2012/2022 – A Decade in British Art Curating

2012/2022 A Decade in British Art Curating This year’s BAN Annual conference will continue our project of ‘rethinking the curatorial’, using the 10-year anniversary of the Network as an occasion to reflect on a decade in British art curating

The British Art Network was officially launched on 21 December 2012, an initiative organised by Tate and supported by Arts Council England, that aimed to foster connections and develop skills and knowledge among curators of British art. That precise date was, oddly enough, predicted to see the end of the world, according to the widely reported (but wholly spurious) Mayan calendar. In the run up to 21 December 2012 there was a proliferation of web articles and media coverage of the anticipated apocalypse – an end of the world as long envisaged by, for instance, John Martin in the 19th century (featured on the cover, here). But as everyone from NASA to the BBC was pleased to point out, that did not come to pass – not in any real sense, anyway. But in retrospect, 2012 itself looks like a seminal year, perhaps a turning point. From the (unexpected) success of the London Olympics and Paralympics to the (wholly expected but still shocking) exposure of grotesque life of the recently dead Jimmy Savile, from the conviction of Stephen Lawrence’s racist murderers at the beginning of the year to the Diamond Jubilee, we can observe (or recall) a range of landmarks/firsts/lasts/occasions which would provide reference-points for thinking about what has changed and stayed the same over the last decade. During the last months there has been recurring press and media commentary connecting and contrasting the Jubilees of 2012 and 2022, using the former year as a benchmark for charting changing social attitudes, accounting for the repercussions over the last decade of the shakeup of the NHS in England in that year or charting attitudes towards migration and race after the introduction in April 2012 of the idea of the ‘hostile environment’ by the then Home Secretary Teresa May. This was the year, also, of the publication of Britannia Unleashed, a political tract which infamously lambasted British workers as ‘the worst idlers in the world’ while heralding some form of new culture war, authored by, among others, Liz (then Elizabeth) Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.

In the visual arts sector, there were firsts, new developments and turning points – the opening of the Tanks at Tate Modern and the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, the first ‘Untitled’ Festival at the Southbank Centre, the premier of John Akomfrah’s Unfinished Conversation at Bluecoat, Liverpool, the first Frieze Masters, the first major photography show at the National Gallery, London, the mooted emergence of ‘OWAs’ (Older Women Artists as opposed to the YBA’s) and the commemorative BLK Art Group Conference at Wolverhampton in October. There were major (or at least, big) shows of Hockney, Freud, Bacon, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites – and some expressions of unease even in the mainstream press about the maledominated canon these embodied.

Looking over curatorial activity in 2012, we can note that there were gestures towards a ‘globalising’ of British art (although generally focussed only on exchanges between Britain and Europe) and several exhibition and display projects that connected figures from different eras in ‘transhistorical’ curatorial gestures, including a number placing modern and contemporary art in heritage settings. There were signs of growing disquiet with the proliferation of curatorial training courses and of superstar curators. In general, there are indications of how questions of social justice and equity were becoming more pressing and apparent within mainstream curatorial practice, even in the context of London’s national institutions. Most critically, perhaps, the Paralympics and accompanying cultural programmes jump out as a turning point in disability representation. And there were already signs that mainstream London institutions were at least starting to acknowledge the marginalised histories of Black artists.

We can make the case that 2012 was a real turning point in these regards, the beginning of the ‘reality check’ or reckoning that gained momentum in subsequent years with #MeToo and BLM. As the cultural critic Mark Fisher observed, referring to the exposure of Jimmy Savile, ‘By the end of 2012, the 70s was returning, no longer as some bittersweet nostalgia trip, but as a trauma’. And as Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, wrote recently ‘The past decade has been one in which many of us realised that Britain was more divided, anxious and fragmented than any of us would want – yet perhaps not as divided as we had told ourselves’.

Tony Heaton, Monument to the Unintended Performer, 2012 – a monumental commission helping mark the 2012 Paralympics

Photo: Dave King

Using this vantage point, BAN’s annual conference programme for 2022 will explore a decade in British art curating, offering multiple perspectives on curatorial practices and knowledge production, reflecting on the material and social forces at work over these years, and considering the innovations and missed opportunities. Referring to the archive of cultural activity in 2012 itself as a point of reference and engaging with an expanded view of the curatorial field in the decade since, the programme will offer reflections, questions and challenges for British art curating now.

The programme will involve four sessions in November, including in-person and online events guest-convened by Sonia Boue, Bryan Biggs, and Victoria Walsh as well as a new online resource documenting 2012 as a year in British art (see below), and a commissioned film exploring the conference themes by Niyaz Saghari.

Martin Myrone

2012/2022 A Decade in British Art Curating BAN Annual Conference, November 2022

Please save the date for the following sessions

15 November Beyond othering - curatorial practice and the neurodiversity paradigm, convened by Sonia Boue, online

17 November Curating in the contemporary: the art school, museum, and the academy, convened by Victoria Walsh, in-person and online, venue TBC

22 November Perspectives on a decentred decade – local and global, convened by Bryan Biggs, Bluecoat, Liverpool and online

24 November Reflections on a decade in British art curating – chaired by Martin Myrone, BAN Convenor, Tate Britain, London, and online

More information on the individual sessions and how to book your place will be issued soon. Do look out for further mailings and updates on the dedicated page of the BAN website.

Invitation to contribute #1 The British Art UnCanon, “12 from 2012”

The British Art UnCanon, BAN’s ‘virtual collection’ bringing together images from across the history of British art now includes 30 articles, with more on the way. Ranging from Tudor portraiture and Georgian silver to contemporary video art and protest culture, the images are accompanied by short commentaries produced by Members and exploring a theme or question of their choosing. To help mark BAN’s 10-year anniversary, we would like to commission 12 new articles by Members addressing images relating to the year 2012 – works made, exhibited or interpreted in that year, or commenting on the historical events of that moment. We would aim to include up to 12 articles of this nature in the UnCanon, in time for the annual conference in November.

If you are interested in contributing a piece and could produce something by the end of October, please write to BritishArtNews@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk, suggesting the image of work you would want to write about. Commissioned articles will need to be around 300-500 words long, and contributors will receive a fee of £100.