Worthing Museum and Art Gallery’s intern, Izzy Singleton, has been working hard to help everything run smoothly at the museum. Recently she has been working to fill some prominent space in our display. We caught up with Izzy to find out about her role and what she’s been up to.
About Izzy
Izzy is Worthing Museum’s Curatorial Intern who started here in September 2023. As a University of Brighton undergraduate, Izzy was offered a place on a Masters programme in Museum Curation and Collections. “I did my professional placement [at Worthing Museum], and now I work here!” Originally from North Wales, Izzy grew up with an Archaeologist father, giving her a life-long love of history. Her combined love for art, archaeology and history led Izzy towards working in museum and academic historical spaces.
Izzy’s role as the Curatorial Intern is varied. She assists with the museum admin (which involves a lot of spreadsheets!) but she also assists with physical installations of work, and cataloguing and recording information about pieces in the museum collection. Izzy puts her academic skills to good use by doing research on the collection and for exhibitions.
Bianca, the Patroness of Heavenly Harmony
Recently, a prominent space in the museum became vacant when William Holman Hunt’s 1869 painting Bianca, the Patroness of Heavenly Harmony went on loan to Fondazione Cassa Dei Risparmi Di Forli for their Pre-Raphaelite Modern Renaissance exhibition. This exhibition looks at the huge historical and cultural impact of Italian art, specifically on the Pre-Raphaelites.
Holman Hunt is a renowned artist who was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Izzy was tasked with finding work in the collection to fill the gap. “Originally, I looked at pieces that were of a similar size to Bianca, because it’s a large space that you see as soon as you come up the stairs. But then I started looking at pieces that attracted me through theme or colour.”
Dorothy Primrose as Ophelia
The first piece that stood out to Izzy was Dorothy Primrose as Ophelia (1937), by Stephen Makepeace Weins. Weins moved to Worthing in the 1920s, where he likely saw a production of Hamlet at the Connaught around 1937 starring the painting’s sitter. “That painting captured me.” says Izzy “There’s something about her expression. It’s interesting as a depiction of Ophelia, because a lot of them will show her just before her death or just after, and it’s always very dramatic. This one shows more of a sombre, sweet and sincere moment. You don’t see that depiction of Ophelia a lot.” Weins’ painting led Izzy to think of filling Bianca’s space with other work on a theatrical theme, to reflect WTM’s wider cultural output.
Thomas J.Serle as Hamlet
Another piece Izzy has chosen for the space is Thomas J.Serle as Hamlet (19th century). Izzy’s research led to identifying the sitter as Thomas Searle, a playwright, dramatic author and an actor. Searle lived in Worthing in the 19th century. The artist of this piece is unknown, but it was owned by Mr W.F. Fuller. He was the manager of Henty’s Bank on Chapel Street and was a friend of Thomas Searle. One of Izzy’s favourite historical quirks is when costuming is influenced by the era in which it’s designed. In this piece Searle’s costume is reminiscent of 19th century menswear but with an Elizabethan or Jacobean twist.
Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante
The final piece in the space is Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante. Again, the artist is unknown but it is a copy of a Joshua Reynolds painting of the same name. “When artists were training in the past, they would copy established work for practice” says Izzy. Emma Hamilton is best known as the mistress of Lord Horatio Nelson, but Izzy is keen to highlight how there was so much more to her, “She was such an interesting person!” she says. Hamilton was famed for her beauty, her boisterous personality and flamboyant nature, “and she was able to make a living out of that – a lifestyle.” The painting captures one of Hamilton’s ‘attitudes’ where she would perform poses from classical imagery in front of an audience, usually semi-naked or partially topless. The Bacchantes form the chorus in the Euripides play The Bacchae, the frenzied and intoxicated female followers of Dionysus.
Worthing Museum Collections
Izzy says that her time at Worthing Museum has taught her about the breadth of small collections. “This is something I was sort of aware of, but being able to explore the collection here – the amount of things that are unique and interesting… I just want people to see how cool it is.” Worthing Museum may be a small local history museum, but it houses one of the largest collections of everyday historical clothing in the UK. The dress collection is one of Izzy’s favourite aspects of the museum and influenced her placement project. She focused on re-cataloguing women’s purses in the collection.
“The amount of things I found inside them! Coins and business cards, things people didn’t know were in there when they donated them. I found a 10 shilling note!” She is fascinated by the minutiae of everyday life. We often disregard and overlook commonplace, everyday items. But they are important items when investigating the changing social landscapes of the past. “It’s my favourite thing about history,” Izzy says, “the everyday-ness of people. People being people for thousands of years. We still do the same things that people were doing hundreds, or thousands of years ago. The dress collection really sums that up.”
Curiosities and Curation
Izzy is making the most of her time with the museum team. She has a fondness for many other parts of the museum. We asked about her favourite work, and her top picks from our last exhibition, Open 23.
Pictured above: Worthing Museum Archaeology (left); A Sylvanian Family of Bears at Worthing Museum (top right); ‘Headlouse’ by Roger Edwards (middle bottom); ‘Simone’ by Kitty Oakley (bottom right).
The Archaeology Section
Probably inspired by her childhood running around fields with her father, Izzy loves our archaeology collection. “They have some really cool and unique pieces that are very interesting.”
Sylvanian Families
We have a wonderful collection of toys at Worthing Museum. Toys are another great example of our collection reflecting the everyday social history of the local area. “I used to have them when I was a kid. It’s that human-focus and the nostalgia for me. They’re just a small toy that people would normally overlook but they’re still important.”
Open 23
‘Headlouse’, Roger Edwards (Alabaster stone)
“I really like the stone he’s made out of. He’s a bit creepy, he’s a bit funky and I really like the colour! I keep calling him ‘him’ – he can be any gender he wants to be! That’s my favourite 3D piece.
‘Simone’, Kitty Oakley (Handmade Screen-print)
“This is my favourite 2D piece. She looks like Jojo, our PhD student, and also I just like her face. It’s very 1920s. I love the colour of it and the style of it.”
Worthing Museum & Women Artists
To finish we asked what Izzy would programme if she could curate her own exhibition. “I have so many ideas!” she said. She reflected on the research she did for our current exhibition As We See It Now celebrating the centennial of the Society of Sussex Painters. The society was formed by a host of all-male artists in 1924. Often, she found herself ruminating on a tagline from a Guerrilla Girls campaign about the underrepresentation of women artists in galleries. It stated: ‘Less than 4% of artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.’
Her research has shown her how much work in our collection is by women artists. That would be the starting point for her dream exhibition here at Worthing Museum. “There are some really cool pieces in the collection by women, showing women in ways that you don’t often see when the majority of work is by men. I’d pull all this stuff out of the art store and put it on display.”
You can see Izzy’s selected purses from the dress collection in the Museum now. You can also visit our free exhibitions, As We See it Now, and more, during Museum opening hours.