Art Fund International brings new exhibitions to Walsall and Birmingham
Pieces from a new £1 million contemporary art collection for the region are on display for the first time. Terry Grimley takes a look.
Artists from Italy, Germany, India, China, and Russia are among those featured in two exhibitions currently showing at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the New Art Gallery in Walsall.
They are part of a permanent collection of early 21st century art from around the world being assembled for the West Midlands as part of the Art Fund International project. The scheme, launched in 2007, is aimed at encouraging Britain’s regional museums to take a more international perspective in collecting contemporary art.
The Art Fund, an independent charity with 80,000 members, is better known for its work in saving historic works of art for the nation, such as its current campaign to help the National Trust keep a Brueghel at Nostell Priory in Yorkshire.
But when it celebrated its centenary in 2003 withThe Treasure Houses of England, a major exhibition at the Royal Academy celebrating the artistic riches of England’s regional collections, it became all too apparent that during the 20th century museums outside London had more or less given up collecting new art from overseas.
And so the concept of Art Fund International was born. A fund of £5 million was set up, and museums outside London and Edinburgh were invited to bid for a share of it. A key requirement was that they were asked to form partnerships with organisations which had expertise in contemporary art but did not themselves have permanent collections.
In the West Midlands, a three-way consortium between Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, the New Art Gallery, Walsall, and Ikon Gallery was one of the successful bidders from a field of 29. The others are in Middlesbrough, Glasgow, Bristol and Eastbourne.
Now the scheme, launched in 2007, is halfway to its completion in 2012, and for the first time the public can see what has been achieved so far.
