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Grants

Programmes Department
contact: Paul Tourle 
programmes@artfund.org
020 7225 4822

Sarah Philp
Head of Programmes
sphilp@artfund.org
020 7225 4803

Rachael Browning
Programmes Manager (Projects) 
rbrowning@artfund.org
020 7225 4816

Penny Bull
Programmes Manager (Acquisitions)
pbull@artfund.org
020 7225 4815



 

Art Fund International is the £5 million funding initiative launched by the Art Fund in 2007 in order to encourage UK museums and galleries to build outstanding collections of international contemporary art.

One of the most important and ambitious schemes ever launched by the Art Fund, the initiative allocated £1 million each to five successful partnerships between UK museums and contemporary art organisations, to fund the creation of collections of international contemporary art over a period of five years, thus encouraging a radical change in the scale and ambition of contemporary art collecting in the UK.

The successful partnerships are:
º Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives in partnership with Arnolfini with a collection theme of ‘Glass Walls: Reflections and Interactions’. The City Museum and Art Gallery’s existing works are a starting point, along with the strong connections the city’s communities have with other parts of the world. It will be a collection of work by artists who are responding to the contemporary forces of urbanisation, tradition and identity, globalisation and migration.

º Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow in partnership with The Common Guild whose collection will aim to establish an international context for the Gallery’s recent acquisitions of Scottish art. Over the next five years it will initially focus on building a collection of high quality international photography, film, video, audio and text-based work with a preference for acquisitions that reflect socially engaged practice.

º Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) in partnership with The Drawing Centre, New York  and others will build an important collection of drawings made by artists living and working in North and South America from different generations and with varying degrees of renown. The ultimate goal being to secure outstanding works by those artists who are, and who will become, internationally significant.

º Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne in partnership with Photoworks, Brighton Photo Biennial and Artsway. Taking Eastbourne’s position on the south coast beside Beachy Head as a starting point, the Eastbourne partnership will collect art that reflects upon images of Edges. These could be real physical boundaries such as the beach, cliffs, the horizon and the edge of urban development, or social frontiers such as national boundaries, conflict zones like the Balkans and Israel and Palestine, or of social migration such as across Europe or between the United States of America and Mexico.

º The West Midlands Partnership: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall in partnership with Ikon whose collection theme is ‘The Metropolis – reflections of modern urban life’. It will explore the diversity, dynamism and growth of the contemporary metropolis through an international collection with a central theme of city life representing a powerful shifting strand of contemporary culture.

The museums and galleries involved are acquiring works through Art Fund international until 2012 – keep an eye on our news pages for latest acquisition announcements.
 

Further information
For more information about the winning partnerships, read the Art Fund's press release from November 2007 

Art Fund International Committee
The selection of the winning proposals was made by the Art Fund International Committee. The committee comprises three members of the Art Fund’s Board: James Lingwood (Chair), Professor Michael Craig Martin and Dr Deborah Swallow, and three external members with extensive international curatorial expertise: Catherine Lampert, former Director, Whitechapel; David Landau, Editoral Board Member of Print Quarterly and former Art Fund Trustee, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, The Serpentine.

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