One year ago, guests gathered for the official opening of the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, ending a long search for a permanent home. Today, Masterworks collections manager Elise Outerbridge spoke to Lifestyle reporter Rene Hill about those first 12 months.

Twenty-one years ago Masterworks had no permanent home and 12 paintings to its name.

Back then, it wasn't thought of as an official collection, but rather a group of paintings bought from American dealer Scott Schutz which were hung wherever space was found, and which were often moved around after dark to fulfill someone's request to borrow paintings for an exhibit.

How times change.

It is now firmly established at its new home in the Botanical Gardens where the permanent collection is housed.

"The first year has been beyond our wildest imaginations and has been really quite incredible," said Mrs Outerbridge.

"The response to the building from both the local public and the tourist public has been extraordinary. I don't think that we have had anybody with any criticism of the overall building itself, which has turned out to be really adaptable to all of our programmes."

The Museum opened with a bang with both The Charman Prize (see separate story) and another show, which featured the permanent collection and since the opening on March 1 between 17,000 and 18,000 people have passed through the doors.

"The first two shows 'Somewhere Beyond the Sea' and 'Charge of the Light Brigade' were really well received," added Mrs Outerbridge.

"It was gratifying to me to be collections' manager to finally be able to show the gems of our collection to the Bermuda community, which had been overseas for so many years and to be a place where people are really coming in to look at the artwork."

One of the biggest pluses is having classrooms in the same building as the collections, meaning children can easily see the art on display.

"Carrie Zenti, our education coordinator and teacher, can bring children up and walk them around the museum and I think it is great for children in Bermuda to be learning how to go to a museum and be in the classroom at the same time.

"The other day I think we had 40 CedarBridge Academy students here for a couple of hours and it was very rewarding, because as you know we are here for the public and we are here for the Bermudians and over and above for an educational purpose and exposure to expose Bermudians to the arts.

"So we have been able to give a full-time educational programme, Saturday classes, after-school classes, Arts for All twice a year and we are doing workshops with our Artists in Residents, the current one being Peter Zokosky, who has been doing portrait workshops.

"We have been able to use the building for people like Manuel Palacio and Shelly Hamill to conduct classes, so I can honestly say that the building is being extensively used, which is great.

"Even with the economic downturn we have been able to attract people to our classrooms and to all of our programmes."The current show is 32N/64W A Revelation: Community Roundtable Discussions/Black History month which, according to Mrs Outerbridge has been very well received.

"We have seen more people come to this show, than probably any other. The opening was absolutely jammed packed."The first 12 months have been busy and fulfilling for the staff at Masterworks, but for the future, Mrs. Outerbridge explained that there was a lot more in store.

"Our next venture is to get started on the gift shop and café, which will give the full museum experience," she said."We have the funds in place for it now and in a way things worked out all for the best. We opened the museum, had things fall into place and now we are onto step two to open the gift shop.

"The gift shop will be in the Rose Garden Gallery and the old tank will have steps going down. It will be sort of a sitting, wine drinking, book reading area - one thing that I am hoping will be a place where there will be no laptops or cellphones and people can just go and enjoy the atmosphere."Overall, she said: "Our first year has been beyond our wildest dreams, not without its challenges, I mean the economic downturn was scary and I think we were lucky because we would have never been able to have started or to finish the capital campaign if we had been a year later.

"But people have been very generous and people for the most part, understand that we depend on the generosity of the community and the corporate community and they have been forthcoming and I really appreciate that.

"I think we are working towards a better Bermuda and after a year we can see that it really is impacting.

It took about a year to get that recognition and get the word out."

For more information visit www.bermudamasterworks.com or ring 236-2950.