00:00 With hundreds of thousands of people passing through these doors each year,
00:04 Leeds Art Gallery tops a list of the region's most visited attractions.
00:09 Being able to welcome more of us was welcomed as there was a 44% rise in visitor
00:14 numbers across all of these venues between 2021 and 2022.
00:19 Every day it is busy here at the gallery and in addition to our incredible exhibition programme and our outstanding collection,
00:26 we have a very busy public programme and I feel like the gallery is often filled with young people on school visits,
00:33 with international visitors, with local people just popping in to see their favourite work from the collection,
00:39 or people also coming into the Tart Hall Cafe to have a cup of coffee.
00:43 Sometimes people think because we're on galleries that maybe we get bored.
00:46 Never get bored. I just absolutely love it. I mean I love being surrounded by art, my background's in art.
00:52 I studied art quite a few years ago. Love meeting people and love being surrounded by art.
00:57 So to me it's my two favourite things combined in one place.
01:00 Everybody is welcome. There's no charge for the exhibitions or to visit their collections.
01:04 So we have collection displays that highlight key works and themes that draw out within the collection
01:11 and then we have a temporary exhibition programme as well.
01:13 So the scale of the gallery is also great. We're in a historic building.
01:17 We opened in 1888 so the architecture of the building is phenomenal.
01:22 I think quite often and probably in the past people have assumed that an art gallery is a particular space for a particular type of person
01:28 but to be honest we would like to think that our art gallery is very inclusive.
01:31 The team here are incredibly knowledgeable and welcoming.
01:34 I think when visitors come they'll see how friendly our visitor assistants are
01:38 and the expertise within the curatorial and the education team and our registrars
01:44 and our technicians of course who put on these incredible exhibitions is a joy to be around.
01:49 In 2017 we reopened and had an artist exhibition by an artist called Joseph Boyce
01:54 and one of his statements is that everybody's an artist and I truly believe that everybody is an artist
01:59 whether you draw or you paint, you sing, you dance, it doesn't matter.
02:06 I mean in fact to be honest even talking about dance we have had quite a few performances here.
02:10 We have Light Night which takes place here.
02:13 We've got a lovely exhibition that will be a countdown to Christmas in our ground floor galleries, in the Lions galleries.
02:19 So the whole team are going to be selecting a favourite work of theirs from the collection
02:24 and they're going to be revealed a day at a time.
02:27 So I do hope people will be interested to come back and visit and see the different works
02:31 that people who know the collection very well really want to have up
02:35 and there'll be a little description about why they've been chosen.
02:38 So that's something to look forward to.
02:40 And next year we're really looking forward to Found Cities Lost Objects
02:44 which is about the experience of women and gender non-conforming artists in the city,
02:48 how they navigate the city, how they feel safe and that will be opening later in January.
02:54 And then we're also looking forward to a major solo show,
02:58 a retrospective by the well-known and much-loved photographer here in Leeds, Peter Mitchell.
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