Arnolfini is an international

arts centre An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues fo ...

and gallery in

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

, England. It has a programme of

contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...

exhibitions, artist's performance, music and dance events, poetry and book readings, talks, lectures and cinema. There is also a specialist art bookshop and a café bar. Educational activities are undertaken and experimental digital media work supported by online resources. Festivals are hosted by the gallery. The gallery was founded in 1961 by Jeremy Rees, and was located in Clifton. In the 1970s it moved to Queen Square, before moving to its present location, Bush House on Bristol's waterfront, in 1975. The name of the gallery is taken from

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Nort ...

's 15th-century painting '' The Arnolfini Portrait''. Arnolfini was refurbished and redeveloped in 1989 and 2005. Artists whose work has been exhibited include Bridget Riley,

Rachel Whiteread Dame Rachel Whiteread (born 20 April 1963) is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993. Whiteread was one of the Young British ...

, Richard Long and Jack Yeats. Performers have included Goat Island Performance Group, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. The gallery reached a new audience in April 2010, when it was chosen to host one of the three 2010 general election debates.

History

Jeremy Rees started Arnolfini with the assistance of his wife Annabel, and the painter John Orsborn in 1961. The location was above a bookshop in the Triangle in Clifton, Bristol. In 1968, Rees was able to give up his teaching job and with the aid of private funding and Arts Council funding relocated the gallery to Queen Square, then to W Shed, later the home of the Watershed Media Centre. In 1975, Arnolfini moved to its present home in Bush House, occupying two floors of a 19th-century Grade II* listed tea warehouse situated on the side of the

Floating Harbour Bristol Harbour is the harbour in the city of Bristol, England. The harbour covers an area of . It is the former natural tidal river Avon through the city but was made into its current form in 1809 when the tide was prevented from going out p ...

in Bristol City Centre. The first two simultanuous shows at the new location were by British artists Howard Hodgkin (ground floor) and Keith Milow (upper floor). The remainder of the building was office space leased out by developers JT Group. Originally dedicated to exhibiting the work of artists from the West of England, under the directorship of Barry Barker (1986–1991) the gallery moved towards a more general spread of

. Barker supervised a refurbishment of the gallery spaces and café bar by

David Chipperfield Sir David Alan Chipperfield, , (born 18 December 1953) is a British architect. He established David Chipperfield Architects in 1985, which grew into a global architectural practice with offices in London, Berlin, Milan, Shanghai, and Santiago d ...

. Before development work began, Arnolfini was attracting over 285,000 visitors per year. Subsequent Directors have been Tessa Jackson (1991–1999), Caroline Collier (1999–2005) and Tom Trevor (2005–2013). As part of a two-year development project that finished in September 2005, the old warehouse has been redeveloped, adding another attic storey. Arnolfini now occupies the lower three floors and basement, and the upper floors are leased to help pay for the running costs. One tenant is the School of Creative Arts, part of the

University of the West of England The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a Public university, public research university, located in and around Bristol, England, UK. With more than 39,912 students and 4,300 staff, it is the largest provider of hi ...

. Funding for this development was received from the National Lottery and the Barker-Mill Trust, set up by long term Arnolfini patron Peter Barker-Mill. The original committee to support Arnolfini included Peter Barker-Mill, Ann Hewer, and Lawrence Ogilvie. In July 2015, Bush House was sold to the

, with a lease-back of the artistic space. The profits from the sale replenished Arnolfini's endowment fund.

Bush House

The architect of Bush House was Richard Shackleton Pope, who constructed first the south part of the warehouse (1831) then extended it to the north in 1835–1836. Its original use was as a warehouse for local iron foundry D., E. & A. Acraman. The building has a Pennant Sandstone exterior with arched ground level entrances and arched windows above. This style of architecture is the first example of the Bristol Byzantine style which became popular in the 1850s. Later conversion to a tea warehouse added interstitial floors.

