Art Fund International
Wolfgang Tillmans, End of Land 1, 2002
Art Fund International is the £5 million funding initiative launched by the Art Fund in 2007 to help UK museums and galleries build outstanding collections of international contemporary art.
Art Fund International is 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, Art Fund International encouraged a radical change in the scale and ambition of contemporary art collecting in the UK.
Towner was fortunate to be one of the five recipients, in patnership with Photoworks, Brighton Photo Biennial and Artsway. The starting point of our collecting policy is our position on the south coast beside Beachy Head. We are collecting art that reflects upon images of Edges. These Edges 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.
The four other successful 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
- The West Midlands Partnership: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall, in partnership with Ikon.
All of the museums and galleries involved are acquiring works through Art Fund international until 2012. Keep an eye out for Towner’s acquisition announcements!
Find out more about Art Fund International
