BAN Steering Group

STEERING GROUP

The BAN Steering Group provides oversight on the BAN programme, membership and other activities. It serves as a sounding-board for new proposals from the BAN team and assesses bursary applications on an annual basis. The Group provides a forum for reporting and assessing activity across the network and makes recommendations for making BAN more inclusive and representative in its programme, membership and organisational structures.

The Steering Group includes representatives from Tate and the Paul Mallon Centre, the current and previous Emerging Curators Group, and at least 8 other members representing a range of experience and interests, serving 2-year terms (renewable up to 4 years). Chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain, and Mark Hallett, Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Steering Group meets three times a year. With seven new members joining in March 2021, we take this opportunity to introduce the Steering Group.

Cora Gilroy-Ware is currently a Lecturer in the History of Art department at the University of York. In her academic work she is committed to reversing the gaze to look critically and objectively at the Western art historical canon, focusing in particular on the classical body and its status, over time, as a false universal. Her first book The Classical Body in Romantic Britain was selected as one of Marina Warner’s Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. She has curated exhibitions at Tate Britain and the Huntington European Art Gallery, and written for the London Review of Books, art-agenda, the White Review, Apollo, and X-Tra Contemporary Art Quarterly. She is also a practicing artist.

Cora joins the Steering Group in March 2021

Dorothy Price is Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol, where she was a founder member and the inaugural Director of the Centre for Black Humanities. She is editor of Art History journal, where she is currently finalising a special issue co-edited with Venice Biennale 2022 British Pavilion artist, Professor Sonia Boyce RA OBE on the theme of Rethinking British Art. Black Artists and Modernism and a special issue with Imogen Hart (Berkeley) on the theme of British Art and the Global. Price is currently curating a show on German Expressionist women artists

for the Royal Academy of Arts, London; she has written for the forthcoming Freelands Award exhibition catalogue on the work of Veronica Ryan, is a consultant for New Walk Gallery Leicester and serves as a Trustee of the Holburne Museum Bath and Spike Island, Bristol, where she also sits on the Academic Advisory Board and Exhibitions Committee of the Royal West of England Academy.

Price is widely published in the areas of both British art and German modernism through the lens of race, sexuality, gender, with a particular focus on artists who identify as women. Books include Representing Berlin (2003); Women the Arts and Globalization (with Marsha Meskimmon) (2013), After Dada (2013) and Chantal Joffe: Personal Feeling is the Main Thing, which she also co-curated as an exhibition with Joffe for The Lowry, Salford in 2018. Her most recent collaboration with Joffe, Chantal Joffe. For Esme - with Love and Squalor was curated for Arnolfini Arts in Bristol in 2020.

Dorothy was a member of the Steering Group 2019-21 and is renewed for a further 1 year term.

Emily Pringle trained originally as a painter and worked for several years as an artist, educator, programmer, researcher and writer. She joined Tate as Head of Learning Practice and Research in 2010, with a responsibility to develop practice-based research across the Learning department. In 2018 she stepped away from Tate for a year to undertake an AHRC Leadership Fellowship and research and write on research in the art museum. The publication that emerged from this – Rethinking Research in the Art Museum (Routledge, 2019) - interrogates how research can support museums to situate themselves as sites of knowledge co-production. In 2019 Emily was appointed Head of Research at Tate.

Emily is an existing member of the Steering Group, and in 2021 is the nominated Tate Representative.

Professor Fiona Kearney is the founding Director of the Glucksman, an award-winning contemporary art museum on the campus of University College Cork that promotes the creation, understanding and enjoyment of art. In this position, she has curated numerous exhibitions of Irish and international art, with a particular emphasis on how contemporary art practice relates to research directions within academic discourse. Recent exhibitions include Circadian Rhythms: Art and biological time, The Parted Veil: Commemoration in Photographic Practices, PRISM: the art and science of light, and Outposts: Global borders and national boundaries. Kearney has published widely on contemporary art and photography, and throughout her career has received several distinguished awards including the NUI Prix d’Honneur from the French Government, a UCC President’s Award for Research on Innovative Forms of Teaching and the Jerome Hynes Fellowship on the Clore Leadership Programme. She is an assessor on the Museum Standards Programme of Ireland, and a board member of the Irish Architecture Foundation, VISUAL Carlow, Cork Midsummer Festival and Cork Chamber of Commerce. She is a member of the Irish Museums Association, ICOM, IKT, Universeum, and AICA.