Name

The Arnolfini is named after

's masterpiece '' The Arnolfini Portrait'' (1434) depicting the merchant and arts patron

Giovanni Arnolfini Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini ( – after 1452) was a merchant from Lucca, a city in Tuscany, Italy. He spent most of his life in Flanders, then part of the Duchy of Burgundy, probably always based in Bruges, a wealthy trading city and one of t ...

. ''The Arnolfini Portrait'' is one of the earliest paintings to assert the presence of the artist within its depiction (an inscription in the middle of the work and a reflection in a mirror on the back wall). One of Arnolfini's consistent concerns is to explore the role of artist as a witness and recorder of what is around them – contemporary society. The painting is in the

National Gallery, London The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current dire ...

and it was one of the founder's favourite paintings.

Today

Arnolfini has three floors of galleries, a specialist arts bookshop, a cinema which can also be used as a performance space for theatre, live art, dance and music, a reading room that provides reference material for all past exhibitions, books and catalogues, and a café bar. Entrance to the galleries is free of charge. Notable exhibitions have included works by Bridget Riley, Richard Long,

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained global fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and the piano, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John ...

Angus Fairhurst Angus Fairhurst (4 October 1966 – 29 March 2008) was an English artist working in installation, photography and video. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). Life and work Angus Fairhurst was born in Pembury, Kent. Having attende ...

and

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

. Events include poetry and film festivals, live art and dance performances, lectures and jazz and experimental music concerts, including Bodies in Flight, Goat Island Performance Group, Akram Khan, the

London Sinfonietta The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber music, chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble has headquarters at Kings Place and is Resident Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. Since its inaugural concert ...

, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Random Dance, and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. There is an access and education programme, hosting visits from students, workshops with artists, presenting interpretative information and offering some work experience placements within the gallery. ''project.ARNOLFINI'' is an online experimental web site with dumps of digital media related to Arnolfini exhibitions and events, past and present, which may be reorganised by any online user, utilising resources on the web site to create new works and projects under a

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

license. Arnolfini also hosts events from outside organisations, including the ''Encounters Short Film Festival'' (along with the Watershed Media Centre), Mayfest, the first Festival of British Independent Cinema, the biennial Time Festival of Live Art and Intrigue and the Bristol Artists Book Events. In April 2010,

British Sky Broadcasting Sky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting Limited (BSkyB)), trading as Sky, is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television, broadband internet, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers a ...

chose Arnolfini to host the second of the three 2010 general election debates. Arnolfini receives funding from

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council o ...

, and Bristol City Council. According to returns lodged with the

Charity Commission The Charity Commission for England and Wales is a non-ministerial department of His Majesty's Government that regulates registered charities in England and Wales and maintains the Central Register of Charities. Its counterparts in Scotland and ...

for the year ending in March 2016, Arnolfini had 500,000 visitors in 2013/2014. Income was £2.1 million and expenditure was £2.7 million and the gallery employed 44 people. In 2017 the Arnolfini, which had asked for increased funding in recent years, will be losing its Arts Council England £750,000 annual grant after an assessment that the Arnolfini was "not viable" in its current model. In 2017 a new director, Claire Doherty, was appointed. She aimed to devise a viable financial model. A show by

Grayson Perry Sir Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960) is an English artist. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries, and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foib ...

drew in more than 300 visitors a day. In 2023, Arnolfini faced backlash after cancelling two

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

film events over concerns they would be construed as political.

References

External links

* *
Bush House

Pevsner Architectural Guides The ''Pevsner Architectural Guides'' are four series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. ''The Buildings of England'' series was begun in 1945 by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, with its forty-six original volumes pu ...

{{authority control Commercial buildings completed in 1836 1836 establishments in England Grade II* listed buildings in Bristol Art museums and galleries in Bristol Museums in Bristol Bristol Harbourside Music venues in Bristol Art museums and galleries established in 1961 1961 establishments in England Grade II* listed museum buildings