at Nottingham School of Art and Design. He is an internationally published author on art, having contributed to catalogues on Anselm Kiefer and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and written books on Tess Jaray RA, Anthony Whishaw RA and Leonard McComb RA.
To book, please visit: http://ragm.co.uk/unveiled-the-rugby-collection
Art Talk – Alexander Adams
To coincide with 𝐔𝐍𝐕𝐄𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐃, we are hosting a series of Art Talks focusing on artists with works that feature in our Collection.
Meet the artist 1.30pmTalk 2-3pm
Tickets £5
Artist Alexander Adams Saturday 23 May
Alexander Adams talks about his two pictures in RAGM’s collection, giving insight into his working process and career. Adams has been an artist for 30 years after studying at Goldsmiths, College, London. He has lived in London and Berlin and has works in museums around the world.
To book, please visit: http://ragm.co.uk/unveiled-the-rugby-collection
Art Talk – Hettie Inness in Conversation with Jo Baring
To coincide with this exhibition, we are hosting a series of Art Talks focusing on artists with works that feature in our Collection.
Join us from 6.30pm – 8pm, £5 per ticket. Refreshments served from 6pm
Hettie Inness
In conversation with Jo BaringThursday 4 June
To book, please visit: http://ragm.co.uk/unveiled-the-rugby-collection
100 Years of Rugby Radio
100 Years of Rugby Radio celebrates the centenary of the station and featuring a treasure trove of items from the museum’s social history collection.
Rugby Radio Station became operational on 1 January 1926, with its GBR transmitter – then the most powerful radio transmitter in the world – sending news broadcasts and telegrams across the globe.
A year later, the station started transmitting the iconic time signal ‘pips’ from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and launched the world’s first transatlantic telephone service – with calls costing £15 for the first three minutes (the equivalent of more than £600 today).
During the Second World War, Rugby Radio Station operatives supported the RAF during bombing missions in Germany before the post-war telecommunications boom saw the radio station expand in the 1950s, with its total of 57 transmitters making it the biggest station in the world.
Technological advances led to the station’s GBR transmitter being decommissioned in 2003 and four years later all transmissions from the station came to an end.
Now home to Houlton – named after the town in Maine, USA, which received the first transatlantic telephone call – the developers incorporated Rugby Radio Station’s grade II listed ‘C’ building into Houlton School.
100 Years of Rugby Radio opens at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum’s local history gallery on Wednesday 15 April, featuring apparatus, models and images from the station dating back to 1926.