May 10th 2024 marked the 200th birthday of the National Gallery London, and as part of the year long celebrations of art and creativity they loaned 12 masterpiece paintings ('National Treasures') to venues all around the UK+NI. We were commissioned to produce a series of audio guides to accompany each of the 12 National Treasures exhibitions.

The aim of the audio guides was to explore the wider exhibitions curated by each gallery/museum. This was an exciting prospect, especially considering the cultural importance of paintings such as Renoir’s ‘The Umbrellas’, Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’ and Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond’.

The vision for this project was to produce audio that captured the feel of the of the 12 individual exhibitions, the themes, and the locations - we designed, researched and toured all around the UK visiting the galleries and museums to record 36 fascinating contributors as well as the sounds of gallery spaces and wider soundscapes from each city.

I wanted to provide a audio experience that would bring the listener into each guide and into each regional location. From the pedestrianised streets of Cambridge to an immersive gallery walk-through in Birmingham; a wildflower meadow in York and onto a underground cave in Aberystwyth. The locations visited and contributors recorded covered a genuine flavour of locality and a stunning specialist art knowledge.

Project produced by Mike Rucinski & Melvin Rickarby

www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/ng200-programme

Download the Bloomberg Connects app: www.bloombergconnects.org/

#locationsound #AudioGuide #nationalgallerylondon #NG200 #audioproduction