New Exhibition Partnership for the National Gallery in Cayman Brac and Little Cayman

The National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (NGCI) has embarked on a new exhibition partnership with the Cayman Islands Legacy Fund (CILF) that will enable NGCI exhibitions to travel regularly from Grand Cayman to venues in Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. The CILF is a non-profit organization established by the Tibbetts family to honour the legacy of Linton and Polly Tibbetts. The first of these exhibitions, From Whence We Came and Coral Encounters: Photographs from Our Underwater World, recently opened at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort and the Little Cayman Museum respectively, and they will be on display until February 2019.

As NGCI Director Natalie Urquhart explains, “We are truly delighted to be partnering with the Tibbetts family to travel exhibitions regularly to the Sister Islands. In keeping with our mandate to preserve, promote and develop visual art in the Cayman Islands we are committed to making art and art education as accessible as possible, across all three islands. This opportunity allows us to expand exhibition programming via these satellite venues and to engage with our community in all three islands.”

“The late Linton Tibbetts was a former National Gallery board member and long-time supporter so the partnership with the Little Cayman Museum and Cayman Brac Beach Resort, both of which he founded, is particularly significant to our team,” adds Urquhart.

Each exhibition is designed with related programming ranging from school tours to workshops, lectures and screenings. This education initiative builds on NGCI’s longer term Cayman Brac afterschool programme, the Walkers Art Club, which runs weekly throughout the school year, and the EY Brac Seniors art programme, which will resume in early 2019. NGCI will also be partnering with Brac-based Simone Scott at Walton’s Mango Manor to host Saturday Art Sessions, along with pop up art classes in Little Cayman. Entry to these programmes and each exhibition, which will rotate three times per year, will be free of charge.

Michael Tibbetts, Chairman of the CILF says, “We are proud to support NGCI by hosting their exhibitions and working with their staff to provide inspiring programming. This partnership continues our vision for the Little Cayman Museum, which is to share our unique history and culture with our community and visitors to the island. It was equally important to both organizations that the exhibitions then travel to Cayman Brac and we have successfully adapted exhibition space at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort to facilitate these moving forward.”

On display at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort is From Whence We Came, which was originally shown at NGCI in early 2018. It features a collection of images by celebrated musician and author D. Randall Blythe that draw upon the John F. Kennedy quotation “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, – we are going back from whence we came”. The series is a celebration of the artist’s deep visceral connection to the water and waves and is part of NGCI’s ongoing programming around the ocean, our maritime heritage, and conservation.

The inaugural NGCI exhibition at the Little Cayman Museum is Coral Encounters: Photographs from Our Underwater World, which offers an unique chance to view one of the world’s most diverse environments and to take a close-up look at some of the creatures that call it home. It features the work of 30 local and international underwater photographers and was developed in conjunction with the International Year of the Coral Reef initiative in mid-2018. Original exhibition partners the Central Caribbean Marine Institute, who are based in Little Cayman, will be collaborating with the Little Cayman Museum’s Community Director Tanja Laaser and the NGCI Education Department to provide programming over the next few months.

The Little Cayman Museum is open from 1.30pm-4pm from Monday to Thursday, 2:00 pm-4pm on Friday and 10:30am-12:00pm on Saturday. The Cayman Brac Beach Resort is open from 8am-9pm daily. Admission is free. The exhibitions will run until 01 February 2019. A full list of NGCI exhibitions and events will be posted shortly on https://www.nationalgallery.org.ky/whats-on/ .

IMAGES:

Photo caption: (front row l-r)
Emily Allenbach, Little Cayman Museum Community Director Tanja Laaser, NGCI Director Natalie Urquhart, David Buchanan, Cayman Islands Legacy Fund Chairman Michael Tibbetts, Jessica Buchanan and Ed Houlcroft at the opening reception of Coral Encounters.

Photo caption: Assistant curator Simon Tatum installing Coral Encounters at the Little Cayman Museum

Photo caption: Guest view the recently installed From Whence We Came exhibition at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort.

About the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands
Established in 1997, the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (NGCI) is the country’s leading visual arts museum, exhibition facility and education centre, charged with promoting and encouraging the appreciation and practice of the visual arts in the Cayman Islands. This mission is achieved through exhibitions, education/outreach programmes, school tours, community festivals, and ongoing research projects. Holding up to six exhibitions annually at their central exhibition space and satellite venues around Grand Cayman and the Sister Islands, the curatorial team strives to create a balance between exhibitions of quality Caymanian artwork and collaborations with artists from further afield. This is achieved by working with a broad cross-section of artists and ranging from site-specific work to more traditional gallery-based projects.
NGCI is at the forefront of visual arts education in the Cayman Islands hosting over 60 public programmes monthly, across all three islands. These programmes capture every age group from the youngest pre-schoolers to senior citizens, as well as marginalized members of our community. They combine art education with enriching creative experiences to foster creativity, help build self-esteem, and provide effective and invaluable explorations of cultural heritage, national identity and community values.