Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
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The Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art or mima is a recently built contemporary art gallery based in the centre of Middlesbrough, in the North East of England. The gallery was formally launched on Sunday 27th January 2007, although it was originally planned to open in late Summer 2006[citation needed]. It is one of three institutions run by the Middlesbrough Museums & Galleries Service along with the Dorman Museum and Captain Cook Birthplace Museum.
[edit] History and Estates
The Institute's opening marks the completion of an accumulative journey for the art collection of post-industrial Middlesbrough. The early artistic heritage of a town of Middlesbrough's youth rested largely on the success of the Linthorpe Art Pottery (1879-1889), co-launched by Christopher Dresser out of the Sun Brickworks that built the suburb of that name. An esteemed School of Art had opened alongside the Mechanics' Institute in the Old Town's Durham Street in 1870, and by the 1950s that, too, had relocated to Linthorpe. The region's cultural profile was further amply boosted by the Cleveland International Drawing Biennale, up until that competition's extinction in the 1990s.
A spot for the town's first ground-up art gallery was granted by father of the Mayor, Sir Arthur Dorman as early as 1904. This was on Linthorpe Road opposite, and conceived in the same spate of events as, what was to become the Dorman Museum outside Albert Park. Funding shortfalls amid the onset of War, however, ensured that only a rest garden was eventually sited there. In the meantime, from 1927, the Carnegie Library and Grange Road Methodist Church housed the considerable collection of paintings. Any permanent provision for the pieces did not materialise, however, until 1957, with the purchase by the Council of a former doctor's surgery on Linthorpe Road. It was not until 2003 that this building was vacated.
The other half of present-day mima, Cleveland Crafts Centre, based on Gilkes Street, was highly regarded for its collection of twentieth century British studio ceramics, and artist made jewellery dating from the 1970s onwards.The Cleveland Crafts Centre was closed as an exhibition venue in January 2003, and thereafter operated as the mima offices whilst the new gallery was being constructed. Its sister institution that lasted until 1999, the Cleveland Gallery, resided nearby in the erstwhile school buildings on Victoria Road. They are today home to the University of Teesside's graduate incubation studios in aid of new business start-ups.
Following the January 2003 closure of the two surviving galleries, construction of the present accommodation comprising the gallery, education suite, auditorium, cafe-bar, roof terrace and conservation studio commenced in 2004. The centre was designed by Erick van Egeraat Associated Architects and Buro Happold. Whilst construction was underway, mima programmed a series of offsite exhibitions and events including such artists as John Harrison and Paul Wood, Susan Pietzsch, Yuka Oyama, Graham Dolphin, Chicks on Speed, Martin Creed, Oliver Zwink and Mah Rana.
[edit] Collections
Mima has the second largest collection of Pablo Picasso's in the United Kingdom and currently has artworks from Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Chantal Joffe, Gavin Turk, Joseph Beuys, David Musgrave, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, DJ Simpson, Marcel Duchamp and Ceal Floyer. The sheer vintage attributable to the local constitution of artworks makes for a majestic line-up of featured artists, among which can be found such vaunted locals as William Tillyer and Len Tabner, joined by such others as Frank Auerbach, Ben Nicholson, Stanley Spencer, Elizabeth Blackadder, Ken Currie, Gwen John, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Howson, David Bomberg, Ivan Samsonov Woods, L.S. Lowry, Anne Redpath, Paula Rego, Sir Jacob Epstein, David Hockney, Jeremy Deller and Tracey Emin.
