Biography
With financial support and a bequest of artworks from local businessman John George Graves (1866-1945), the Graves Gallery, part of Sheffield Museums Trust since 2021, opened to the public in July 1934 above Sheffield's Central Library. The large collection charts the development of European and British art from the 16th-century to the present. Notable pieces include works by Gainsborough, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites and a collection of Impressionist work by Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissaro and Egon Schiele.
The Modern British collection has an impressive group of works by the artists Gwen John, Stanley Spencer, David Bomberg, Henry Moore, John Hoyland and Frank Auerbach. The Contemporary Art Society has helped to expand its contemporary collection with artists such as Helen Chadwick, Alison Wilding, Suputa Biswas and Isaac Julien. In 2020 the Contemporary Art Society acquired through its first crowd-funding campaign, the Rapid Response Fund, 67 tiny ink drawings and an etching, of his Pandemic Diary by the Welsh-born mural artist Phlegm, who spent 15 years living in Sheffield.
The Graves Gallery won the Contemporary Art Society's Annual Award Commission to Collect in 2009. It commissioned a major new work by the Czech artist Kateřina Šedá . The decorative art collection includes pottery from local factories such as Rockingham and Pinxton, as well as examples from Worcester, Derby, Wedgwood and Leeds. The gallery’s collection of metalwork charts the influence and history of the famous Sheffield-based industry. The gallery has always shown temporary exhibitions alongside permanent displays, a policy established by its first director, Sir John Rothenstein (1901-1992),who later went on to become director of the Tate Gallery as well being a Contemporary Art Society Executive Committee member from 1938-65.
The Millennium Gallery is an art gallery and museum in Sheffield which opened in 2001 and houses the Ruskin Collection and the Metalwork Collection of more than 13,000 objects of Sheffield-made cutlery, flatware (forks and spoons) and holloware (for example, bowls, teapots, containers). It also has a Craft & Design gallery as a tempoarary exhibition space. It continues to acquire silverware from emerging artists; Clothed Akin (2023), five Britannia silver pieces by Ghanaian-born, Sheffield-based metalsmith Francisca Onumah was commissioned and acquired with support from the Contemporary Art Society's Griffin Award.
