The Box, Plymouth review: Brutalism-by-the-sea, and not in a good way
Could there be a less auspicious time to unveil a public art gallery? Recently, I put this to Nicola Moyle, one of the people in charge of The Box, Plymouth’s shiny new “arts and heritage museum space”, which opens to the public next Tuesday [Sept 29], having cost £46 million. To her credit, she threw back her head and roared with laughter – in despair? “Oh dear,” she said, swiftly composing herself. “It’s not ideal, is it?”
Of course, The Box’s staff have no control over the repercussions of the pandemic. Indeed, having secured impressive grants from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England, as well as Plymouth’s city council, they were poised – following a four-year build – to open on time, this spring. Now, though, they are expecting only a quarter of their hoped-for 250,000 annual visitors (a target, incidentally, about the size of Plymouth’s population). Through no fault of their own, alas, their business model could be stillborn. The past couple of decades have proved a golden age for new regional galleries and museums. Yet, for all the success stories (Turner Contemporary, Hepworth Wakefield), there are sorry tales of institutions that bit the dust. Here are four words to send shivers down any museum director’s spine: The Public, West Bromwich. Three years after completion, it closed in 2013.
For now, then, The Box’s fate hangs in the balance. On the plus side, everything about it is well-intentioned and sincere. This is a box crammed to bursting – overly so, you could say – with civic pride. Outside the new glass atrium, decorated with 14 renovated 19th-century ships’ figureheads (which look folksy and fantastic, dramatically suspended from the ceiling), a new pedestrianised square links the building with St Luke’s Church, also co-opted as one of The Box’s many exhibition spaces.
But there are minuses. The eponymous “box” is a massive cantilevered concrete structure, clad in stainless steel, which “floats” above what was the city’s Edwardian art gallery, linking it with the old library. Inside, there are 24,000 boxes comprising the archives of the Plymouth and West Devon record office. Unfortunately, the building’s design, by architectural firm Atkins, is as boring as that sounds. Unattractive and clumsy, The Box revives the post-war architecture that still characterises this Brutalism-by-the-Sea – and not in a good way. Where is the grace, the subtlety, the finesse? The monochromatic interiors, too, are drab and uninspiring. By contrast, stepping inside, say, V&A Dundee, feels uplifting.
And that name, “The Box”, presumably conceived to ride on the coattails of The Shed in New York: doesn’t it lack imagination? I wouldn’t want my local gallery to evoke a humdrum cardboard package; I see enough of those already, left by couriers on my doorstep. It’s so blank and generic – much like the gallery’s choice for a new public commission on West Hoe Pier: a stack of iron blocks by Antony Gormley. Yawn. Isn’t culture meant to think outside the box?
I don’t want to sound mean. In times like these, regional galleries need all the help they can get. Perhaps, though, The Box – a repository, apparently, for more than two million objects – needs to clarify its vision. Because, frankly, it is trying to do a lot – and that can feel bewildering. As well as that record office in the sky, there are installations by contemporary artists and galleries devoted to naval and natural history. One minute, we are peering through a periscope from a nuclear submarine (a lovely, inviting touch), the next we are confronted by a life-size model of a woolly mammoth, who looks as though she’s sneezing. Sorry, why? Ah, yes – because a mammoth’s tooth, on display in the same gallery, was discovered nearby. And, presumably, because she provides The Box with a mascot, justifying the sale of cuddly mammoths in the large shop.
Everything is programmed to hammer home a message about the locality. “From the pyramids to Plymouth” reads the heading of one display case. We even encounter a rare money spider that has only been seen in three places, all within the city. At times, walking through the permanent displays feels like enduring a corporate video for Plymouth plc.
Thankfully, the centrepiece of the opening programme, an exhibition of 300 objects retelling the story of the Mayflower, marking the 400th anniversary of its voyage from – you guessed it – Plymouth, is brilliantly executed, with a big central hull-like structure evoking the cramped ship. Yes, at times, the show is excessively misty-eyed about the Wampanoag people whom the English Separatist settlers encountered on the other side of the Atlantic – possibly because it was co-curated with their descendants. But the central narrative of that arduous crossing, which lasted for 66 storm-tossed days, and the subsequent hardships endured by the colonists – and, indeed, the Wampanoag – is intrinsically compelling. I just hope The Box will prosper, like Plymouth Colony, against the odds.
Information: theboxplymouth.com
