Leeds Art Gallery is the most visited attraction in West Yorkshire

National World - LocalTV

The most visited West Yorkshire tourist attraction of 2022 has been announced as we meet two of the team from the Leeds Art Gallery which attracted over 300,000 visitors last year.

Transcript

00:00 With hundreds of thousands of people passing through these doors each year,

00:04 Leeds Art Gallery tops a list of the region's most visited attractions.

00:09 Being able to welcome more of us was welcomed as there was a 44% rise in visitor

00:14 numbers across all of these venues between 2021 and 2022.

00:19 Every day it is busy here at the gallery and in addition to our incredible exhibition programme and our outstanding collection,

00:26 we have a very busy public programme and I feel like the gallery is often filled with young people on school visits,

00:33 with international visitors, with local people just popping in to see their favourite work from the collection,

00:39 or people also coming into the Tart Hall Cafe to have a cup of coffee.

00:43 Sometimes people think because we're on galleries that maybe we get bored.

00:46 Never get bored. I just absolutely love it. I mean I love being surrounded by art, my background's in art.

00:52 I studied art quite a few years ago. Love meeting people and love being surrounded by art.

00:57 So to me it's my two favourite things combined in one place.

01:00 Everybody is welcome. There's no charge for the exhibitions or to visit their collections.

01:04 So we have collection displays that highlight key works and themes that draw out within the collection

01:11 and then we have a temporary exhibition programme as well.

01:13 So the scale of the gallery is also great. We're in a historic building.

01:17 We opened in 1888 so the architecture of the building is phenomenal.

01:22 I think quite often and probably in the past people have assumed that an art gallery is a particular space for a particular type of person

01:28 but to be honest we would like to think that our art gallery is very inclusive.

01:31 The team here are incredibly knowledgeable and welcoming.

01:34 I think when visitors come they'll see how friendly our visitor assistants are

01:38 and the expertise within the curatorial and the education team and our registrars

01:44 and our technicians of course who put on these incredible exhibitions is a joy to be around.

01:49 In 2017 we reopened and had an artist exhibition by an artist called Joseph Boyce

01:54 and one of his statements is that everybody's an artist and I truly believe that everybody is an artist

01:59 whether you draw or you paint, you sing, you dance, it doesn't matter.

02:06 I mean in fact to be honest even talking about dance we have had quite a few performances here.

02:10 We have Light Night which takes place here.

02:13 We've got a lovely exhibition that will be a countdown to Christmas in our ground floor galleries, in the Lions galleries.

02:19 So the whole team are going to be selecting a favourite work of theirs from the collection

02:24 and they're going to be revealed a day at a time.

02:27 So I do hope people will be interested to come back and visit and see the different works

02:31 that people who know the collection very well really want to have up

02:35 and there'll be a little description about why they've been chosen.

02:38 So that's something to look forward to.

02:40 And next year we're really looking forward to Found Cities Lost Objects

02:44 which is about the experience of women and gender non-conforming artists in the city,

02:48 how they navigate the city, how they feel safe and that will be opening later in January.

02:54 And then we're also looking forward to a major solo show,

02:58 a retrospective by the well-known and much-loved photographer here in Leeds, Peter Mitchell.

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