LONDON.- Exactly 50 years this week, the Hayward Gallery was opened by HM The Queen. To mark this special anniversary, the gallery is holding a series of commemorative events. Celebrations include a very special day on Wednesday 11 July, when tickets to the critically acclaimed show Lee Bul: Crashing will be available to all visitors for just 50p; a series of special discounts on the same day, when Southbank Centre Memberships will be exclusively available for £50 (meaning a saving of up to £25) and selected items from Hayward Gallery Publishing’s roster will be discounted at 50%.

In the lead up to the Hayward Gallery’s 50th anniversary, the gallery’s curatorial and archive teams have been looking back at the gallery’s rich exhibition history over its half century of existence. This project is culminating in the digitisation of selected items from Hayward Gallery’s rich archive, with the help of the Google Arts & Culture; in a publication featuring essays commissioned by Hayward Gallery’s publishing arm by artists, writers, academics and curators; as well as a series of five short films featuring artists, curators and exhibition organisers who have been involved in five of Hayward Gallery’s seminal exhibitions.

The Hayward Gallery Shop will also participate in the celebrations by offering a special artist print by ​Marysia Lewandowski for £25 and a Hayward 50th tote bag. On Wednesday 11 July, when customers spend £50 or over, they will also receive the birthday tote bag for free.

Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries, Justine Simons OBE , said:
“The Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank has contributed enormously to our city’s reputation as a global cultural capital for half a century. This anniversary celebration is a fantastic opportunity for Londoners and visitors to make the most of brilliant offers for entry and membership, as we look forward to many more remarkable exhibitions in the years to come.”

Elaine Bedell, Chief Executive, Southbank Centre, said: “I am delighted to be able to mark 50 years of ground-breaking art at Hayward Gallery with a special reduced ticket price for the Lee Bul exhibition on Wednesday. I want to take this opportunity to personally thank Ralph Rugoff, the Hayward Gallery Director for his commitment and brilliant work over the last decade, to artists who have given the Gallery so much, to the deeply dedicated staff who have worked in the building, and especially to the millions of visitors who have cemented its position in the visual arts world of this great city. This is a fabulous commemoration of a very important part of Southbank Centre’s story.”

Ralph Rugoff, Director, Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery, said: “For 50 years the Hayward Gallery has been a crucial visual arts and architectural landmark in London and worldwide. Celebrating the work of some of the world’s most influential artists, it has also produced many ground-breaking group exhibitions. We are delighted to have marked the gallery’s 50th anniversary year with our recent major refurbishment which included the installation of 66 new glass pyramid rooflights, allowing adjustable natural light into the upper galleries for the very first time realising the original architectural vision for this unique and adventurous space.”

50p Day
50 years to the day when the Gallery first opened its doors to the public (11 July), the Lee Bul exhibition ticket price of £14.50 will be significantly dropped, enabling visitors to enjoy a visit to the Hayward Gallery for the reduced price of 50p on Wednesday 11 July 2018 for the special extended opening hours (11am-9pm).

Archive Digitisation
Working in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, Hayward Gallery has digitised archival material from 50 landmark exhibitions that have taken place at the gallery over the past 50 years, including Henri Matisse 1869-1954: A Retrospective Exhibition (1968); The New Art (1972); Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (1978); Hayward Annual 78 (1978); Outsiders: An Art Without Precedent or Tradition (1979); The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain (1989); Addressing the Century: 100 Years of Art and Fashion (1998); and Sonic Boom: The Art of Sound (2000). The material that has been digitised – which includes exhibition proposals, printed ephemera and installation images – helps tell the stories behind each of these remarkable exhibitions. The digital assets and exhibits will be published on both the Southbank Centre website and Google Arts & Culture to coincide with the Hayward Gallery’s birthday.

Suhair Khan, Program Manager for Google Arts & Culture, said: "Bringing the unique, innovative, and always groundbreaking exhibits and archives of the Hayward Gallery to life on Google Arts & Culture has been a wonderful experience. We look forward to hearing how people like exploring these legendary exhibits and seeing exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to the building and its history. We are so pleased to be an integral part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Hayward Gallery.”

Archive Films
To accompany and enrich the research into Hayward Gallery’s archive, the curatorial team, with support from the Art Fund, commissioned filmmakers James R Price and Kate Vogel to make five short films about five key exhibitions from the Hayward Gallery archive. These short films – each approximately 10 minutes in length – feature artists and curators who were involved in these seminal exhibitions. In each film, the archive material – which includes install images, posters, correspondence and gallery plans – acts as a prompt for varied and personal recollections and reflections. The five films will be released from mid-July onto Southbank Centre’s YouTube channel:

1. The New Art (1972): Nicholas Serota and Anne d'Offay in conversation about the first institutional survey of British conceptual art.

2. Hayward Annual 78 (1978): Curator Catherine Lampert and artists Liliane Lijn and Deanna Petherbridge on this landmark exhibition with an all-female selection committee.

3. Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (1978): Art historians and curators Dawn Ades and Elizabeth Cowling on this ambitious organised by an illustrious committee that included the critic and curator David Sylvester and poet and surrealist Roland Penrose.

4. Anish Kapoor (1998): Anish Kapoor and Martin Caiger-Smith (ex-Head of Exhibitions at Hayward Gallery) discuss Kapoor’s first solo show in a UK public institution.

5. Sonic Boom: The Art of Sound (2000): Artist Christian Marclay and the show’s curator David Toop discuss this groundbreaking exhibition of sound art.

Publication
The publication Fifty Years of Great Art Writing – produced by Hayward Gallery Publishing – brings together remarkable essays on modern and contemporary art that have been commissioned by Hayward Gallery over the past half century. Introduced by Ralph Rugoff, Hayward Gallery Director, the publication features 47 essays by writers and artists including Geoff Dyer, Dave Eggers, Bridget Riley, Stuart Hall, Lucy Lippard, Ali Smith and Will Self, on topics ranging from painting to the internet, and from architecture to the Harlem Renaissance. This publication acts as an invaluable reference for anyone interested in writing about art, and in modern and contemporary art more broadly.