Sharing out a public offering at Compton Verney
Compton Verney’s new director, Steven Parissien, talks to Terry Grimley.
All architectural historians are familiar with the classic English country house set in a Capability Brown parkland, but not many get to run one.
Steven Parissien, the recently-appointed director of Compton Verney, is a fortunate exception. The successor to Kathleen Soriano, who was headhunted last year to become head of exhibitions at the Royal Academy (and, like her, a resident of Oxford), he is clearly in his element in this beautiful jewel in the Warwickshire countryside just north of Kineton. “I was delighted to have the job because it’s such a gorgeous place to work and such a nice part of the country,” he says.
The 18th-century mansion went through a long period of dilapidation and a serious, but eventually aborted, scheme to establish a Glyndebourne-style opera house, before it was acquired by the Peter Moores Foundation and turned into an art gallery and museum.
Combining idiosyncratic collections ranging from Neapolitan painting to British folk art and Chinese bronzes with ambitious temporary exhibitions of both historic and contemporary art, it first opened its doors to the public five years ago and was named small visitor attraction of the year in 2006.
Although the recession may have reined back its activities in the art market, it has seemed in recent years that Compton Verney was possibly Britain’s best-endowed public collection.
Among many other exhibits (for instance, the original portrait of Oliver Cromwell by miniaturist Samuel Cooper which is believed to have introduced the phrase “warts and all”) it was able to buy two Canalettos threatened with export for £6 million without help from the funds museums usually turn to in these circumstances. But acquisitions are the province of the Peter Moores Trust, rather than the director, so Steven Parissien is focusing his attention on the bigger picture of how Compton Verney can develop its various attractions to strengthen its role in the region’s leisure economy.
“First and foremost, we are an art gallery and a jolly good one with an international profile, but I think we have recognised that we need to make much more of what we have got,” he says.
“In particular, I would like to see more made of the house and grounds – I’m looking for easy wins, not vast expensive schemes. We are restoring the ice-house as a bat sanctuary and I want to make more of the flora and fauna and loans of sculpture in the park, although we don’t want to become a sculpture park.
“I want to find more space for the cafe and the shop because they are both very successful. The cafe has been taken over by Amadeus, the NEC’s catering arm, and they will be promoting us as a hire venue. Corporate hire is dead at the moment, but we’ve never had any weddings here, yet we’ve got the lovely landscape and we’ve got the hall. We want to make it more of a social centre for this part of the south Midlands.”
It is hoped to reopen the chapel adjoining the house next year and that could see the reintroduction of music events for the first time since the opera scheme was abandoned.
It was the perceived elitism of that project which proved fatal when it came to compete for Lottery funding, and Compton Verney has always appeared elitist to the extent that it effectively only caters for the car-owning public. Yet it is, at least technically, accessible by public transport.
“At the moment, there are three buses a day,” Steven points out. “I’m talking to Stagecoach to see if we can get a link to Leamington – that’s the best station. We are starting a volunteer system and not all of the volunteers have cars.”
But for most of its visitors, Compton Verney is competing in the mobile Midlands leisure market, drawing on the M40 corridor connecting Oxford and the West Midlands. With major population growth planned for the south Midlands, the leisure playground of Warwickshire/Oxfordshire, with its mix of natural and cultural attractions, should have interesting economic potential.
“Birmingham is crucial and we get visitors from Leamington and Coventry, the south west Midlands, Oxford and South Leicestershire. We get 60,000 visitors a year and we could do with more – couldn’t everyone?” says Steven.
Neighbouring attractions which could share a day out with Compton Verney include the National Trust’s Charlecote Park and the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon – shortlisted for European Museum of the Year 2009 – while the tourist hot-spots of Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick Castle are also not far away.
As Steven Pariissien acknowledges, the core of Compton Verney’s appeal has to be maintaining the high standards of an exhibition programme which, a couple of years ago, included Britain’s first Van Gogh exhibition since the 1960s.
“What we’ve got planned for the rest of this year is a good balanced offer, with Constable portraits from the National Portrait Gallery and Surrealism from the Whitworth in Manchester. Then we have a big exhibition opening at the end of September on artists’ studios.
“But we’re trying to look at perhaps expanding our events. We’re doing a World War II event in September when we’re having a fly-past by Spitfires and Hurricanes as part of our memories campaign of getting people to recall their stories of Compton Verney and we’re going to be a stopping point on a classic car rally on September 20.
“It’s really about plugging into the region more, to knit together the local cultural offer.”
* Compton Verney is currently hosting the exhibition Surrealism and Contemporary Art: Subversive Spaces, and Constable Portraits opens next Saturday. Both exhibitions run until September 6. The final exhibition for 2009 is Artists’ Studios (Sep 26-Dec 13).
* For more information visit: www.comptonverney.org.uk
