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Bowes Museum
The North’s museum of art, fashion and design
Founded: 1892
Charity Details
Full Name: The Bowes Museum
Field: Arts, Culture and Heritage
Founded: 1892
Headquarters: Barnard Castle, DL12 8NP
Charity No: 1079639
History and Activities
The Bowes Museum is an art museum located near Barnard Castle, County Durham, which houses diverse collections of European fine and decorative art. Work on the building, designed in the grand French-chateau style, began in 1869 but was not completed until 1892, by which time its founders, John Bowes and his wife Joséphine Chevalier, Countess of Montalbo, had both died.
John and Josephine spent £100,000 on building the museum and endowed it with a collection of 15,000 works of art, including 800 paintings, and £125,000 in cash. The Bowes is home to paintings by El Greco, Van Dyck, Canaletto, Gainsborough, Goya and many other distinguished artists. The most iconic item of decorative art is the Silver Swan musical automaton. There is an award-winning fashion and textiles gallery, an important collection of ceramics and a wide range of beautiful historic furniture. Besides its permanent collection, the Bowes regularly plays host to important touring exhibitions, recently featuring works by Monet, Raphael, Turner, Toulouse-Lautrec and William Morris. In 2015/16, the museum welcomed 139,938 visitors, a 30% increase on the previous year due in part to its curating the first UK retrospective of the work of Yves Saint Laurent.
In the accounting year 2016/17, the Bowes had an income of just over £5 million, of which £3.5 million came from philanthropic sources. Like other museums and galleries, its permanent collection has been built up through a combination of donated works and purchases. In-kind donations are an unpredictable and highly variable source of capital growth. In the accounting year 2015/16, the Bowes benefited from in-kind philanthropic donations worth £2,803,000, the greater part attributable to the donation in lieu of inheritance tax of the portrait of Olivia, Mrs Endymion Porter by Sir Anthony Van Dyck. The portrait was made around 1637 when the artist was at the height of his career and is one of his finest female portraits.
Vital Statistics (year to 31/03/2017)
| Total Income (TI):
| £5,063,748
|
| Philanthropic Income (PI):
| £3,413,116
|
| PI as % of TI:
| 67.4%
|
| Employees:
| 65
|
| Volunteers:
| 90
|
| Charitable Spending:
| £1,278,650
|
| Investments at Year End:
| £2,852,274
|
Website
http://www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk/
References
Charity Commission. (2017). Bowes Museum - Report of the Trustees and consolidated financial statements 2017, Available here (Accessed: 21/09/2018).
CODART (2015). Website. Available here (Accessed: 21/09/2018).
Hardy, C. (1970). John Bowes and the Bowes Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne: Frank Graham
The Bowes Museum. (2018). History. Available here (Accessed: 07/06/18).
Wikipedia. (2018) John Bowes (art collector). Available here (Accessed: 07/06/18).