The Art Fund have announced the five £1m winners of Art Fund International, the scheme dedicated to building collections of international contemporary art at regional UK museums and galleries.
The initiative, launched in April, aimed to create
partnerships between UK institutions and contemporary art
organisations. There were 29 applications, with ten being
shortlisted.
The winners were: Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives in
partnership with Bristol's Arnolfini arts centre; Glasgow's Gallery
of Modern Art in partnership with Glasgow's The Common Guild;
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in partnership with New
York's The Drawing Centre; Eastbourne's Towner Art Gallery in
partnership with Photoworks of Brighton; Brighton Photo Biennial
and ArtSway of Hampshire; and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and
New Art Gallery Walsall in partnership with Ikon of Birmingham (The
West Midlands Partnership).
The Bristol winners will focus on urbanisation, tradition,
identity, globalisation and migration.
Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art aims to establish an international
context for their recent acquisitions of Scottish art,
concentrating on photography, film, video, audio and text-based
work.
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art will build a collection of
drawings by artists living and working in North and South
America.
The collection at East-bourne's Towner Art Gallery will reflect
upon images of edges, including physical boundaries (the beach, the
horizon), social frontiers (national boundaries, conflict zones),
and social migration (across Europe, between the USA and
Mexico).
Finally, the theme of the West Midlands partnership, The
Metropolis - reflections of modern urban life, will explore city
life and the diversity, dynamism and growth of the contemporary
metropolis.
The £1m allocated to each partnership must be spent over the next
five years on specific purchases and commissions of contemporary
art by non-British living artists.
By Stephanie Harris
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