Unfit for purpose

In recent months, two new museums have opened to much acclaim: The Hepworth in Wakefield and Turner Contemporary in Margate. Now Colchester is receiving the dubious benison of a new building. What is this assertive new generation of museums in England supposed to be about? Leisure, business or art? There’s precious little of the last in the much delayed Firstsite gallery in Colchester, a long pavilion by Rafael Viñoly Architects clad in gold-coloured metal which looks wonderfully out of place in the Roman city of Camulodunum (the name also chosen for its inaugural exhibition). Don’t get me wrong: I live in East Anglia and would welcome a great new museum in Colchester, as a centre for excellence and a potentially worldwide audience. Sadly, I find it difficult to imagine Firstsite attracting such interest.

The first exhibition is so thin as to be almost invisible. Revealingly, there’s not a single painting in this installation, and only one or two exhibits worth prolonged attention. The pile of junk in the foyer is called ‘We the People’, and is actually an installation by Danh Vo (born 1975, Vietnam) of fragments from his copy of the Statue of Liberty plus tools and moulds. Somewhat classier is the Berryfield mosaic, Firstsite’s only permanent work of art. Of Roman origin, it has been relocated under the floor beneath glass panels over which visitors can vertiginously walk. Nearby there’s a rather small dedicated gallery for changing displays of the University of Essex’s renowned collection of Latin American prints.

Spread out across the rest of the building, the exhibits are a mixture of the expected (Warhol and Ai Weiwei), the slight (an almost invisible Turner drawing of Colchester, and a cabinet of bits and bobs that inspired Henry Moore) and the downright dreadful (a twee relief by Karin Ruggaber and some kitschy resin pieces by Michaela Eichwald).