Impact case study database

Mahon’s work challenges the orthodox history of the avant-garde, notably Surrealism, which has centred on white male European artists. Women are discussed by the majority of scholars and museums only as muses, lovers, and marginalized presences. High profile public exhibitions and events have raised the status of the work of women artists and have demonstrated how their recognition and inclusion is crucial for the history and appreciation of the aesthetic, socio-political, and emphatically collective ambitions of the avant-garde. As a result, new audiences have discovered women artists while museums, collectors, and critics have been catalysed into a newfound appreciation of their art.

Persuading Museums to Exhibit More Women Artists

At the Museum of Sex Mahon brought Fini’s body of erotic art, especially works which challenged sexual hierarchies and gender binaries, to new audiences as well as empowering the typical visitor for this museum – ‘60% female and female-identifying individuals … looking to find new ways to express their desires or seek information about their own bodies’ [E4]. The first museum show of Fini in the US, it was attended by over 150,000 visitors, and named one of the top ten exhibitions of 2018 by Art News. This led the Weinstein Gallery to receive ‘more inquiries of acquisition for Leonor Fini’s work than any other artist’ [E4].

The Reina Sofia invited Mahon to curate a major Tanning exhibition as part of their commitment to avant-garde women artists ‘whose voices were silenced by the historical periods in which they lived’ [E1]. In press meetings, the Director spoke of the ‘great necessity’ for this overdue Tanning exhibition. The Spanish Minister of Culture and Sport praised the Tanning exhibition for supporting the Reina Sofia’s aim to ‘reformulate and reactivate the legacy of modernity’ [E2]. He noted that the Reina Sofia and Tate Modern relied on Mahon’s ‘extensive scholarship’, and he pointed to the collaboration of Mahon, the two museums, and the Spanish government as a ‘model of institutional cooperation’ [E2]. The retrospective received 429,000 visitors at the Reina Sofia and made a profit of EUR839,508 [E1]. Mahon spearheaded a lively public programme – public curator tours, and interactive workshops for teenagers exploring movement and Tanning’s poetry within the exhibition galleries.

At Tate Modern, Dorothea Tanning attracted 115,000 visitors, with a significant increase in Tate membership [E3]. It was named one of the top ten exhibitions of 2019 in The Guardian. [E5] 6,503 copies of Mahon’s edited Dorothea Tanning catalogue were sold at the Tate and 1,642 at the Reina Sophia (1,150 in Spanish, 492 in English). It helped prove the museum’s new commitment to underrepresented women artists. The Director of the Tate Modern testified to Mahon’s ‘acute, intelligent and committed cultural vision’ in bringing one of the first women artist shows to Tate Modern and ensuring ‘a talented and visionary artist who had long been overshadowed by her husband, the surrealist Max Ernst’ was redressed. It enabled five works by Tanning from the Tate collection to be showcased anew and shed ‘fresh light on our understanding of surrealism and pointing to a broader geographical and historical scope of surrealist practice’ [E3]. Mahon led two public curator’s tours, a public conversation with Tanning’s niece, Mimi Johnson, and an event on Tanning’s Family portrait; all sold out. She made a TateShots video on Tanning (7 mins) which has received over 290,000 views [E9, p. 203]. One viewer commented: ‘This just goes to show how sexist the world is that I didn’t learn about this supremely talented artist back when I was an art major some time ago. Learned all about the usual boys, but not her. Crazy’ [E9, p. 241].

Elevating Women Artists in the Eye of Critics and the Public

Both exhibitions were met with overwhelmingly positive responses in the international press. With Leonor Fini, a reviewer in Artforum noted ‘Today, MOMA has no paintings by Fini in its collection. It has 283 by Ernst … That this retrospective is held at the Museum of Sex underscores institutional art history’s missed encounter with Fini’s work’ [E4, p.187]. Le Temps wrote ‘I had never heard of Leonor Fini before I entered the Museum of Sex and I noticed that it was really the first time that I saw the feminine represented in this way by an artist of that time’ [E4, pp. 1-2]. The Art Newspaper invited Mahon to do a podcast interview on Fini in Nov. 2018; it has had 6,400 listeners to date. In Nov. 2020, Katy Hessel of The great women artists podcast invited Mahon to do a further podcast on Fini. It has had over 10,000 listeners to date [E6].

