Darlington has hundreds of artworks within its public collections, including paintings in oil, acrylic, gouache and watercolour paintings, etchings, engravings, screen-prints, collage, embroidery and textile works, ceramics, sculpture and photography. A number of paintings in oil paint or acrylic, can currently be viewed on the Art UK website, which shares work in public collections.
Over the years artwork has been held in different Darlington Borough Council buildings and moved on occasion. Sometimes work is loaned for exhibition, sometimes displayed in different buildings, including The Town Hall and Darlington Library and sometimes for storage. Sometimes the glass in frames has become cracked, over time the card mounting paper based images can dis-colour and sometimes frames become damaged beyond repair. Not all of the works within the Borough Art Collection are framed, which limits opportunity to display them.
Creative Darlington recently supported services to frame, mount and glaze, reframe, re-glaze or replace the card mounts some of the pictures held in public collections in Darlington. A big thank you to The Art Shop in Darlington for providing fantastic service in reframing, re-glazing and mounting particular works in Darlington Library and Darlington’s Borough Art Collection recently.
A big thank you also to those who have donated artwork to our public collections, and we’re looking forward to renewing exhibitions of particular works from Darlington’s Borough Art Collection within the gallery at Darlington Library, once the restoration work is concluded. Our collections policy regarding donation is that we only consider works either particular to Darlington’s heritage and culture or of considerable artistic value, i.e. artwork by recognised artists with a national or international reputation, as space to safely and securely store work is limited and there are costs attached. A few examples of works donated in recent years which met these criteria are shown below.