Fiona was a member of the Steering Group 2019-21 and is renewed for a further 1 year term.

Lauren Craig (She/her/hers) is a social-media shy, internet-curious cultural futurist based in London. Her practice as a polymath draws on her experiences as an artist/curator and researcher. She has founded and directed six creative organisations with a background in ethical, social and environmental entrepreneurship and reproductive justice.

Her work as a full spectrum doula and celebrant add to her interest in contemporary celebration and commemoration. She is driven by a desire to build, collaborative and caring experiences and ethical cultural memory.

Inspired by archives, lived experience and futurity

Photo: Matthew Arthur Williams her practice transverses performance, installation, experimental art writing to moving image and photography. Recent screenings include the CCA Goldsmiths (2020), Tate Britain (2019) and talks at Tate, British Art Network (2020). She is currently co-curating a Rita Keegan survey show, Between There and Here (South London Gallery 2021). She has written an experimental essay, A journey Through Knowing MIT Press (2021)

She has an MA in Enterprise and Management for Creative Arts from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London (2007). She is currently completing Syllabus VI an alternative MA jointly delivered by Eastside Projects, INIVA, Studio Voltaire, Spike Island and Wysing Arts Centre.

Lauren is the Emerging Curators Group representative for 2021.

Marcus Jack (he/him) is a curator and art historian based in Glasgow and working predominantly with the moving image. He is currently completing an AHRC-funded PhD at The Glasgow School of Art investigating the histories of artists’ moving image in Scotland and is the editor of DOWSER (2020–), a new quarterly publication series on the same field. In 2015, he founded Transit Arts, an organisation for the support of artist-filmmakers working through public programmes and experimental publishing, and has developed projects with partners including Alchemy Film & Arts, ATLAS, CCA Glasgow, Document Film Festival, the Goethe-Institut, Glasgow Short Film Festival and Tyneside Cinema. He is a Research Associate at LUX Scotland and recently coordinated the nationwide Margaret Tait 100 centenary programme (2018–2019). He has sat on the submissions viewing panels of Open City Documentary Festival, London (2019–2021) and Glasgow Short Film Festival (2016–2020). Jack’s writing has been published by ICA London, MAP Magazine and Videoclub. He is a trustee of Glasgow Artists’ Moving Image Studios, a charitable organisation seeking to bring the historic Govanhill Picture House into reuse as a bespoke studio, production and exhibition facility.

Marcus represented the Early Career Curators Group on the Steering Group in 2019-20, and is the Emerging Curators Group Continuity Representative for 2021. the underrepresentation of CEE artists in British creative economy.

Miles Greenwood was appointed Curator of Legacies of Slavery and Empire at Glasgow Museums in September 2020. His role involves planning and coordinating Glasgow Museums’ approach to addressing the legacies of slavery and Empire. Miles studied for an MA in Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, where he focussed on the role of PanAfricanism in the decolonisation of the British Empire through a study of the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester. He then returned to his home city of Manchester to take a research job with the cultural audience research agency, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre. Building on his work in audience research, he was appointed Visitor Studies Officer at the Paisley Museum as part of their redevelopment project team, before taking up his current role with Glasgow Museums.

Miles joins the Steering Group in March 2021

Pauline de Souza is the founder and director of Diversity Art Forum, which is now in its 16th year as an art funding organisation, nationally and internationally, that involves working directly with organisations on projects as well as providing funding. Recently she has been working with the Beacon Collective and Black Funding Group on philanthropy development. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of East London in the Visual Arts Department, where she works with all creative areas in programming/ curating the Cultural Manoeuvres Programme, as well as working with Fine Art and Graphic Design students. She is a Fellow of the Advance Higher Education Academy. The Advance Higher Education Academy is a British professional accredited membership scheme for those who provide evidence of excellence in learning and teaching in Higher Education. She sits on the University of East London Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Committee.