The Tanning retrospective was also perceived by the press and public as ‘rescuing’ an artist from the art historical obscurity to which she had been consigned because of her gender. A review in El Norte de Castilla was given the subtitle: ‘The Reina Sofia has claimed the genius of a multi-talented, original artist excluded from the canon’; while El País called Tanning a ‘woman surrealist against patriarchy’ [E8, pp. 91 and 22]. The Guardian gave it a rare five-star review, noting ‘it’s easy to give Tanning a crucial place in the canon of feminist art’ [E9, p. 26]. ARTnews described it as ‘a superb Dorothea Tanning retrospective connected with present (and surely, future) controversies over sexism’ [E9, p. 185]. Many commentators noted the nature of ‘discovery’ round the exhibition: it was described as a ‘nonstop revelation’ ( The Observer) [E9, p. 101], ‘an exciting revelation’ ( The Brooklyn Rail) [E9, p. 145], an ‘absolute revelation’ ( The Arts Desk), a ‘revelatory exhibition’ ( Europhile) [E9, p. 168] and a ‘feast of surprises’ ( The Sunday Times) [E9, p. 103]. The exhibition was featured in specialist dance and fashion publications including The Dancing Times, Dance International, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Stylist and a Whistles blog [E9, pp. 30; 197; 75; 99; 130; 109]. It inspired a fashion shoot in The Financial Times – ‘10 ways to dress like a surrealist Artist’ – and even a new hairstyle, invented by the London-based stylist Daniel Dyer [E11].

Celebrating Difference and Serving Diverse Audiences

Mahon’s exhibitions presented Fini and Tanning as exemplary of the ‘modern woman’, as noted by critics and the public. Leonor Fini was hailed in The Art Newspaper as ‘a joyful exploration of freedom, creativity and gender non-conformity’. David Noh wrote in Gay City News, ‘If and when I die, I would love to be resurrected in a world created by Leonor Fini — a realm where it is the female who is all powerful, holding complete yet salubrious sway over all men, being more nurturing, empathetic, infinitely sagacious, and rather more beauty-loving than the true weaker sex, exemplified by the treasurable show Leonor Fini: The Theater of Desire’ [E4, p. 176].

Tate shared several Instagram posts on the Tanning exhibition, which accrued a collective 233,214 likes and where comments repeatedly featured the words: ‘amazing’, ‘fabulous’, ‘fantastic’, ‘stunning’ ‘inspiring’. One Instagrammer commented: ‘Genuinely one of the best exhibitions I’ve seen. Thank you’. There were private viewings for Brad Pitt and Madonna who publicized the show to her 14,100,000 Instagram followers and credited Tanning with providing inspiration for her most recent incarnation: Madame X [E12, p. 8]. Tanning’s depictions of motherhood, in particular, touched visitors. The author of an article in Oh Comely magazine said: ‘The first time I saw [ Maternity, 1946] at Museo Reina Sofia, I felt a deep connection with it and my own internal debate about motherhood’ [E9, p. 36], while a piece in Elephant Magazine said: ‘At Dorothea Tanning’s exhibition at Tate Modern, it comes as a great relief to see motherhood depicted in nightmarish glory … Seeing this kind of depiction hanging in a major museum is vital’ [E9, p. 183]. An article on the healing effect of art on mental health in Dazed cited the Tanning retrospective in particular: ‘I feel a confusing juxtaposition of restless and disengaged; my palms are sweaty and there’s a risk I might vomit. I soothe myself by remembering that in an hour or thereabouts, I can skip over Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern and lose myself in [Tanning’s] “Endgame”...’ [E9, p. 176]. Mahon also spoke on ‘Women, Sex and Surrealism’ at the Doyce Street Studios’ pop-up exhibition (1-7 May 2019) organised by ‘a group of diverse artists’ and celebrating ‘beauty and sex and a sisterhood’ in response to Tanning [E7].

