Arts Council Collection

The Courtauld Institute of Art’s MA Curating the Art Museum students have launched their annual exhibition, offered online for the first time and featuring major works from the Arts Council Collection and The Courtauld Gallery collection.

Exhibitions Explore National Partners Programme About Us

Unquiet Moments: Capturing the Everyday was conceived in response to the 50th anniversary of the departure of the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages from the General Registry Office at Somerset House.

Such an archive records the banner headlines, the life-beginning, life-changing and life-ending moments that mark human experience. But what would an archive look like that instead recorded the fine print: the quiet, everyday moments of transformation and connection that shape human lives?

Featuring work by artists Karl Ohiri, Charlotte Prodger, Veronica Ryan, Barbara Walker plus many more. Read more here.

WATCH: Moving Image Works Online Exhibition

This week, ACC Collections and Operations Manager, Josh Dowson, selects Alan Currall’s Word Processing, 1995:

" Due to current circumstances, we all find ourselves spending more time talking to our computers. With this in mind, I felt this short film was more relevant than ever. It's always made me smile."

Watch in full here.

READ: Meet the Partners

In a new blog series, we hear from the teams working on our National Partners Programme to find out more about their unique venues.

First up, Posy Jowett, Public Engagement and Learning Officer at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens shares her experiences and insights working on the programme, as well as her personal highlights and route into the museum sector.

"I work from Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens which is a beautiful old building right by Sunderland’s main shopping streets, home to the spectacular Winter Gardens, which houses heat and humidity loving plants and a pond full of Koi Fish! Every so often the gardener will ask me if I want a banana leaf or a huge piece of bamboo – I always say yes."

THROWBACK: Explore an exhibition from our archives

Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity (Dec 2017 - April 2018)

A National Partners Programme Exhibition conceived by Walker Art Gallery in partnership with Birmingham Museums Trust, Coming Out was a ground-breaking and vital exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts in England and Wales (1967 Sexual Offences Act). Read more here.

From our Friends

This month we've selected a 3D Exhibition Tour of an ACC commissioned artwork by Heather Phillipson, shown at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre in Scunthorpe.

TRUE TO SIZE (2015) features a series of video and audio works that play out stimulating, fantastical and furry sculptural narratives. The installation pairs mass-produced materials, such as large printed emojis and teddy bears, with monitors and speakers.

Begin the 3D Exhibition Tour here.

Images:
Alan Currall, Word Processing (film still), 1995 Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © the artist.
Posy Jowett and Sunderland Culture's Arts Champions at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Installation view, Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2018.
Heather Phillipson, TRUE TO SIZE, 2015. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. A 70th Anniversary Commission for the Arts Council Collection © the artist.