The Wright time to celebrate one of Derby’s most famous sons

In the latest edition of Marketing Derby’s Innovate Magazine, we catch up with Tony Butler OBE, executive director at Derby Museums, to talk about one of Derby’s most famous sons – Joseph Wright.

Almost 250 years after his death, Wright is continuing to put Derby in the national and international spotlight.

Currently, a major exhibition of his work is taking place at the National Gallery, in London.

In June, that exhibition, called Wright of Derby: From the Shadows, will relocate to his home city, which is the custodian of the largest collection of Wright paintings.

It will reunite some of his most famous works for the first time in more than 80 years – and is expected to attract thousands of visitors in what has been dubbed ‘The Year of Wright’.

As Innovate discovers, for Tony and his team, The Year of Wright will mark the achievement of an ambition nurtured for more than a decade.

He told Innovate: “When the museums trust was set up back in 2012, one of the objectives was to stage a major retrospective of Wright’s work but, I think, that was a bit beyond us at the time.

“The relationships we have developed with those such as the National Gallery, the Tate and the British Art Network have now allowed us to develop something on this scale.”

In his interview, Tony discusses Wright’s life and some of his most famous works, including ‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’ – which will be making the journey from the National Gallery to Derby.

Tony hopes that the Wright celebrations could entice visitors in similar numbers to those who attended the museum’s display of drawings by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci in 2019.

He told Innovate: “We attracted around 50,000 people during the two and a half months that Leonardo was here.

“I’m hoping for about the same. I would like to think local people will want to come and see this, but I hope that it’s also going to encourage people to come to Derby from other parts of the country to see what we’ve got here.”

Tony also reveals why he hopes this latest celebration of Wright’s work could be a catalyst for ambitious plans to transform the current museum and art gallery – following on from the successful reimagining of the Silk Mill into the award-winning Museum of Making.

He told Innovate: “I would love us to think about creating a museum of ideas and thinking that would complement the Museum of Making.

“We want a redeveloped museum that really does the Joseph Wright collection justice, alongside all the other rich collections of archaeology, natural science and decorative art.”

To read the feature in full, click here.