John Hansard Gallery has moved to the city centre and has become... Well, a disaster.
It's as though some poor, first year student took a course on museum creation and thought "Yeah, that's what a gallery is supposed to look like, right?". As it is, the only artist actually on display right now is Gerhard Richter, a muddled artist whose style suggests pretentious amateurism rather thank skill and beauty. Rarely have I seen so much ugly art in one place; be it his muddled tapestries, or the way his blurs produce unsightly colours and forms.
Obviously you shouldn't judge a gallery on one artist, but as his is the only art there, it's fair to say this gallery is not very good. Not only that, but the general assembly of the place is muddled and all over the place. The "mezzanine gallery" is just the landing for the stairwell, and just has some news articles and video about Richter on one side. Then, moving upstairs, we continue to find that there's just very little art here at all. Huge rooms with only a few pieces in them (maybe one piece per massive wall), and out of place wooden benches placed haphazardly around. You'd think the room facing the street would be beautiful, right? Tall ceilings, covered in more of Richter's rip-off art, but whoever designed this place failed to realise that it's barely that high above street level, with a busy and often event-filled plaza opposite, completely detracting from whatever feeling that room was going for. The foyer is no better, being introduced to the gift shop/reception/another random piece of 'discussion' art wedged to into the corner should really be a warning of what's to come (or rather, what isn't). There's also the issue of the art info placed on the walls; the general description/explanation texts for each room are relatively confusing, and not always in the most obvious place, and it seems that in order to fill in the for the lack of other art, the description boxes for each piece are placed a few miles away from the art they're associated with.
As for facilities, the bathrooms are rooms with doors which are frankly far too heavy, and to add insult to injury the soap comes in the form of a bottle like you'd use at home... Hardly appropriate for a public venue, especially a supposed temple of art.
Maybe, just maybe, future displays will offset how poor a state the gallery is in right now. The website flaunts the gallery as "one of Britain's most respected", although probably only amongst people who've never been to another gallery. I'm really quite ashamed that University of Southampton has spent so much money on such a disappointment, and doesn't exactly help the perception that Southampton is a city with either no or fairly uninspiring culture.
Also, watch out for the constant rattling from the air conditioning... Maybe someone should check that out.
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