The Art Fund has announced a 20% rise in membership following the launch of the national art pass last year.
As reported at the time, the fundraising charity said the pass, which was linked to wider membership changes, would result in its acquisition fund increasing from £4.5m to about £7m by 2014.
In today’s announcement, Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said the increase in membership numbers to about 92,000 individuals meant it had been able to commit £6m to the purchase of works of art over the past year – helping 84 museums buy 141 works for their collections.
“More Art Fund members are good news for UK museums as they mean more grants and more visitors,” Deuchar said.
He also revealed further details of a new collection of photography from the Middle East being jointly established by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the British Museum in London.
The collection of more than 80 works from 22 artists has received more than £150,000 of funding from the Art Fund.
Highlights from the collection will be exhibited in a major exhibition at the V&A from 13 November to 7 April 2013. Deuchar said the Art Fund also plans to fund a UK tour of the exhibition following its V&A showing, although no further details are available at this stage.
Following this tour, the collection will become part of the permanent collections of the British Museum and the V&A respectively.
The Middle Eastern photography collection, of which about 50% is owned by the V&A and 50% by the British Museum, has mainly been produced in the past 10 years by emerging and established artists living in the region or in diaspora.
Artists include internationally established practitioners such as Abbas (Iran), Youssef Nabil (Egypt) and Walid Raad (Lebanon), and emerging talents including Taysir Batniji (Palestine), Shadi Ghadirian (Iran) and Abdulnasser Gharem (Saudi Arabia).
And Marta Weiss, the V&A’s curator of photography, said: "The exhibition will celebrate the creative and sophisticated ways that contemporary artists use photography to respond to the complexities of the Middle East.”
As reported at the time, the fundraising charity said the pass, which was linked to wider membership changes, would result in its acquisition fund increasing from £4.5m to about £7m by 2014.
In today’s announcement, Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said the increase in membership numbers to about 92,000 individuals meant it had been able to commit £6m to the purchase of works of art over the past year – helping 84 museums buy 141 works for their collections.
“More Art Fund members are good news for UK museums as they mean more grants and more visitors,” Deuchar said.
He also revealed further details of a new collection of photography from the Middle East being jointly established by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the British Museum in London.
The collection of more than 80 works from 22 artists has received more than £150,000 of funding from the Art Fund.
Highlights from the collection will be exhibited in a major exhibition at the V&A from 13 November to 7 April 2013. Deuchar said the Art Fund also plans to fund a UK tour of the exhibition following its V&A showing, although no further details are available at this stage.
Following this tour, the collection will become part of the permanent collections of the British Museum and the V&A respectively.
The Middle Eastern photography collection, of which about 50% is owned by the V&A and 50% by the British Museum, has mainly been produced in the past 10 years by emerging and established artists living in the region or in diaspora.
Artists include internationally established practitioners such as Abbas (Iran), Youssef Nabil (Egypt) and Walid Raad (Lebanon), and emerging talents including Taysir Batniji (Palestine), Shadi Ghadirian (Iran) and Abdulnasser Gharem (Saudi Arabia).
And Marta Weiss, the V&A’s curator of photography, said: "The exhibition will celebrate the creative and sophisticated ways that contemporary artists use photography to respond to the complexities of the Middle East.”
