Contemporary art calls for contemporary type, but also something that is silent enough to let the artworks shine.

How about Lyon Text paired with Lyon Display by Kai Bernau?
While you’re checking out Commercial Type, you should also pick up a copy of Wallpaper Magazine and see their Graphik surrounded by contemporary art and architecture.

Another sans that just begs to be used for something like this is Akkurat from Lineto.

UK based A2/SW/HK have a lot of design work that revolves around contemporary art and might serve as inspiration for you. They draw a lot of their type themselves, something you should perhaps consider for your project as well.

Logotypes deserves, IMHO, more attention than just being typeset in a generic font.

Caslon Black

Hardly Victorian.
If you're going historical, why not use a face more in keeping with the era and style of the building?

Ignoring your Victorian building, I like TheSans and TheSerif for texts accompanying art, esp "contemporary" art. With both, just about any weight you need is available. But then, I only do books, so that may not be responsive.

FWIW & probably not much.

These are very useful comments - thank you all.

Frode, the usual way to approach design for contemporary art institutions is indeed to use fonts that feel 'contemporary'. Commonly this means using sans serif faces throughout - and I'm keen to avoid that tactic. However, there are obviously more subtle ways of being contemporary - and I will look at the fonts that you are suggesting.

Nick, I have thought hard today about this question of the relation to the period of the building - I agree it's an important issue. I have ditched Caslon Black. And my latest thought is to use fonts that are a bit earlier in origin: a slightly chunky Modern font for the logo, such as Berthold Bodoni Antiqua; and then a version of Baskerville for the titles and body copy.

(Frode, you are of course right that the logotype should be treated separately, and perhaps shouldn't be set in a generic font. But at the moment the exercise I am doing is a notional one.)

Okay, since Nick is too shy to say it:
The Modern Suite.

Well yes, there is a Shinntype font for (almost) every occasion :-)
But as I have no idea what the building looks like (there were many genres of architecture in the 19th century), it would be premature to suggest a ModSuite font.

The thing to bear in mind is that the logo for an institution will probably end up in signage, with the potential for disaster:

http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/01/very-english-blunder.html

Mark, could you post a picture of the building?