Capital of Culture
On 4 June 2008, Liverpool was named a European Capital of Culture for 2008, the other site being Stavanger, Norway.
The culture of Liverpool incorporates a wide range of activities within the city of Liverpool, England. The city is an important centre for culture not just in the northwest of England, but also the United Kingdom more broadly. Its contributions to culture internationally were recognised in 2008, when it was named the European Capital of Culture.
On 4 June 2008, Liverpool was named a European Capital of Culture for 2008, the other site being Stavanger, Norway.
Beryl Bainbridge, one of England's greatest contemporary writers, grew up in Liverpool. Many of her stories are set there.
A number of notable authors have visited Liverpool including Daniel Defoe, Washington Irving, Thomas De Quincey, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hugh Walpole all of whom spent extended periods in the city[ citation needed ]. Hawthorne was stationed in Liverpool as United States consul between 1853 and 1856[ citation needed ]. Although he is not known to have ever visited Liverpool, Jung famously had a vivid dream of the city which he analysed in one of his works. [1]
Liverpool was the centre in the 1960s of Merseybeat and since then has been home to a music scene. The city is also home to the UK's oldest-established orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, headquartered in the Philharmonic Hall, and a youth orchestra. Max Bruch was one of numerous notable conductors of the RLPO, and dedicated his Kol Nidre to the Jewish community in the city. Sir Edward Elgar dedicated his famous Pomp and Circumstance No.1 to the Liverpool Orchestral Society, and the piece had its first performance in the city in 1901. Among Liverpool's curiosities, the Austrian émigré Fritz Spiegl is notable. He not only became a world expert on the etymology of Scouse, but composed the music to Z-Cars and the Radio 4 UK Theme.[ citation needed ]
During the late 1960s the city became well known for the Liverpool poets, who include Roger McGough and the late Adrian Henri. An anthology of poems, The Mersey Sound , written by Henri, McGough and Brian Patten, has sold over 500,000 copies since first being published in 1967[ citation needed ].
Liverpool also has a history of performing arts, reflected every summer in its annual theatrical highlight, the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival, and by the number of theatres in the city. These include the Empire, Everyman, Playhouse, Neptune, Royal Court, and Unity Theatres. The Everyman, Unity, and Playhouse Theatres all run their own theatre companies. [2] [3]
Liverpool has more galleries and national museums than any other city in the United Kingdom apart from London. [4] National Museums Liverpool is the only English national collection based wholly outside London. [5] The Tate Liverpool gallery houses the modern art collection of the Tate in the North of England and was, until the opening of Tate Modern, the largest exhibition space dedicated to modern art in the United Kingdom. The FACT centre hosts touring multimedia exhibitions, whilst the Walker Art Gallery houses an extensive collection of Pre-Raphaelites. Sudley House contains another major collection of pre-20th-century art, [6] and the number of galleries continues to expand: Ceri Hand Gallery opened in 2008, exhibiting primarily contemporary art, and Liverpool University's Victoria Building was re-opened as a public art gallery and museum to display the University's artwork and historical collections which include the second-largest display of art by Audubon outside the US[ citation needed ].
Artists have also come from the city, including painter George Stubbs who was born in Liverpool in 1724.
The Liverpool Biennial festival of arts runs from mid-September to late November and comprises three main sections; the International, The Independents and New Contemporaries although fringe events are timed to coincide. [7] It was during the 2004 festival that Yoko Ono's work "My mother is beautiful" caused widespread public protest when photographs of a naked woman's pubic area were exhibited on the main shopping street. Despite protests the work remained in place[ citation needed ].
Salt and pepper chips are believed to have been invented in Liverpool as a fusion of Chinese and Scouse cuisine. [8]
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corporation. Tate Liverpool was created to display work from the Tate Collection which comprises the national collection of British art from the year 1500 to the present day, and international modern art. The gallery also has a programme of temporary exhibitions. Until 2003, Tate Liverpool was the largest gallery of modern and contemporary art in the UK outside London.
John Walker is an English painter and printmaker. He has been called "one of the standout abstract painters of the last 50 years."
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
In the art world, a Biennale, Italian for "biennial" or "every other year", is a large-scale international contemporary art exhibition. The term was popularised by the Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895, but the concept of such a large scale, and intentionally international event goes back to at least the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.
The Everyman Theatre stands at the north end of Hope Street in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It was founded in 1964, in Hope Hall, in an area of Liverpool noted for its bohemian environment and political edge, and quickly built a reputation for ground-breaking work. The Everyman was completely rebuilt between 2011 and 2014.
Alexander Robert "Sandy" Nairne is a British art historian and curator. From 2002 until February 2015 he was the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Liverpool Biennial is the largest international contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom.
Andreas Gursky is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
John Smith is a British avant garde filmmaker noted for his use of humour in exploring various themes that often play upon the film spectator's conditioned assumptions of the medium.
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005 and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
London has, alongside New York, been described as the cultural capital of the world. The culture of London concerns the music, museums, festivals, and lifestyle within London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. London is one of the world's leading business centres, renowned for its technological readiness and economic clout, as well as attracting the most foreign investment of any global city.
Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam, was an Iranian-born painter, sculptor, and a professor of art. He was most notable for his style of abstract expressionism, and was once referred to as the "pioneer of modern Iranian abstraction."
Sheffield has a growing cultural reputation. 7.2% of Sheffield's working population are employed in the creative industries, well above the national average of 4%. The music scene has produced many music acts during the last 25 years. It is also home to the largest theatre complex outside London. The council has attempted to build upon these foundations with the creation of the Cultural Industries Quarter. Sheffield made the shortlist for the first city to be designated UK City of Culture, but in July 2010 it was announced that Derry had been selected.
Sarah Sze is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University. She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums. Sze's work explores the role of technology and information in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze's work often represents objects caught in suspension.
assume vivid astro focus (avaf) is both an alias of Brazilian-born New York-based artist Eli Sudbrack, and the name of an international group of visual and performance artists, with French multimedia artist Christophe Hamaide-Pierson one of the main collaborators. Sudbrack was born in 1968 and moved to New York in 1998.
Jananne Al-Ani is an Irish-Iraqi artist.
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, having opened in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the art of the United Kingdom since Tudor times, and in particular has large holdings of the works of J. M. W. Turner, who bequeathed all his own collection to the nation. It is one of the largest museums in the country. The museum had 525,144 visitors in 2021, an increase of 34 percent from 2020 but still well below pre- COVID-19 pandemic levels. In 2021 it ranked 50th on the list of most-visited art museums in the world.
The Victoria Gallery & Museum (VG&M) is an art gallery and museum run by the University of Liverpool in Liverpool, Merseyside, England.
DaDaFest is a disability arts organisation based in Liverpool, UK. It delivers an international, biennial festival and organises other events to promote disability and deaf arts from a variety of cultural perspectives. Alongside the festival and events, DaDaFest organises opportunities for disabled and deaf people to gain access to the arts. This includes training and a youth focused programme.
