An international spotlight is shining on County Durham with two prestigious US exhibitions attracting international attention.
Paintings from The Auckland Project, Bishop Auckland, including works from Auckland Castle and the forthcoming Spanish Gallery nearby, have been displayed in two separate exhibitions in New York City.
Francisco de Zurbarán’s Jacob and His Twelve Sons, a series of paintings that has hung in Auckland Castle for more than 250 years, is being exhibited at the renowned Frick Collection until 22 April, while an additional selection of Spanish artworks was shown at Sotheby’s auction house earlier this month.
Both exhibitions have helped to raise the profile of Bishop Auckland with the Zurbarán paintings at The Frick Collection, in particular, generating countless column inches in worldwide publications such as The New Yorker, The Art Newspaper and Spain’s La Vanguardia.
A sold-out evening event about the exhibition, featuring Philippe de Montebello, former Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Auckland Project’s Chairman, Jonathan Ruffer, was also broadcast and viewed as far afield as Colombia and Australia.
The first ever showing of Jacob and His Twelve Sons in New York builds on a year-long in-depth technical analysis of the Zurbarán paintings at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas and an exhibition at the Meadows Museum, Dallas, which closed in January.
Elsewhere in Manhattan, a selection of Spanish art from The Auckland Project’s collection
was also on display at Sotheby’s from 26 January to 11 February. Timed to coincide with
Sotheby’s Masters Week, one of their busiest weeks of the year, the exhibition featured
Spanish Old Master paintings acquired by The Auckland Project through the international
auction house. Jointly curated by Sotheby’s and The Auckland Project, this was the first
presentation of works that will soon be displayed in the Spanish Gallery, due to open in
Bishop Auckland in 2019.
Auckland Castle and the Spanish Gallery form part of The Auckland Project’s plans for a
world-class visitor destination in Bishop Auckland, including a Faith Museum, Walled Garden
and Auckland Tower visitor centre. The first of these new attractions, the Mining Art Gallery,
opened in October 2017, with the rest following in stages over the next two years.
The presentation of Jacob and His Twelve Sons to American audiences was made possible,
in part, by the multi-million-pound conservation programme currently underway at Auckland
Castle, the historic home of the Prince Bishops of Durham. The paintings will return to
England prior to the Castle’s grand reopening on Saturday, 1 December 2018.
For more information about the American exhibitions and to stay up to date with The
Auckland Project’s Future Plans, visit: www.aucklandproject.org.