Increasing the Market Value of Women Artists’ Work to Museums and Collectors

Mahon’s research on women Surrealists, notably Fini and Tanning, reached new audiences through her public talks at museums and auction houses and media coverage: MoSEX (2018), the Reina Sofia Madrid (2018), Tate Modern, London (2019), Fondation Giacometti, Paris (2019), Witte de With, Rotterdam (2019), Fine Art Museum, Sedona (2019) Christie’s, Paris (2018, 2019). Mahon shared her research and promoted women Surrealists in a number of podcasts (three times for The Art Newspaper), and was prominently featured in a 2019 ARTE documentary on women Surrealists, Gelebte Träume (52 mins) [E6]. In 2020 a record price of USD980,000 for Fini was achieved at Sotheby’s and Weinstein Gallery notes that between 2018-2020, ‘From the website Artsy alone, we receive 3-5 inquiries from curious collectors per week. In most all cases, they have only recently learned of the artist’ [E4]. In 2018 Fine Arts Brokers noted a dramatic increase in prices for Tanning with The temptation of St Antony (1945-46) selling for USD1,152,500 [E10, p. 6]. Gallerist Alison Jacques, noted the impact of Tanning’s ‘well deserved retrospective at the Tate Modern last year … [now] her paintings can command prices between USD75,000 and $1m’ [E10, p. 11]. Further, Mahon advised Reina Sofia on the acquisition of 4 works – Hôtel (1988, collage), Étreinte (1969, sculpture), Even the young girls (1966, painting), Les 7 Périls Spectraux (1959, lithograph) – and National Galleries of Scotland on their bid to the Art Fund to purchase Tableau Vivant (1954). In 2020, Tate bought Murmurs (1976) and MOMA Notes for an apocalypse (1976) – both paintings featured in Mahon’s exhibition.

Impacts on understanding, learning and participation

Prior to the COLOUR exhibition [E8], illuminated manuscripts were widely considered a marginal, medieval art form, produced by monks, very distant from the celebrated Renaissance panels and frescoes created by professional artists. The exhibition had a major effect in challenging this conventional public wisdom, and press articles describe the impact of these messages: ‘ It blows apart cliches about illuminated books and the medieval world that created them’ (Jonathan Jones, Review, The Guardian 28 July 2016) [E2].

Fig. 1. Pigments on display alongside manuscripts in COLOUR exhibition

COLOUR stimulated interest in the MINIARE research project, with 100,246 visitors to the exhibition and over 3,420 people taking part in the public engagement programme [E9]. Feedback from participants in these events demonstrated that the exhibition had provoked public interest in the research and enhanced their understanding of MINIARE’s key research themes: materials, processes and techniques. Visitors also noted how the exhibition encouraged them to look closely at manuscripts and think about them differently: ‘ First of all congratulations on a fantastic exhibition! I have been to see it several times now and am continually excited by each new thing I see and revelation I glean. As a craftsman with a special interest in re-making 15th C artefacts I am continually amazed at the craftsmanship of the artists shown in the exhibition’ (comment in visitor book) [E1].

In Autumn 2019, over 68 teachers, and 3,800 children from forty schools studied and made art in response to Sellaio’s painting of Cupid and Psyche as part of the Inspire project, training teachers to support children to look at and make art [E3]. Many schools spent weeks looking at and talking about the painting: ‘ *The Cupid and Psyche painting was something most of our children would have never seen or heard of but now, if you ask any of the children in Year 1 and Year 2 at my school, they can tell you the entire story from start to finish!*’ [E3]. The project encouraged participating schools to explore interdisciplinary links between art and science. One school studied the writings of Renaissance artist Cennino Cennini to find out about how egg tempera paint was made; another invited a local scientist to help them to carry out experiments on the effects of colour and light on plants. The resulting exhibition (December 2019-March 2020) had 33,410 visitors and further impacted on teacher, student and public knowledge and understanding of Renaissance techniques and materials, as members of the public, University staff and visiting academics reported how seeing the children’s responses and ideas within the exhibition also made them see the painting differently. A university professor told the project team, ‘as an Italian Renaissance person who must have seen that painting hundreds of times, I looked at it through entirely new eyes’ [E3].

