Kurt Schwitters' Merz Barn to star at Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts in London will host a major exhibition next year focusing on 20th-century British sculpture and will include a recreation of painter and collageist Kurt Schwitters famous Merz Barn. Schwitters came to the UK after escaping from Hitler's Germany and worked in the Cumbrian shed which he turned into a kind of architectural artwork: the recreated shed will be built by dry stone wallers from Cumbria in the Academy courtyard. Modern British Sculpture runs from January 22 until April 7 2011 and also features the shedlike'Let's Eat Outdoors Today' by Damien Hirst

Thanks to Cathy Dobson for the alert


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The Harry Pierce Micro-Museum opens today

We've talked about Kurt Schwitters' Merz Barn on the Cylinders estate at Langdale in the Lake District before on Shedworking (and you can find lots more about it on their site here) so it's great news to hear that work on the site near Ambleside continues apace. This time the focus is on the landscape gardens there created by Harry Pierce in the 1940s and 1950s which are in the process of being restored.

The Harry Pierce Micro-Museum and Reading Room will be officially opened by the garden designer's grandson William at 2pm today. The reconstruction of Pierce's original drawing office on the site of the derelict original measures 4.3m by 3.2m so is among the smallest museums in the country containing a desk, drawings, books and plans he made to convert the former gunpowder works estate into experimental gardens, as well as writings about his experiences and contemporary photos.

The work has been made possible thanks to a grant from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, supported by the Cumbria Fells & Dales Local Action Group.
   
The original office was built by Pierce (who owned Cylinders in the early 1940s) as a garden office in which to create his plans for Mawson’s of Windermere where he was the chief designer. It was here where he met the German-born artist Schwitters and they began a lifelong friendship. It will be open daily from 10am to 5pm with no admission free. The painting below is a portrait of Harry by Schwitters.

There's an excellent article about the work by Mike Glover in Lancashire Life here. ---------------------------------------

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Kurt Schwitters’ Lake District barn saved

Good news about Kurt Schwitters's Merz Barn at Elterwater in the Lake District which got walloped by Storm Desmond: a Swiss art Gallery, Galerie Gmurzynska, has donated £25,000 to restore the art installation following a suggestion by the late Zaha Hadid. It follows the great work of the Littoral Arts Trust which has been looking after the barn but lacked the funds to fully restore it, hopefully by the start of the summer.

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