Opening in February 2025, the exhibition titled ‘From Joséphine Bowes: Trendsetters and Trailblazers’ will feature works spanning 300 years from more than 60 artists, designers, and makers who have shaped trends in western culture.
Joséphine was a 19th-century actress and dancer from humble roots, who became a pioneering artist, collector, and patron of the arts after marrying into a fortune in 1852.
By 1862, she had laid the first stone of The Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, defying societal norms and navigating restrictions of gender, geography, class, and taste.Josephine Bowes (Image: Bowes Museum)
The museum now aims to explore the continuation of Joséphine’s collection and speculate on where her knowledge of artistic trends might lead the museum in the future.
The exhibition is organised into four thematic sections, with each aspect of the museum’s collection presented in a new light.
The first section is dedicated to our relationship with nature, featuring one of Joséphine Bowes’s still-life oil paintings alongside new, previously unseen works.
The second section focuses on the female versus male gaze, featuring a selection of works from artists such as Sophie Anderson, Pablo Picasso, and Grayson Perry.
The third section centres around collecting and belonging, with sculptures standing alongside a photograph series by Gillian Wearing.A still life by Josephine Bowes (Image: Bowes Museum)
The exhibition concludes with a theme of open skies and seas, featuring works like Joséphine’sMaree Montante, pres Boulogne-sur-mer, 1870, and Paul Merrick’s large abstract painting, Lagoon, 2020.
Vicky Sturrs, director of programmes and collections at The Bowes Museum, said: “Joséphine Bowes was a 19th-century innovator and tastemaker, a collector of young and emerging talent, who amassed a founding collection of 15,000 objects encompassing fine art to ceramics, glassware to textiles, furniture to mechanical objects.
“At the time, more early Impressionist works were purchased by The Bowes Museum than by the National Gallery, London.
“The driving force behind this new exhibition, From Joséphine Bowes: Trendsetters and Trailblazers, is The Bowes Museum reflecting on its founders’ vision and what it means to be a collecting institution at the forefront of artistic trends for the North of England and beyond.
“How, 200 years on, should Joséphine’s pioneering vision to create a public museum for everyone, especially the people of Teesdale, live on today and for future generations?”
Highlights from Joséphine’s extensive 18th and 19th-century collections will be paired with significant loans from 20th-century European history and new works by leading artists today from the North of England.
The exhibition will feature works in various media forms including painting, drawing, film, photography, sculpture, ceramics, furniture, and textiles.
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Visitors will be greeted by one of Joséphine Bowes’s large-scale still-life oil paintings in the first section of the exhibition.
Each section aims to provide an insight into Joséphine Bowes’s influence on the art world and her continued impact on the Bowes Museum, Teesdale, and beyond.
The exhibition promises to be full of surprises, much like Joséphine’s own story.