Pauline joins the Steering Group in March 2021

Reyahn King became Chief Executive of York Museums Trust in 2015 and is responsible for the strategic leadership of the Trust including its three museum venues: York Castle Museum, Yorkshire Museum and York Art Gallery.

Reyahn joined York Museums Trust from Heritage Lottery Fund where she had been Head of HLF West Midlands and was previously Director of Art Galleries at National Museums Liverpool and before that Head of Interpretation and Exhibitions at Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery. Reyahn began her career as a curator of art with a specialism in British 18th century art and has produced ground-breaking exhibitions including Ignatius Sancho at the National Portrait Gallery, Anwar Shemza at Birmingham and Aubrey Williams at the Walker Art Gallery.

Reyahn has been a trustee of New Art Exchange in Nottingham. She is currently on the Boards of Crafts Council and Culture Perth and Kinross.

Reyahn joins the Steering Group in March 2021

Richard Sandell (he/him) is Professor of Museum Studies and Co-Director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) at the University of Leicester. Through RCMG he works collaboratively with cultural institutions on projects that generate new insights and advance thinking and practice around their social roles, responsibilities and agency. Recent collaborations have shaped major new gallery developments – such as Being Human at the Wellcome Collection in London - and large national public programmes such as Prejudice and Pride with the National Trust. In 2017 he published Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (2017) which explores how museums, galleries and heritage sites of all kinds – through the narratives they construct and publicly present – contribute to shaping the moral and political climate within which human rights are experienced, continually sought and fought for, realised and refused. In 2019, he published a major new international edited collection

– Museum Activism, with Robert Janes, that explores the ‘activist turn’ in museum thinking and practice and makes the case for the socially purposeful museum. Richard joins the Steering Group in March 2021 BAN’s Emerging Curators Group Umulkhayr is also a member of Black Curators Collective, a collective of Black women and non-binary curators working across the UK.

Sarah Turner is an art historian, curator and writer. She is Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, which is part of Yale University, and has taught art history at the University of York and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Sarah is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She is co-editor of British Art Studies, an award-winning digital arts publication, and the co-writer and co-host of the Sculpting Lives podcast. A full list of Sarah’s publications, exhibitions and projects are listed at https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/about/ people/sarah-victoria-turner

Sarah is an existing member of the Steering Group. In 2021 she is the nominated Paul Mellon Centre Representative.

Sophia Yadong Hao is a curator, writer and editor who situates the curatorial as a mode of critical inquiry directly engaging with culture and the political as an open question. Hao has curated contemporary art projects internationally, notably NOTES on a return (2009), a recontextualisation of performance art from 1980s Britain; Studio Jamming: Artists’ Collaborations in Scotland (2014); Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? (2016–2017) that evokes the ethos of feminism for an alternative politics in culture and society; and CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland (2015–2021), an exhibition programme in China interrogates contemporaneity in a global capitalist context.

Hao is the founding editor of the art journal &labels. Her publications include Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? (2019), Hubs and Fictions: On Current Art and Imported Remoteness (co-edited with Edgar Schmitz, 2016), A CUT A SCRATCH A SCORE (2015) and NOTES on a return

Photo: Rachel Cherry (2010). Hao is a member of Art 360 Advisory Group, and a member of Live Art Sector Review Steering Group (ACE). Hao is currently Director & Principal Curator of Cooper Gallery, DJCAD, University of Dundee.

Sophia is an existing member of the Steering Group and is renewed for a further 1 year term.

Tony Heaton OBE is a practising Sculptor, Chair of Shape Arts and Consultant/Advisor to many major cultural organisations, including: The British Council, Tate and the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries. He is the initiator of NDACA – the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive. https://the-ndaca.org/. His sculpture, Gold Lamé, recently occupied The Liverpool Plinth and is currently installed at the Riverside Museum, Glasgow. His ‘Monument to the Unintended Performer’ was installed on the Big 4 at the entrance to Channel 4 TV Centre in celebration of the 2012 Paralympics. His sculpture ‘Squarinthecircle?’ is situated outside the school of architecture, Portsmouth University. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2013, for services to the arts and the disability arts movement and has an Alumni Award from Lancaster University and honorary Doctorates from both the University of Leicester and the new University Bucks. www.tonyheaton.co.uk

Tony joins the Steering Group in March 2021