Introduction

Convenor's Introduction

Our rather delayed Summer newsletter – arriving in September and after the close of the meteorological season (although within the astronomical season, strictly defined, I think) – focuses on our annual conference coming up in November. Last year, the annual conference explored Genealogies of Black Curating in Britain, with guest convenor Paul Goodwin. The recordings and wonderful commissioned films from Raju Rage and Rita Keegan remain available online, here, together with Paul’s reflections on the programme’s centering of the agency and trajectories Black curators in British art worlds and beyond. This year, marking the 10th anniversary of the British Art Network, we have invited three distinguished guest convenors – Sonia Boué, Bryan Biggs and Victoria Walsh – to organise panels exploring different aspect of the curatorial over the last decade. Focussing variously on questions of difference and neurodiversity, locality and globalism, decolonisation, decentering, and the sites of production of curatorial knowledge, these sessions promise to generate multi-faceted and complex perspectives on British art curating. As I explore in the short essay below, the year 2012 provides a fascinating benchmark for understanding where we are now, in terms of curatorial practice and the wider political and cultural context of our work as curators and researchers.

Alongside the conference programme, Niyaz Saghari is working on a short interview-based film exploring these themes, and we are developing a new online resource documenting 2012 as a year in British art and planning to expand the British Art UnCanon with new articles relating to the year. As set out below, we are inviting proposals for the UnCanon and suggestions of relevant materials for the online resource. We hope you will want to contribute, and that you will be able to complete the Membership survey which we are planning to conduct this Autumn, which we outline below.

Elsewhere, Lizzy Harris reports on recent activity, including the two-day trip to Manchester with the Emerging Curators Group which involved a succession of fascinating visits and presentations, many reflecting directly on the abiding questions of who gets to be a curator? and how should we curate, now?

The success of that trip was down in large part to the careful planning undertaken by Lizzy and by Danielle Goulé, who joined us as BAN Administrator in April 2021 but who has now moved on to an exciting new position with Canopy Collections. Many of you will have had contact with Danielle, including most recently the members of our YCBA/BAN Curatorial Forum, which she took in lead in organising and which takes place in New Haven this October. I am sure you will join me in thanking Danielle for all her work for BAN, and also in welcoming at this point Rosalind Stockill who is joining Tate as Head of National Partnerships, providing cover for Heather Sturdy who continues on maternity leave. Rosalind will be working with Lizzy Harris on BAN from the Tate side. While I continue as Convenor of the British Art Network, my role at the Paul Mellon Centre has expanded to Head of Grants, Fellowships and Networks.

We will be appointing a replacement for Danielle soon, as we prepare for a busy Autumn which will include our new round of bursary opportunities, for Research Groups and the Emerging Curators Group, the Curatorial Forum and Annual Conference, as well as the range of Seminars we are supporting this year. As ever, information on forthcoming and past events can be found on the website.

Finally, we are pleased to highlight below an important initiative relating to new work by Ingrid Pollard, developed by talking on corners, whose Creative Producer, Lorna Rose, was a member of the Emerging Curators Group in 202021. If you have new projects which you think would be of interest to the Membership, do let us know as we can post items on our News section on the website, highlight via our mailings, or include in the Newsletter as below.

Martin Myrone BAN Convenor

Coordinator's Introduction

In June the Emerging Curator’s Group came together in-person in Manchester. The programme’s theme was ‘navigating the curatorial’, using the British Art Show as a starting point. We visited a range of organisations and invited curatorial colleagues at these different sites to respond to this theme. The result was a fascinating and wide-ranging dialogue sustained across two days.

When selecting places to visit, Danielle and I wanted to reflect a wide range of organisations and venues going beyond the usual museum contexts and into the surrounding boroughs of Manchester. The first part of day one took us to HOME, where we met with Clarissa Corfe who had Members of the ECG deep in conversation during the visit to recently joined as their

Manchester Art Gallery, June 2022 Creative Producer: Visual Arts. Here the conversation took us to the question of what the role of a curator is, and the differences in being curator of a programme and of a collection. We reflected on how we have seen the roles of ‘curator’ and ‘producer’ change and expand in recent years. Clarissa shared her own professional journey in curatorial and talked about HOME’s use of the job title Creative Producer instead of Curator. In the afternoon we travelled over to Paradise Works in Salford, an artist-led studio community, where we met with Jez Dolan. Jez took us on a tour of their studio and exhibition space, and we talked through the history of artist-run spaces, their history of relocating out from the city centre, the community they work with and the highs and lows of being a freelance artist/curator. On day two we travelled out to Bury Art Museum. Tony Heaton (a member of our BAN Steering Group) and Gina Warburton, Collections and Exhibitions Assistant led an engrossing conversational tour of the galleries and Tony’s exhibition Altered, we we heard about Tony’s sculptural practice and activism. In the afternoon we travelled onto Manchester Art Gallery where we met with Kate Jesson, Curator who took us on a revealing tour of the galleries, hearing how they are navigating their programme development and rethinking their displays. We discussed approaches to researching difficult or unknown histories of objects collection, taking us back to the conversation on day one about curatorial roles.

Alongside tours at each venue, we had the opportunity to connect this year’s ECG cohort with members of the wider British Art Network, meeting over lunch at HOME and at a dinner at Bundobust. Martin, Danielle and I would like to thank all our invited guests, Alice, Gina, Tony, Kate, Nikita, Dominic and Poppy who all gave the group invaluable insights into their roles and how the programmes at each of their organisations are developed.

We are now approaching the last workshop session for this year’s cohort, which will focus on skill sharing and funding research. Applications for the Emerging Curators Group for 2023 will be opening very soon, along with the invitation to propose some new Research Groups – please watch out for mailings and check the BAN Website for updates.

As September is now here, the BAN team are looking forward to the hybrid seminar series led by members of the British Art Network, which will be taking place in the next weeks. The fifteen seminars supported by BAN funding this year are led by Network members and address a wide range of critical themes in the field of British art curating – from the medieval to the contemporary – with the aim of generating new and generative connections, thinking and reflections. Information about the date and venue for each seminar can be found on the Seminars page of the British Art Network website.

Lizzy Harris BAN Coordinator

The 19th century bronze Japanese urn by Seifu which towers over the art gallery at Bury Art Museum – a monumental object whose acquisition and interpretation stimulated much discussion during the ECG visit.

Photo: Bury Art Museum