ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at art institutions in one of the provincial towns: Newcastle. The Newcastle exhibitions seldom succeeded in wooing London artists, the problem being that there was no disguising the fact that Newcastle sales figures were distinctly poor. When the intelligentsia publicly discussed art exhibitions they tended to do so not as places of pleasure and aesthetic delight, but as settings for a kind of civilising ritual in which Newcastle inhabitants had the opportunity to practise being good citizens. In many ways one can say the intelligentsia's involvement in art exhibitions was marked by the kind of unselfish dedication to public service that was fundamental to civic humanism. Newcastle's public life was in effect redefined as being whatever sphere of activity fell within the remit of the various secular institutions over which they presided.
