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Laura House

Curatorial Fellowship
The Foundling Museum
2020

In March 2020, when the first lockdown was called, the Foundling Museum was due to commence its first Curatorial Fellowship, offering an opportunity for a mid-career curator to work on an exciting new concept for a touring exhibition. Together, with Artisa, they decided to continue with the planned recruitment for the role and run the Fellowship despite the uncertainty presented by the pandemic.

The Foundling Museum had the outline of an idea for an exhibition exploring the representation of orphans, foundlings, adoptees and foster children in comics and graphic novels, to be shown at the Foundling Museum in 2022. This was inspired by Lemn Sissay’s Foundling Fellowship piece, the graphic installation, Superman was a Foundling.

The Fellowship would enable the Museum to unlock the full potential of this idea, develop it for tour (perhaps even internationally) and provide organisational learning and valuable partnerships to establish a future touring programme. It aimed to provide an opportunity for an experienced curator to develop their practice, through creating a touring exhibition on an engaging and important subject, working two days per week over 9 months.

Sunny. ©2011 Taiyo Matsumoto & Shogakukan Publishing

Laura House was appointed to undertake the Fellowship alongside her role as Museum Administrator at the Royal College of Music Museum, supporting their major redevelopment. In 2019-2020, Laura had guest curated Beyond the Horizon, an exhibition of contemporary Nordic art for SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway.

Following her remote interview and induction, Laura swiftly adapted to the new circumstances of lockdown, along with all the Museum’s staff, joining staff, team and line manager meetings over video call, and getting set up for remote access to the Museum’s servers. Furloughed from her other role, Laura was able to front load the research for the exhibition, learning the subject area very quickly and making new connections and links. Laura achieved a depth of research that would not have been possible without the dedicated resources offered by the Fellowship. The content very quickly took shape, starting out as a web of relevant artists, characters, themes, and publications, which Laura gradually and imaginatively distilled into narrative sections.

“To mentor and line manage a developing curator again, has been really refreshing and rewarding, and a good challenge to my own practice. It creates dynamism and dialogue to widen the creative group and open up an idea to fresh thinking. It has been good to see someone take a concept in new directions and make it their own.”

— Kathleen Palmer, Foundling Museum Curator

Hogan's Alley. 18 October 1896. (Source: San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library).

Lockdown caused substantial difficulties for some areas of Laura’s work, such as arranging museum store visits during the intense lockdown of early 2020, to view collections where extensive catalogue records or images were not available. However, potential lending institutions were as helpful as they could possibly be, accepting broad loan requests with the aim of refining them at a later date. Identifying and contacting living artists proved somewhat more straightforward. Laura completed her fellowship with confirmed, agreed loans in place from a range of international, national and individual lenders. The resulting cast of characters is international and excitingly rich in its diversity of characters, authors, life experiences, forms and time periods.

There was also a significant impact on Laura’s ability to contact and secure touring partners for the exhibition, with so many colleagues furloughed and museums and galleries temporarily closed. The Foundling's initial aim was to tour the exhibition internationally, to provide organisational learning and establish partnerships that would grow the Museum’s capacity to generate future touring exhibitions. With circumstances limiting appetite for international touring, our efforts became focussed on UK touring partners.

Little Orphan Annie. 2 November 1924. © Harold Gray / Chicago Tribune.

Laura secured some touring consultancy, which will have long term benefits for the Foundling Museum in shaping strategy, and made contact with many potential UK partners. There was substantial interest in the exhibition tour, but the impact of Covid has made this an exceptionally difficult time for other venues to commit to a tour, with issues faced including a backlog of deferred programming, financial uncertainty and the impact of capital building projects. At the time of Laura finishing her fellowship, the museum was in dialogue with three or four potential venues, awaiting their planning outcomes. Whether or not they achieve a tour, they are delighted to have opened a dialogue and serious engagement around our touring offer, with a substantial number of regional museums and galleries. They have a much clearer understanding of what potential venues and partners’ needs are, how to communicate and present a touring package, and they are confident that this will bear fruit in future.

Other areas where Laura has been highly successful are in securing authors and a publisher for an accompanying publication for the exhibition, advance planning for rich and exciting public programming around the exhibition, work with the museum's Development team to draft applications and identify potential funders, and commissioning artists to create new work for the exhibition, adding a new, rich dimension to the project.

Street Angel. © 2004 Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca

“When I started this Fellowship, I was motivated to acquire a working knowledge of specific exhibitions practices (e.g. touring development and protocol), a new subject (comics), and the organisational structure of the Foundling Museum. I have been able to achieve success in these three areas (and beyond) thanks to the Fellowship framework and the generosity of the Foundling Museum staff.“

— Laura House, Artisa Curatorial Fellow

Although Laura has meticulously documented her work, to prepare for handover, The Foundling have managed to find the resource to secure her as a freelance curator, so that she can bring the exhibition to fruition, contribute an essay to the catalogue and participate in exhibition programming.

It has been encouraging for the Museum to have such a strong future project in development, while other projects nearer at hand have had to be significantly reshaped due to Covid. The Museum is delighted with all that Laura has been able to achieve, especially in such a difficult context, and very pleased the decision was made to press ahead with the Fellowship.

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