The specially commissioned technical and art historical analysis on Cupid and Psyche by Cooper, Ricciardi and conservators from HKI was used for a display within the exhibition and for a new AR App (see fig. 2 below) designed in partnership with app developer Maggioli Musei and the University of Florence. As visitors discovered, the ‘Ways of Seeing’ app locks on to the picture when held in front of it and a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen offers IR, X-Ray and pigment analysis overlay modes to allow the viewer to uncover hidden layers of meaning. User testing was cut short after the closure of the exhibition due to COVID-19, but initial feedback was very positive with one enthusiastic visitor remarking on how the app enabled the secrets of the painting to be uncovered, ‘ What would he [del Sellaio] think? All those secrets! He spent so long hiding all his mistakes and now we can see them all!’ [E3].

For older students and their teachers, the University of Cambridge Museums’ Looking at collections resource once again combines Ricciardi’s research on Cupid and Psyche and Noble’s on visual literacy to explore different ways of researching objects [E4]. Feedback reveals that the resource now supports the development of student research skills as part of the ‘A’ level curriculum, ‘a great way to get students looking as well as layering more information that's not too heavy! The resources worked really well, so many thanks! More please??’ [E10]. The resource also raises awareness of potential career routes for those with an interest in both art and science. The site has had over 3,000 unique views to date and we are still developing and launching new content [E4].

Fig. 2. ‘Ways of Seeing’ app in use * * Fig. 3. Young artists and teacher giving a public talk

in Inspire exhibition in Inspire exhibition

Impacts on creativity, culture and society

Our research on the making and meaning of medieval and Renaissance cultural heritage has inspired a range of different audiences to create their own artwork through the public programmes attached to the Fitzwilliam exhibitions. These audiences included children, young people and adults who might not have otherwise visited the museum, such as people with a dementia diagnosis and their care partners, people accessing support for mental ill-health, blind and partially sighted visitors (who made use of a rich audio guide), adults with learning disabilities, and people who are homeless or vulnerably housed. A young person who participated in one of our COLOUR workshops commented that they ‘loved learning about how to paint (with and how) pigments were created. [...] This was a fantastic opportunity [...] and would be interested in doing a Gold Arts Award,’ evidencing how their creativity has been stimulated by research that bridges art and science [E9].

Inspire built on the success of these colour- and pigment-related workshops and shared some of the art activities developed for the COLOUR exhibition with teachers. The project had a significant impact on children’s creativity with over 3,800 children studying the painting and making their own artwork in response to the focus painting [E3]. Drawing on Noble’s research, the project gave children the time and space to be creative, to make their own decisions and to follow their ideas, generating new ways of thinking and inspiring new forms of expression. One child (age five) commented, ‘I felt just like a real artist!’; a second child (age nine) described how ‘working with the clay was really fun and we felt very proud that we had thought of this idea and followed it through from beginning to end’ [E3].

Impacts on practitioners and delivery of professional services

The Inspire project worked on-the-ground to support teachers to develop their knowledge, skills and confidence in teaching art and design and working with museum collections. Artist partner AccessArt’s Inspire blog posts about the project have been shared widely with their creative community of over 14,000 artists, teachers and facilitators [E7]. In a follow-up survey at the end of the project in Spring 2020, this impact was still being reported: ‘ I am now able to use paintings as a stimulus … I feel more inspired to do creative things in schools after seeing the huge impact it made’ [E3]. Feedback from children also demonstrates that the project changed art teaching in participating schools: ‘Normally in art we all have to do the same thing. I really enjoyed having the chance to experiment and choose what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it’ [E3]. Thirty-three teachers also took part in additional training sessions linked to the exhibition, and visiting teachers and students took photos and made notes to take ideas back with them to the classroom and studio, further extending the impact of the project [E3].

