Damien Hirst selects $6.2m banana artwork for UK schools project – The Art Newspaper

High-profile UK artists including Damien Hirst and Cornelia Parker have selected key works of art to be included in a digital project due to be rolled out across Britain’s schools over the next two years.

The Art In Schools charity, launched in 2023, displays well-known works of art on special high-resolution TV “ArtScreens” installed in school halls and canteens, in a series of weekly exhibitions called Sensations. These exhibitions comprise ten works, divided into two weekly parts, which are often presented by a museum curator, an artist, or a cultural personality.

“For most children and parents, art museums are distant, expensive, and intimidating,” says the charity’s founder, Winton Rossiter, who developed the concept as a student at Sotheby’s Institute of Art during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Art In Schools aims to “close the ‘art gap’ in education resulting from funding cuts and…make art accessible to the most disadvantaged youth”. Rossiter adds: “The great thing is that the programme can be adapted to schools in any country, supporting creative learning and helping museums bring art to wider audiences.”

Hirst has chosen to show Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian work (2019), the duct-taped banana which sold for a hammer price of $5.2m ($6.2m with fees) at Sotheby’s New York in November. He told The Observer newspaper: “It is everything art gets a bad name for and everything I love about art. It’s perfect and it’s a real banana.

“So it’s real and not a representation of anything, which means you can trust it, but you can’t. And you have to replace the banana over time, which is obvious and silly. It makes me laugh out loud and it’s serious art.” The artist also chose William Blake’s The Ghost of a Flea (around 1819-20) which is in the Tate’s collection.

Parker meanwhile chose Paolo Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano (1438-40), which is housed at the National Gallery in London, while Clare Lilley, the director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, chose Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Other participating artists include Bridget Riley and Antony Gormley.

The ‘soft launch’ of Art In Schools took place in three schools in London, the Midlands, and South Wales in 2023. The programme will expand to 15 secondary schools across the UK in 2025, reaching 15,000 students.

Art In Schools is funded through grants and donations from philanthropists and charitable foundations, and to date has been primarily driven by pro bono volunteers. The organisation hopes to secure further support, including from government and corporate partners, to reach its goal of bringing art to one million students by 2027.

The programme is free for schools; Art In Schools conforms with copyright law regarding the licensing of images for educational, not-for-profit purposes. The charity also provides learning resources to accompany the programming and invites the school community to vote for their favourite works and make their own versions of the works shown.