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Art Fund International winners announced

5th November 2007

The Art Fund has announced the five successful Art Fund International partnerships that have each been awarded £1million.

Art Fund International is one of the most important and ambitious schemes The Art Fund has ever launched. The scheme will fund the creation of collections of international contemporary art over the next five years, whilst encouraging a radical change in the scale and ambition of contemporary art collecting in the UK.

The five winning partnerships are:
- Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives in partnership with Arnolfini
- Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow in partnership with The Common Guild
- Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) in partnership with
The Drawing Centre, New York
- Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne in partnership with Photoworks, Brighton Photo Biennial and Artsway
- West Midlands partnership: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall in partnership with Ikon

David Barrie, The Art Fund Director said:
“We were stunned by the amazing response to the initiative, particularly by the enthusiasm and ideas generated by the museums working in partnership with contemporary art organisations.
The vision and ability of the five winners was particularly impressive - now comes the exciting task of acquiring and commissioning work to make their ideas a reality. These are the spaces to watch as we begin to realise the enormous ambition of developing international contemporary art collections around the country.”
The scheme emerged from discussions during the planning of The Art Fund’s centenary exhibition and international conference in 2003. These brought into sharp focus the historic failure of UK museums to acquire art produced by living, non-British artists. The situation is little better today. In the last twenty years, Art Fund grants offered towards the acquisition of contemporary artworks amounted to only 17% of its total grants, and of the contemporary grants made almost 83% went towards works by British artists.

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Art Fund International. The Art Fund's new contemporary art initiative. Find out More