Building on the clear need for additional resources for teachers, during Summer 2020 Bucklow, Noble and Ricciardi developed a prototype ‘Ways of Seeing’ teaching resource for primary schools, designed to support the development of transdisciplinary analytical skills essential to both artistic and scientific investigation. Teachers who took part in the pilot session were excited by the teaching potential of the AR app: ‘ Fantastic resource as it tells the story within the story and makes the artist and his decisions appear more real’ [E3].They also said that they had found the training day very beneficial, boosting their confidence and motivation and inspiring them to improve their art and science teaching and to make links with other areas of the curriculum [E3].

Impact on public policy

Inspire aimed to raise the profile of art and design locally and nationally at a time when the subject is under threat, due to a reduction in subject specialist training opportunities for both trainee and in-service teachers. A feature on BBC Look East described how Inspire made art accessible to schools and children across the county and an interview with a head teacher from a Fenland school described how the project had ‘ opened up an amazing opportunity for the children’ in her school where they had not been teaching much art [E5]. In February 2020 Inspire was presented as evidence to the national All-Party Parliamentary Group for Art, Craft and Design in Education, demonstrating the potential of artist, museum and university partnerships to support teacher development [E6]. As a result, Noble has been asked to join the NSEAD (National Society for Art and Design Education) council and is part of a steering group writing a white paper on art and design education, demonstrating how museum based research can inform policy debate in this area.

Developing a deeper understanding of cultural heritage

Death on the Nile exhibition [E1] reached 91,782 visitors, which represents 70% of the Museum’s total visitors during that period [E9, p. 28]. Typically 50-55% of the Museum’s visitors specifically visit to see a major exhibition, in spite of both the exhibition and wider Museum gallery spaces being open to all free of charge. A tracking study following ten visitors found an average viewing time of forty-two minutes and forty-six seconds [E3]. Although a very small sample size, these findings indicate deep engagement with the content. Comments collected from exhibition visitors also reveal exceptionally high levels of interest and enjoyment in discovering the findings of the research, ‘it was all so compelling. I learned many new things and I think I'll remember it as well because of the clarity and connection’ [E4]. These comments also demonstrate that the exhibition, including the integration of scientific data from CT scans with study of the iconography, was very successful in enhancing understanding of Egyptian burial practice, ‘I came with a reasonable knowledge of ancient Egyptian life but this late [sic] me to another level I think. It's easy to forget how technology and working practices, natural resources, etc are as important as the more obvious aesthetic “glam”’ and ‘the deconstruction of the coffins made things come alive I'd never thought about it before’ [E4].

The conservation lab hosted within the footprint of the exhibition provided an opportunity for members of the public to develop their understanding of ancient artefacts, enabling them to touch, smell and interact with replica objects and materials, and talk directly to the research team about methods of investigation and conservation practice. Several visitors commented that their attitudes to the ethics of conservation had been changed by engaging with the conservator, and that this had further stimulated their interest in the exhibition and the research it presented. One visitor stated that they ‘learned a lot here and made me look at the rest of the exhibits with greater reverence for the care taken over them’ [E4].

Fig. 1. ‘Live’ conservation studio within Death on the Nile.

Enhancing the cultural participation of culturally-underserved audiences

The ‘pop-up’ museum was designed to reach audiences unlikely to have visited the Death on the Nile exhibition or Fitzwilliam Museum to enhance the accessibility of the underpinning research and reach a group of marginalised, under-engaged and diverse audiences.

From February-July 2019, the curators and conservators took the ‘pop-up’ museum to eight different community venues in Wisbech, a Fenland town in an area with high levels of social and economic deprivation. The ‘pop-up’ museum was visited by 5,458 members of the public over the course of the project [E5]. Evaluation survey data revealed that the ‘pop-up’ museum was successful in stimulating interest in ancient Egypt and participants reported a heightened level of happiness and wellbeing after taking part and talking to the project team [E5]. As a result of their initial engagement with the pop-up museum, nine Rosmini Community Centre members, many of whom speak English as an additional language, visited the Fitzwilliam for the first time and took part in a special tour by the project team [E8]. These examples demonstrate increased cultural participation from an under-engaged audience.

Fig. 2. ‘Pop-up’ Museum in Wetherspoons Fig. 3. Egyptian Museum colleagues

in Wisbech. delivering ‘pop-up’ Museum.

