The Robert Cripps Gallery
The College opened the new Robert Cripps Gallery at Magdalene College in November 2021 and is delighted with this new gallery space for visiting exhibitions and for occasionally displaying parts of the College art collection to the wider community.
The Gallery has been named in honour of Mr Robert Cripps AM, a passionate art collector, generous supporter and Honorary Fellow of the College since 2005. The Robert Cripps Gallery forms a key part of the award-winning New Library, a purpose-built space for Magdalene students and staff to meet, work, relax and find inspiration.
Current Exhibition
George Mallory: Magdalene to the Mountain
20 June – 28 September 2024
The exhibition will draw on material held in the Magdalene College Archive to reflect on the life and career of George Mallory.
Starting by focusing on his time at Magdalene and covering his academic interests, his sporting achievements and his social and cultural pursuits. It will move on to highlight his experiences during WWI, drawing on the letters he exchanged with his wife Ruth during his service in France. This provides invaluable information into his character and also the social history of life at home and the part played by women.
The remainder of the exhibition looks at his time on the three expeditions to Everest and his lecture tour in the USA as told through his own letters, before commemorating the deaths of Mallory and Irvine on the mountain.
The exhibition will coincide with the conclusion of a major project to digitise all of Mallory’s correspondence allowing these letters to be made available for viewing online.
In association with The Foster Museum, Palo Alto, California, the archival material will be complemented by a series of watercolours of the north and eastern faces of Mt. Everest, and its northern approaches, by the en plein air artist Tony Foster.
Opening Times
20 June - 28 September 2024
Open: 14:00 - 16:00, Monday - Saturday
Closed: Sunday
The Gallery will be closed on Thursday 5 September and Saturday 14 September. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Information for Visitors
- to arrange access to the exhibition please call into the Porters’ Lodge on Magdalene Street
- entrance will be to the Gallery only
- visitors are requested not to enter other parts of the New Library
Upcoming Exhibition
Nigel Hall RA
Line, Edge, Shadow: drawings and sculpture
9 October – 18 December 2024
Nigel Hall RA is one of Britain’s most distinguished sculptors. His outside works, principally made of corten steel, painted steel or bronze, are concerned with three-dimensional space, mass and line. His abstract and geometric sculptures give as much prominence to voids and shadows as to the solidity of material and each work changes with light and viewpoint reflecting the landscapes that inspired them.
Nigel was born in Bristol and raised in the Gloucestershire countryside, studied at the West of England College of Art and the Royal College of Art. A Harkness Fellowship took him to California in 1967 for two years. From 1971 to 1981, he lectured at the Royal College of Art and Chelsea College of Art and Design. His awards include the Pollock-Krasner Award (1995), the Jack Goldhill Sculpture Prize (2002), and he was elected a Royal Academician (2003) and awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts, London (2017). Nigel has exhibited extensively, with his first European solo show in 1967 and over 100 solo and 300 group exhibitions globally.
On his upcoming Magdalene show, he says:
I was delighted to be offered an exhibition at the beautiful Robert Cripps Gallery at Magdalene College, Cambridge as it seems the perfect venue for an exhibition of my drawings and small sculptures. It has a long vista for experiencing larger works on paper and an intimacy conducive to exploring smaller pieces.
As well as drawings, there are three fine vitrines which will display small scale sculptures, both maquettes as well as finished works and also notebooks.
I find there is a symbiotic relationship between two and three dimensional works in which neither take precedence over the other. Drawing has played a constant and vital part in my work and not solely as preliminary studies for sculpture. It has allowed for related explorations freed from the tyranny of gravity to which sculpture is inextricably chained.
Certain views, trees and objects might draw me to them and then I reciprocate by drawing them in return. Drawing for me can be seeing, thinking, exploring, connecting and distilling. You need to know something about the subject in order to draw it and once drawn, it’s never forgotten.
The non-referential or ‘finished’ drawings shown in the Gallery, are complete works with the same status as my sculpture and mostly use the language of geometry as their mode of expression. In these works the subject is the form and the form is the subject.
Past Exhibitions
The Perspective of the Medieval Scribe
Exhibition of Medieval Manuscripts from the libraries of Magdalene College. A unique double exhibition revealing medieval perspectives on the physical world, on other worlds, and on the creative potential of image and word with the natural world, with music and with science.
The Personality and Legacy of Fox (1923-2023)
Sir Cyril Fred Fox (1882-1967) was one of the most distinguished archaeologists to have graduated from Magdalene. 2023 is the centenary of his celebrated book The Archaeology of the Cambridge Regio. The exhibition draws Fox'e publications and other materials, to look at Fox’s personality and the...
The world according to Jiří Kolář
Jiří Kolář (1914-2002) was a prolific Czech artist across media: a poet, writer, and translator who expanded the boundaries of modern art by deconstructing the printed image and word. In re-assembling and constructing images in collage, he created often absurd commentaries on modern life and the...
Duncan Robinson In Memoriam
Duncan Robinson CBE (1943 - 2022) was a leading authority on British art from the eighteenth century onwards. He was also a well-loved Master of Magdalene College, 2002 – 2012, a highly respected teacher and a witty, engaging and very warm man. This exhibition reflects aspects of his remarkably full...
Cross-Connections: Paintings by Ruth Rix
A selection of work by Ruth Rix from sixty years of painting, shown alongside prints by her mother Helga Michie, a Kindertransport refugee from Vienna.
Will Carter - Man of Letters
An important retrospective featuring the wide-ranging portfolio of one of Cambridge’s most respected and much-loved resident artists, including many examples of his calligraphy, letter carving, printing, and typefaces.
From Southwold to Alice Springs
From Southwold to Alice Springs: Selected works from the Collection of Robert Cripps, showcased a small snapshot of the paintings, drawings and engravings acquired over many years by a remarkable collector, reflecting both his deep roots in the countryside and coast of East Anglia and his...
Fragile Planet - Watercolour Journeys into Wild Places
Fragile Planet was a major exhibition of watercolours by Cornwall’s world-renowned wilderness artist, Tony Foster. Fragile Planet - Watercolour Journeys into Wild Places, highlights the precariousness of the world’s wildernesses and endangered environments, many of which Tony visited and painted...
Everest 1921 - A Reconnaissance
Pioneering works in the history of photography! With the kind permission of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), this exhibition showcased a selection of prints of the approaches to Mount Everest, taken in 1921 and reconstructed from newly digitised fragile silver nitrate negatives.