Leeds - the art and soul of a city

Sarah Brown, Principal Keeper at Leeds Art Gallery. (Simon Hulme).

Leeds has long been renowned as an acclaimed centre for theatre, opera and dance. But, as Chris Bond reports, art is also enjoying a renaissance in the city.

When it comes to theatre, Leeds has a lot to make a song and dance about (if you’ll pardon the pun).

It’s home to such lauded venues as the Grand, Leeds City Varieties and West Yorkshire Playhouse, not to mention the HQ of Northern Ballet which has helped established the city as the North’s capital of dance.

Leeds has produced its fair share of notable artists down the years, too. John Atkinson Grimshaw, whose hauntingly evocative pictures of Victorian life have lost none of their lustre, was born in the city, while Jacob Kramer, a Russian emigre whose portrait subjects included Gandhi and Delius, made Leeds his home after the First World War.

Damien Hirst grew up in Leeds and studied art in the city. (PA).

Then there’s Damien Hirst who grew up in the city and studied at Leeds College of Art and Design and has gone on to become one of the most famous (and richest) artists on the planet.

The art scene is aided by the Leeds Art Fund which has been going for more than a century. It owns or has helped buy more than 430 works for Leeds art galleries including those by such luminaries as Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore and it continues to play a key role in acquiring contemporary and historic art.

The city is also home to the Henry Moore Institute, which makes up part of the acclaimed ‘Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle’ and has drawn praise the world over.

Even so, there’s a nagging feeling that the visual arts don’t quite have the same kind of clout as say theatre or music, though this perception is slowly starting to change.

Layla Bloom at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, based at the University of Leeds. (James Hardisty).

In 2015, Leeds hosted the British Art Show, one of the most influential and exciting contemporary arts exhibitions in the country, and last autumn saw the long-awaited reopening of Leeds Art Gallery following a major renovation.

Then came the European Commission’s contentious decision to remove the UK from the Capital of Culture programme, putting the kibosh on Leeds’s 2023 bid. However, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater the city is pushing on with plans for a new 12-year cultural strategy outlined in its bid.

This is not only good news for Leeds, it’s good news for arts and culture in the city.