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Christie's and Spencer House announce special exhibition

Two of our members have announced a joint project - an exciting exhibition programme of modern and contemporary sculpture. Christie's announced the exhibition in conjunction with Spencer House, one of the finest of London’s 18th century private palaces, and the last to remain intact.

The exhibition programme is launched with Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, 1996, which will be on view on the terrace of Spencer House from 29 September to 6 October 2011.

With its human height and massive wingspan of more than five metres, Angel of the North, is the iconic figurehead of Antony Gormley's internationally acclaimed oeuvre. This human scale maquette is one of a series of five sculptures that prefigure the colossal Gateshead project that Gormley completed in 1998, and which has become one of the most iconic of all 20th century British sculptures. Rising twenty meters from the ground and spanning fifty-four meters from tip to tip, the Gateshead project was cast out of 200 tonnes of steel and was conceived as a national emblem and beacon for the North of England.

As the artist himself has elaborated, 'people are always asking, why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them. The angel has three functions - firstly a historic one to remind us that below this site coal miners worked in the dark for two hundred years, secondly to grasp hold of the future, expressing our transition from the industrial to the information age, and lastly to be a focus for our hopes and fears'

For more information about the exhibition, please visit www.christies.com

Some background on Spencer House

Spencer House is arguably the most important Neo-Classical commission in England. Built in 1756-65 by the Hon. John, later First Earl Spencer, who wanted a home worthy of his wealth and ambition, it was constructed by John Vardy under the direction, and possibly the design, of Col. John Gray, secretary of the Society of the Dilletanti. From its conception, it was recognised as one of the most ambitious aristocratic town houses ever built in London and is, today, the city's only great eighteenth-century private palace to survive intact.

The furnishings supplied under John Vardy and James ‘Athenian’ Stuart for Spencer House are rightly lauded as being pivotal in the evolution of English decorative arts. Drawing heavily on the buildings he had documented on his travels to Greece and Italy, Stuart constructed the ballroom like a Roman palace; a painted room in the Roman arabesque style, called a ‘phoenix’ by Arthur Young; a music room; the Rubens room; and a dressing-room with fantastic gilded palm columns.

In 1924 Spencer House was leased and much of the furniture - along with the mahogany doors and chimneypieces - was removed to Althorp. As a result, the state rooms were used as offices from the late 1920s until 1985, when RIT Capital Partners plc acquired the lease.

Spencer House was once occupied by Christie’s. In 1941, Christie’s premises on King Street suffered a direct hit during the Blitz in the Second World War. The firm moved to Derby House, near Oxford Street and then to Spencer House before returning to the re-built King Street premises in 1953.

Under the direction of its current occupants and leaseholders, Lord Rothschild and RIT Capital Partners plc, Spencer House has been the object of one of the most ambitious and celebrated restoration projects to be undertaken this century. The House has now been restored to its original splendour and is used partly as offices and as a place where entertainments can be held in the historic setting of the state rooms.
Spencer House is open to the public for viewing every Sunday (except during January and August) from 10.30 a.m. - 5.45 p.m. Access is by guided tour, which lasts approximately 1 hour. Tours begin at regular intervals and the last admission is at 4.45 p.m.

For further information, please visit: www.spencerhouse.co.uk