Seven curators win awards to build museum collections - Museums Association

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Seven curators win awards to build museum collections

Art Fund programme aims to support ‘rising curatorial stars’
Seven curators have been awarded almost £300,000 worth of grants from the Art Fund’s New Collecting Awards programme.
Now in its fifth year, the funding scheme aims to support curators to build collections for their museums in imaginative and visionary ways.
Each of the recipients will receive a budget for acquisitions, a funding allocation for research, travel and training costs, and support from Art Fund staff, trustees and a mentor.
This year’s funded projects will support the acquisition of works by international women sculptors, Japanese illustrated books and digital design, among others.
The scheme has handed out more that £1.5m to 30 projects over the past five years. The Art Fund’s director Stephen Deuchar, said: “An important part of being a curator today is drawing out the potential of their museums’ collections and considering how best to develop them in new ways.
“The New Collecting Awards give some of the UK’s rising curatorial stars the opportunity to diversify their institutions’ holdings, bringing benefit to a widening range of audiences and helping our museums to thrive.”
This year’s recipients are:
  • Tania Moore, a curator at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, who will receive £80,000 to acquire sculptors’ drawings and works on paper by international women artists.
  • Uthra Rajgopal, the assistant curator (textiles and wallpaper) at the Whitworth, University of Manchester, who has been awarded £38,600 to develop the gallery’s collection of South Asian textile artworks by female artists.
  • Lucy Creighton, the curator of archaeology at Yorkshire Museum, York, who has been offered £50,000 to diversify and strengthen the Yorkshire Museum’s collection of pre-1600 archaeology and numismatics through a holistic approach to collecting.
  • Ben Miller, the assistant curator of ceramics at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, who will receive £25,000 to build a collection exploring the 300-year history of North Staffordshire ceramics created for and used by the hospitality industry.
  • Natalie Kane, the curator of digital design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who has been awarded £35,000 to research and collect examples of digital design.
  • Louise Boyd, Japan Foundation Assistant Curator, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, who will receive £40,000 to acquire a number of ehon, Japanese woodblock-printed illustrated books.
  • Emily Riddle, assistant curator at the Hepworth Wakefield, who has been offered £30,000 to collect post-war ceramics by artists associated with the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

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