A BEGINNER’s guide to modern art won't attract more visitors to mima - but displaying what they want to see will, says famous local artist Mackenzie Thorpe.

From mid-April the £19m Middlesbrough gallery is launching a series of talks and printed guides to help people better understand the genre.

Its new ‘Beginner’s Guide to Modern Art’ will provide an insight into eight highlights from its extensive collection, including works by LS Lowry, Tracey Emin and Bridget Riley.

“Some people think modern art is intimidating, people often don’t learn about modern art at school, so people think how can we understand it,” said Kim Gowland, project manager of audience development at mima.

“There is a perception that it’s all about bricks and beds but it covers such a wide range of styles from Lowry to Emin and pop art.

"It is about getting people to be confident about having an opinion not about being right or wrong. People don’t have to like what they see but we want people to talk about it.”

The gallery which opened six years ago has attracted on average 110,000 visitors each year said Ms Gowland.

It pulled in record crowds in 2009 when 7,000 tickets were snapped up within 24 hours to see paintings, sculptures, full-scale vehicles and video walls created by BBC2’s Top Gear presenters.

“We have an exhibition of drawings by Picasso and Lucian Freud as well as paintings of local Middlesbrough scenes, there is a really good balance,” she added. “We cannot do the Top Gear thing all the time.”

A spokesperson for world renowned artist, Mackenzie Thorpe, who grew up in Middlesbrough, said: “Anything mima can do to encourage local people to visit the town’s art gallery is to be applauded, however mima is now six years old and has failed to become part of the fabric of the town and part of the problem is the elitist culture which surrounds modern art in general.

“People don’t go to mima because, by and large, they don’t like the work on show, it doesn’t relate to them, simple. 

“Mima just does not get the local population, they continue to dish up their vision of what they think we should be enjoying and persist in ignoring demands for something we would like to see.”