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| The Gallery
opened, with the first Annual Spring Exhibition, on 12 March
1901,Lord Rosebury performing the opening ceremony. Over 200,000
visitors attended the exhibition in the six weeks with the largest
daily attendance being over 16,000. However donations received
at the door were only £100 and, without an endowment,
it was clear that the gallery was going to survive only through
the enthusiasm of Charles Aitken, the full time Director,and
with active, and generous Trustees. |
| Canon
Barnett was the chairman of the Board of Trustees until his
death in 1913. Other Trustees included Henrietta Barnett, Edgar
Speyer, H Lawson, of the LCC, and W Blyth, who became Secretary
and Treasurer. Many prominent people, including some local Anglo
Jewish families, and the City Guilds were supporters of the
Gallery. The gallery needed an income of around £500 per
year to cover basic running costs and even with the regular
donations, the gallery struggled to continue. The prospect of
relinquishing the manageemnt of the gallery to the LCC was discussed
but the LCC were not infavour but did award an annula grant
from 1909. |
| 1901 saw
the staging of an exhibition of Chinese art, organised and funded
by a separate committee, and in 1906 over 150,000 people visited
the six week exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities.In 1910
George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill were both involved
in the staging of the Shakespeare Memorial and Theatrical
Exhibition. However, in 1914 prposals for an exhibitian
of Twentieth Century Art, organised by Aitken and Gilbert
Ramsey, who had become Director when Aitken moved to the Tate,
caused Henrietta Barnett to write to plead with the them "
not to get too many examples of the extreeme thought of this
century, for we must never forget that the Whitechapel Gallery
is intended for Whitechapel people, who have to be delicately
led and will not understand the Post impressionist or futuristicmethodsof
seeing or representing things".Whether the aims of
the original Trustees- "to open to the people of East
London a larger world than that in which they usually work.
To draw them to a pleasure recreating their minds , and to stir
in them a human curiosity" were being met is a matter
of debate. Whilst many local people did attend the exhibitions
even more were attracted from elsewhere. Perhaps there was value
in them visiting the East end and seeing the daily living conditions
of the working classes was equally valid. |
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