Glamortality, 2014 © Rankin
As It’s Glam Up North: Curated by Rankin opens, Janet Dugdale, Director of the Museum of Liverpool & Merseyside Maritime Museum reflects on the fascinating role of museums in society.
“Three years ago we hosted Liverpool Love, our first collaborative art exhibition and auction with National Museums Liverpool’s charity partner Claire House Children’s Hospice. From annual displays of decorated ducks and now It’s Glam Up North, this show will be the second art exhibition that our visitors have engaged with and enjoyed. Such collaborations have, importantly, helped to give Claire House the money needed to keep providing support to children and their families.
In hosting a show like It’s Glam Up North, a rather quirky art show for a city history museum, it’s the relationship with Claire House, and the sense of value that it brings, that matters to me as much as the exhibition. As a fundamental part of Liverpool’s cultural landscape, we want to give to society and be part of our community. While we also fundraise to enable us to develop exciting and meaningful programming, collaborations such as this do the same thing for the other charities and organisations that we partner with. We care about people; museums are nothing without the people who engage with them – our visitors. Caring about people, and especially children, has led us into an beneficial partnership with Claire House.
Rankin has curated It’s Glam Up North to support the hospice of which he is a patron. Calling on artists, film makers, fashion and graphic designers to donate works to the exhibition, it makes for an unusual and compelling array of art. Come and see the show and join us at the Museum of Liverpool for the auction on Saturday 21 November. I hope visitors and art buyers will be as moved as I was when, in 2012 at the Liverpool Love auction, in a room of 200 people, I spoke after watching a film about the work of Claire House. As a city history museum with deeply-held social justice values, supporting the charity, workers and users of Claire House is one way the Museum of Liverpool can tell their stories and shine a bright light on their exceptional work.”