The Rye Art Gallery has suffered an almost total loss of income arising out of the Covid pandemic other than the government support payments. The trustees therefore carried out an extensive review and, with uncertainty and risks surrounding the speed and size of any recovery over the next 12 months, financial prudence required that expenditure had to be reduced.
Therefore, sadly, for financial reasons, the trustees have had to agree with the two remaining furloughed staff that their employment ceases at the end July. And so it is with great regret that we have to say goodbye to our director Jane Fenn.
We thank her for her dedication, loyalty and hard work over the years. Jane has been instrumental in making Rye Art Gallery the respected and welcoming institution it is today. We are proud of all that she has achieved and wish her every success in the future.
We would also like to thank Polly Horner for hard work, dedication and support. We also wish her, great success in her future endeavours.
Many of you will now be wondering what will be happening as far as the gallery is concerned and the trustees are going to actively engage with as many as are interested on a plan that they are putting together and will issue in the next couple of weeks for consultation.
This will be well in advance of any re-opening of the gallery. We are all keen to open the doors as soon as is possible, hopefully sometime in the summer, but this obviously depends on many varied internal and external factors. We will be keen to get views and also are very happy to consider alternative approaches.
These are very difficult times for the gallery, for Rye and for society at large so we must be inclusive. The future sustainability of the trust, the gallery’s future and the delivery of the trust’s objectives for the benefit of the friends, our artists, the Rye community and all our supporters from near and far remains our fundamental concern.
Source: Rye Art Gallery trustees
Image Credits: Carol Macdonald .
Difficult to reconcile “keen to open the doors as soon as is possible” with the Trustees of Rye Art Gallery having just dismissed the Director and the only other furloughed member of staff, people who knew how it ran before the lockdown.