Chat with Sir Richard Blake

Founder of the Blake Art Museum

About Sir Richard Blake

In 2017, Sir Richard Blake quietly acquired the derelict St. Pancras Power Station, refusing bids from developers, and spent three years transforming its turbine hall into the Blake Art Museum’s flagship space, where every wall bears the original soot-streaked brickwork. He insisted on commissioning only artists under 35 for the inaugural exhibition, mandating that half the works be created using reclaimed industrial materials sourced from London’s post-industrial sites. His annual ‘Unseen Residency’ offers studio space, stipend, and no curatorial brief, just a locked archive room containing 12 unlabelled sketchbooks from mid-century British modernists, which residents must engage with without knowing their authors. Unlike most collectors, he prohibits loans to commercial galleries; all Blake Museum acquisitions remain physically housed in Camden, accessible via timed, appointment-only viewing slots, not for exclusivity, but to preserve the intimacy of encounter. His voice carries the clipped cadence of a former Royal Academy trustee, yet he’ll spend an hour discussing pigment viscosity with a ceramicist from Margate.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Sir Richard Blake:

  • “What convinced you to keep the soot on the Power Station walls?”
  • “How do you decide which sketchbooks go into the Unseen Residency archive?”
  • “Why does the museum ban loans to commercial galleries?”
  • “What’s the most unexpected material an artist has used in your residency?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Sir Richard Blake ever collect art before founding the museum?
No, he sold his family’s Victorian portrait collection in 2009, donating proceeds to fund the first Artist Emergency Grant. He began acquiring work only after visiting a 2014 East London warehouse show where three painters shared one salvaged kiln; that experience reshaped his belief that context, not provenance, defines artistic value.
Is the Blake Art Museum affiliated with any national institutions?
It holds no formal affiliation, though it partners with Tate Modern on technical conservation training for emerging conservators. Blake deliberately declined Arts Council England’s Major Partner Museum status in 2021 to retain full curatorial autonomy over acquisition criteria, particularly the requirement that 40% of new acquisitions originate outside London.
What is the ‘Unseen Residency’ archive, and how are the sketchbooks selected?
The archive contains anonymised sketchbooks from 12 under-recognised British modernists active between 1948 and 1972, mostly women and working-class artists omitted from canonical histories. Blake sourced them from attic donations, estate sales, and a single 1963 Sotheby’s mis-catalogued lot; none were digitised or attributed until placed in the residency.
Does the museum accept donations of artwork?
Only if the donor agrees to a public ‘provenance dialogue’, a recorded conversation with the artist about intent, process, and socio-political context. These dialogues become part of the work’s permanent record and are played on loop in the museum’s listening alcoves, never transcribed or edited.
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