The Five Senses

A serendipitous arrangement of paintings in Hove Museum.  It forms part of the current Fine Art exhibition "The Five Senses" in which all the paintings are chosen to demonstrate the different ways artists through the ages have chosen to suggest touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. 

Some of the paintings in this exhibition are rarely seen. Brighton & Hove has a collection of about 1500 oil paintings and of course numerous water-colours, etchings, drawings, sculptures etc. Yet gallery space is only available for a few percentage of these. Even if displays were changed every 6 months or so it would take several decades before we could have seen the whole collection. It is true of course that any item would be made available to view on request, yet this hardly compares with the pleasures of casual viewing and the concomitant anticipation of new discoveries. 

There seems no prospect of a significant increase in gallery space in the forseeable future. An extra room in the Brighton Museum might become available when/if, in a few years time, the Local History Centre moves to the Keep in Falmer but, even if the space freed is used for an art gallery, it will not make a significant contribution in comparison with the size of the collection.

Brighton has been called "London-by-the-sea", but unlike London we lack a prestigious Art Gallery and apparently, any philanthropists, sugar or grocery barons for example,  to build us one. 

This free exhibition continues until 1st March next year.