Museums : United Kingdom : how to save a museum from near death : departing director Perdita Hunt explains how she turned around the Watts Gallery in just 12 years

• Published in: Art newspaper (International ed.) 2017-07, Vol.26 (292), p.22-22
• Main Author: Cocks, Anna Somers
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0960-6556

Some adored the Watts Gallery's Sleeping Beauty look, but it was cold and dark, the roof leaked, the canvases sagged, and the tea room was poisoning its clients. What is more, few remembered its namesake, George Frederic Watts. When he died in 1904, leaving in trust his art, gallery, studio, chapel, and house in the Surrey woods, 40 miles from London, he was so famous that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had given him its first-ever exhibition of a living artist. But during the 20th century, the Watts Gallery became a picturesque relic, appreciated mainly by connoisseurs of Victorian art. In 2004, it was added to English Heritage's "at risk" register. Everything changed under the 12-year directorship of Perdita Hunt, who is leaving the Watts Gallery Artists' Village in July. (Alistair Burtenshaw, the current director of the Charleston Trust, will take the reins on 4 September.) She led the seven-year, £10 million Hope project to restore the buildings (the chapel remains to be done), rehang the galleries and undertake conservation work on nearly all the art. Visitor numbers have risen from 10,000 to 65,000, the staff have gone from two to 50, while another 124 jobs are supported in the neighbourhood. An economic impact study by the University of Surrey in 2015 concluded that the institution contributed £7.7 million to the UK economy. [Publication Abstract]