Enhancing international curatorial and conservation practice

Building on the success of the conference (7-9 April 2016) and workshop (4-6 April 2016) held during the Death on the Nile exhibition, the research team went on to develop longer-term local and international collaborations with curators and conservators.

In Egypt in July 2019 the Fitzwilliam team trained twenty-seven curators, conservators and students from the Egyptian Museum and University of Cairo at a workshop, which was followed by a practical demonstration of the ‘pop-up’ Museum [E8]. Colleagues at the Egyptian Museum are tasked with documenting and interpreting the Museum’s internationally-significant collection of 600 ancient Egyptian coffins but they lack experience and modern equipment. The Fitzwilliam’s aim was to share their collaborative, interdisciplinary research praxis, and an effective approach to documenting ancient Egyptian coffins, enabling Egyptian Museum colleagues to become self-sufficient curators and conservators interpreting, displaying and engaging audiences with their outstanding collections (January-July 2019). One Egyptian Museum curator noted that she will now ‘look at the coffins in my museum in a very different way’ and noted her intention to use the information during her PhD, as well as in future supervisions of Masters and PhD students, demonstrating a strong contribution to their continuing personal and professional development and how research findings are being used in their working practice [E6].

The workshop was repeated in Alexandria in November 2019, this time with the Egyptian colleagues who had been trained in July taking the lead supported by the Fitzwilliam researchers [E8]. Both workshops provided practical suggestions for museum workers to apply within their day to day practice; one participant noted how the workshop gave them ‘a structured way to analyse coffins in general [...] Usually what I used to do is to just, maybe, depend on what I see, but I didn’t have a kind of a structure’ (November 2019) [E6]. Another participant reported a few days later that she had ‘ already started doing a workshop yesterday with some children about the way that things were made, where they were made of wood, and using tools’ [E6]. The Director of the Antiquities Museum, Alexandria noted how ‘this workshop also opened a field of scientific research for other objects’ and that ‘as one of the main tasks for museum staff is to speak about artefacts (including coffins) during school and group visits, the course has, indeed, helped the staff restructure and adapt their presentation [...] in a more efficient, educative and attractive manner’ [E7]. This shows how the Fitzwilliam research has supported the adoption of new or improved methods and has improved the efficiency and quality of their professional services for schools.

Enhanced professional practice leads to increased cultural participation of marginalised audiences and new ways of thinking

In Egypt, colleagues from the Egyptian Museum followed the example of the Wisbech pop-up museum and also found it was a successful way of engaging culturally-underserved audiences within their local community. As a result of the initial training session described above, they went on to create their own ‘pop-up’ at a furniture store in Maadi, Cairo. Egyptian Museum colleagues went on to lead pop-up museums at a furniture factory, the public library and a sports centre in Damietta in the Delta (at the heart of Egypt’s woodworking/furniture production) [E8]. These pop-ups further developed public interest and engagement with the original research but also gave participants new ways to understand their cultural heritage. One carpenter commented how ‘today I realized that ancient Egyptians are the origin of many tools and techniques that we still use today and they left us a great legacy’ [E6]. A workshop participant noted how working with tools ‘makes you imagine how the ancient Egyptians did it and it makes you think a bit like them and start to perhaps analyse things that you can just see by looking at them: okay it was made like that, but not this way. You have to use your hands, not just listen. So it’s quite important to use the tools by yourself, feel the material, this is the right tool for that or this is not the right tool’ [E6]. These testimonials demonstrate how effective the hands-on nature of the pop-up model workshops were in encouraging participants to make links between their own experiences and research on technological innovations of the ancient Egyptians. The testimonials also show how the research team’s collaboration with museum professionals in Egypt resulted in enhancements to cultural heritage interpretation. The resulting enhancements in professional practice have now become embedded Egyptian museological professional practice going forward.

In October 2019 the strength of the work was recognised by a University of Cambridge Vice Chancellor’s award for impact in the collaboration category, in recognition of the success of our interdisciplinary approach to audience engagement. The project has also been shortlisted for a Museums and Heritage Show award and an International Council of Museums (ICOM) University Museums and Collections award [E10].