LONDON, Oct 8 — Dead butterflies, sectioned cows and sharks suspended in formaldehyde are archetypal subjects of Damien Hirst’s art. Yet they are absent from the private museum that the British artist is opening in south London today. In fact, the place will not be showing any Hirsts.

Instead, the Newport Street Gallery — a free, nonprofit center that has cost Hirst £25 million (RM161 million), or US$37.9 million, of his own money to redevelop — will serve as a showcase for the more than 3,000 pieces in his personal collection. These include major works by Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons.

Hirst is dedicating his inaugural exhibition to a lesser-known artist: British abstract painter John Hoyland, a fellow Yorkshireman who died in 2011 and whose work he saw as a student.

Hirst is no newcomer to curating. As the ringleader of a brash clique of art students who became known as the Young British Artists, he staged a pioneering 1988 show (“Freeze”) in a disused London warehouse. He then went on to produce a series of mortality-themed installations — pickled sharks, chopped-up calves, fly-infested cow’s heads, wall-to-wall pharmacy cabinets — that helped him win the 1995 Turner Prize and, within a decade, become Britain’s richest artist, with an estimated fortune of £215 million, or more than US$329 million, according to the 2015 Sunday Times Rich List.

John Hoyland, ‘28.2.71’. — Picture courtesy of artist

In September 2008, during the week that Lehman Brothers collapsed, Hirst made £111.5 million, more than US$170 million, auctioning his art directly in a two-day solo Sotheby’s sale here. His prices have dropped since then: The 1996 coloured spot painting “Benzhydrol” sold for US$514,000 at Sotheby’s in May while it had fetched US$912,000 at Christie’s in 2006.

Two recent painting series have been panned by the critics. The first, shown at the 2009 Wallace Collection exhibition “No Love Lost: Blue Paintings,” was described as “not worth looking at” by The Independent while the later canvases shown in the 2012 “Two Weeks One Summer” exhibition at the White Cube gallery were called “abominations unto the lord of art” by The Guardian. Many art-world observers see Newport Street as a bid for Hirst to establish his profile as a curator and museum builder, and consolidate his legacy.

“His critics might be all too ready to praise this particular venture and suggest he should confine himself to this, rather than being an artist. I don’t see the two as separate,” said James Cahill, a critic who co-authored a book on Hirst’s 2012 Tate Modern retrospective and is now a Cambridge University researcher on links between contemporary British art and classical antiquity. “I see this gallery as a new aspect of his art practice.”

Hirst, who declined media interviews for his gallery opening, spoke in a video interview posted on his website with Tim Marlow, the director of artistic programmes at the Royal Academy of Arts.

“I always feel it’s a great honour to be able to curate things,” he said. “You play with other people’s works and use them as elements in your own composition.”

The Newport Street Gallery is Hirst’s own art space. — AFP pic

Stretching across 3,437 square metres, the attractive gallery, which took three years to complete, was designed by the Caruso St John architectural firm, who transformed Tate Britain and just finished a space in London’s Mayfair District for the Gagosian Gallery, which represented Hirst until a split in late 2012. On Newport Street, they have revamped a row of century-old Victorian brick buildings and added a brick edifice on either side. The six interior galleries are naturally lit, with luxuriously high ceilings.

Architect Peter St John noted that unlike in a commercial gallery, where “the relationship with the art is, relatively speaking, quite abrupt,” Newport Street will operate “like a public building, like an institution” — with a foyer, a shop selling books, a restaurant and circulation spaces.

St John said he was surprised by how much he saw of Hirst, describing him as “very involved in every detail of the design” and possessing “an extremely good eye.”

Hirst has been collecting Hoyland’s works since 2009, according to his staff. A Hoyland abstract has been hanging in his office for the past six months, he said in the video, and he chose to open with the artist because he felt the paintings would “set the space off brilliantly” and vice versa. He personally chose and hung the 33 Hoyland works in the exhibition: handsome, wall-length canvases painted from 1964 to 1982 and featuring strips, squares and rectangles of bright and occasionally oozing colour. They are a tribute to a gifted abstract artist who was overshadowed by figurative giants like Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney. The most a Hoyland painting has fetched at auction was £185,000 —or around US$283,000 — in 2008.

“We could have put a Jeff Koons show on; we could have put a Richard Prince show on. We have enough works,” said the gallery’s senior curator, Hugh Allan, who has known Hirst since they were both art students in Leeds. “Going left field was the right choice.” — The New York Times