Crowd-Funding an Exhibition – Please show your support

‘We only have 2 weeks left to raise the money to stage Mark Fairnington’s exhibition at the Horniman Museum and every pound counts. To find out more, make a donation and get wonderful rewards visit http://www.artfund.org/get-involved/art-happens/mark-fairnington-the-hornimans-hidden-world’

This week I received the above email asking me to help support the crowdfunding efforts of the Horniman Museum to stage the exhibition Mark Fairnington: The Horniman’s hidden world and rather than just tweet or flag it on Facebook I thought I’d quickly mention it here.

The idea of the exhibition is to stage Mark Fairnington’s paintings alongside their inspiration, the Horniman’s hidden taxidermy treasures. The objects will be presented as they are in storage, the aim being to ‘evok[e] the wonder Mark experienced when he found them for the first time’.

Now, I’ve never heard of museums or galleries crowdfunding before, but a quick scan of www.artfund.org show’s me to be rather naïve in that view. So I guess it’s just never appeared on my radar before – but what a fantastic idea! We all know of the growing pressures museum face, especially with regards to funding cuts and this to me just seems like an imaginative way to get an exhibition up and running.  It’s placing emphasis on public engagement and asking the public to get involved and support institutions and culture they value.

I donated – why? Because of my interest in natural history, taxidermy and fondness for the Museum, but also because of my curiosity about how Mark has taken something so ‘of its time’ and made it relevant. I’m really interested to see how the specimens will be represented in his modern art and how he has used the collection. It will bring modern art and natural history together and show that natural history collections are relevant and continue to provide inspiration, outside of a scientific context (my thoughts not the museum’s!!!). It will also enable the museum to show a more extensive selection of its holdings, that it could not otherwise display, which again can only be a good thing, for us curious members of the public!

Anyway, I didn’t intend to review the museums fundraising technique, I just wanted to say what a fantastic idea I think it is and hope that maybe some of you who read this, might also feel as impassioned about this idea and offer a donation to help it become a reality.

Follow the link if you do - http://www.artfund.org/get-involved/art-happens/mark-fairnington-the-hornimans-hidden-world

Thanks!