The Arts Council Collection is pleased to announce three new members of the 2018-2019 Acquisitions Committee. Charlotte Keenan, Curator of British Art at Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool; Fatoş Üstek, Director and Chief Curator at David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF); and Helen Nisbet, Curatorial Fellow at Cubitt in London, will join existing committee member, artist Anthea Hamilton. We are also delighted to welcome Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair of Arts Council England, as our new Chair to the 2018-2019 Committee.
Charlotte Keenan McDonald was appointed Curator of British Art at Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool in April 2014. Her research interests include feminist and queer art histories and socially-engaged art practices. Charlotte was awarded a New Collecting Award by the Art Fund in 2015 to acquire new artwork for the Walker’s collection related to LGBT+ history and culture. In 2017 she curated the major Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme exhibition Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender & Identity at the Walker, which later toured to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. She has contributed texts to several publications including Museums and Feminism (2018) and Louise Giovanelli: In Conversation (2016) and was a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Curatorial Scholar at the Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut in 2013.
Fatoş Üstek is Director and Chief Curator at David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF). Previously, she worked as an independent curator and writer based in London. Her projects have included miart Talks 2018, Milan (with Joao Ribas); Art Night 2017, East London, in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery; fig-2, 50 projects in 50 weeks, 2015, at ICA Studio, London; and the 10th Gwanjiu Biennale, South Korea, 2014. In 2016 she was nominated for the Gerrit Lansing Independent Curatorial Vision Award. Fatoş has initiated two UK-wide schemes to support acquisitions of new works by public institutions; Art Night Legacy launched in 2017 (in partnership with The Art Fund, Contemporary Art Society and Outset Young Production Circle) and fig-futures in 2018 (in partnership with Outset and The Art Fund). She writes extensively on contemporary art, and has contributed to international magazines and publications.
Helen Nisbet is the Curatorial Fellow at Cubitt in London. She is an Artist Advisor on Syllabus IV with Wysing Arts Centre, a Visiting Lecturer at the RCA and curates independent and partnership projects across the UK and internationally. Previously she has worked with organisations including Open Source, Creative Time, Contemporary Art Society and the Arts Council Collection where she organised a series of 8 commissions to celebrate the Collection’s 70th anniversary in 2016.
Nicholas Serota was appointed Chair of Arts Council England in February 2017. He was Director of Tate between 1988 and 2017. During this period Tate opened Tate St Ives (1993) and Tate Modern (2000, expanded in 2016), redefining the Millbank building as Tate Britain (2000). Tate also broadened its field of interest to include twentieth-century photography, film, performance and occasionally architecture, as well as collecting from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The national role of the Gallery was further developed with the creation of the Plus Tate network of 35 institutions across the UK and Northern Ireland.
Recommendations on purchasing innovative works of art that reflect artistic practice in Britain today are made by a changing group of external advisors to the Arts Council Collection Acquisitions Committee.
Acquisitions are made through a committee of eight individuals. The internal members of the Acquisitions Committee are Jill Constantine (Director, Arts Council Collection), with Ralph Rugoff (Director, Hayward Gallery), and Peter Heslip (Director, Visual Arts, Arts Council England). Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair of Arts Council England, acts as Chair to the Committee.
Explore works acquired for the nation through our 2017-18 Acquisitions.