The secret to good art gallery curation is to tell stories using works from the permanent collection hung alongside loans from other institutions or individuals.

But often supporters, patrons and visitors want to see the lot – and all on display at once.

The pressure can intensify if the arts and galleries are owned by the public. Early last year The Argus ran a story quoting community groups who wanted Brighton and Hove City Council’s £32 million art collection to be put on show or sold off.

The story got people talking about art and its value. Soon the council calmed art fans’ fears saying not a single work would be sold.

Further down the coast, in Hastings, the independent Jerwood Gallery is listening to its supporters as it celebrates two years since its opening on March 17, 2011. Three-quarters of its 250-strong collection of 20th-century and 21st-century modern British art is to be on display as part of Jerwood Collection: Revealed. Its director Liz Gilmore has been at the head of the organisation since the gallery’s first brick was laid. She says the exhibition answers regular visitors’ calls to see old favourites together.

“This is the fullest exhibition we have had of the collection. We have put the collection everywhere, with the exception of one room upstairs and one room downstairs where we have two dedicated shows – one is a collaboration with Tate [Marlow Moss] and one is a collaboration with Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge [Alfred Wallace].”

It’s a rough day when The Guide visits. The wind sweeps rain sideways over fishermen dashing between beached boats and fishing huts on The Stade shingle beach. It is still home to Europe’s largest fleet of beach-launched fishing boats which are visible from the gallery’s newly refurbished cafe, set between the huts. “The gallery was built to reflect its context. It blends in seamlessly but is much bigger than you think. It is like a Tardis on The Stade,” says Gilmore.

She believes the Jerwood Collection has become part of the building’s DNA. “The show is in a way about that connection. Two years in and there are already a lot of old friends in the collection for people who are regular visitors. “Yet with this show there are also a lot of new surprises and work that has not been exhibited before.” Its opening room, usually reserved for the contemporary exhibitions programme, has been given over to showing jewels and key works which reflect the collection’s trends. “They are like snapshots,” adds Gilmore.

There is Frank Brangwyn’s From My Window At Ditchling [pictured on The Guide cover], with its view out to The Downs from his former home in the village which appears to have changed very little. “I describe this as core to the DNA.

“People often ask why Jerwood is in Hastings and one reason is there are a number of paintings in the collection about the area. “That is obviously near Brighton, but our Sussex audiences love it.”

Frank Brangwyn was famous in his day but his star has dimmed. “We don’t really know of him nowadays yet he was absolutely famous, making a lot of money. He was a brilliant businessman in his time. “Because it is one of the collection’s first works we put it in this space with other key works.” Alan Grieve, chairman of the Jerwood Foundation, oversaw that purchase – as he has every new addition to the collection ever since. The former lawyer established Jerwood Foundation in 1977 for the jeweller and cultured-pearl dealer John Jerwood. Grieve was also a director of John Jerwood’s international trading company. Since Jerwood’s death in 1991, he has devoted his working life to building the Jerwood Collection.

Personal connections

On the day The Guide visits the gallery, a Royal Institute of British Architects award- winner, clad in 2,000 black tiles to reflect the net huts’ tarred boards, Grieve explains what he looks for in all the paintings he’s purchased. “My rule is I have to like it. If I don’t like it I find it difficult to include in the collection. Then I want to see the artist has fulfilled what he set out to do, not just in paint terms of filling the canvas, but what was he or she was trying to portray, to tell us, to make us think about. “When you’ve done those things you have to let your senses tell you. It is subjective. It has to be.”

That makes for personality in a collection.

“There aren’t a great number of individual collections that have been made. They have been made for museums, yes. They have been made by curators, but this was a collection made for itself – to create something, and it has never been seen as it is here today. Never.” A thread runs through the show.

“The paintings reflect what the painters saw and felt and experienced in the 20th century. “It is possible if you spend time looking at these works that you can spend time looking into the 20th century. “You can recognise in many cases what was fascinating, what was interesting, what the painters wanted to say. “There is a story through it – and if you see it, it gets even more exciting.”

It’s easy to imagine Grieve, a measured and softly-spoken arts enthusiast as well as businessman, sitting in the boardroom at the Jerwood Foundation’s home in Fitzroy Square, Bloomsbury, where many of the artists with work in Hastings lived. On the wall of that meeting room, where Grieve worked on a day-to-day basis, hung Christopher Wood’s The Bather. The painting is central to the collection.

“I really gazed and looked at it every day of the week. I really related to it and kept seeing more and more in it. To me it is the loveliest painting as a work of art. It may not be the best or most valuable but, to me, it is lovely.”

Wood painted it in St Ives in 1927, the same year as Frank Brangwyn painted From My Window At Ditchling. He was good friends with the Nicholsons and based in the Cornish resort. Yet he committed suicide three years later aged only 29. He had become addicted to opium and was working frenetically before a forthcoming London show. He threw himself under a train at Salisbury after meeting his mother and sister for lunch.

With that knowledge, the painting suddenly transforms from provocative and lively to having a melancholy air. “It looks as if it could have been painted last year,” thinks Grieve. “He has made a monumental, beautiful woman. The nudity doesn’t come into it. He has done what some painters can do, which is to look at a person, not dehumanise it, but make it immortal.”

Before Grieve leaves a room filled with work by nominees for the Jerwood Painting Prize – including Crucifixion by inaugural winner Craigie Aitchison in 1994 – he reveals why the foundation picked Hastings to house its collection. “We looked at various cities and towns without going into them. We tried to analyse advantages and disadvantages of each of them. “And although Hastings was not at the top to start with, we liked the coastal location, we like its cultural artistic heritage and we liked the opportunity to contribute a cultural presence which would benefit the regeneration. “And it is public knowledge that the town needed regeneration and this will help.”

A varied palette

As Gilmore returns to finish the tour she is quick to point out the collection’s variety. We walk through a second room with a wall of portraits by and of key artists – “old faces behind the collection”. They are hung in a playful manner, Royal Academy style, with the wall filled top to bottom. John Bratby’s heavily stylised work stands out.

Elsewhere in the gallery are artists with strong local connections: Keith Vaughan, John Piper and Duncan Grant. There are hidden gems by in vogue artists such as LS Lowry, who was the recipient of a major Tate show last year. Other works in an industrial landscapes section include Walter Sickert’s wonderful St Remy and Alfred Wolmark’s colourful take on New York’s Flatiron Building.

Upstairs are maquettes by Henry Moore and Michael Ayrton. It’s is why Gilmore is happy to boast, “We are not just a provincial gallery. We have a national pull and international visitors.”

  • Jerwood Revealed, Jerwood Gallery, Rock-A-Nore Rd, Hastings, until April 23
  • Tuesday to Friday 11am to 5pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am to 6pm, closed Mondays (except Bank Holiday Mondays and during East Sussex school holidays). Adults £8. Call 01424 425809.