Art Fund International £1 Million Award

The Art Fund, the UK’s leading independent art charity, announced on Monday that Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne has been awarded £1million. The money will fund the creation of a collection of international contemporary art through the charity’s new scheme Art Fund International.

This is one of the most important and ambitious schemes The Art Fund has ever launched and aims to encourage a radical change in the scale and ambition of contemporary art collecting in the UK. The Towner Gallery was one of only five partnerships that won £1million.

Matthew Rowe, Artistic Director of Towner Art Gallery, said: “The Towner Art Gallery’s success in the Art Fund International scheme represents an outstanding opportunity for the Towner in Eastbourne, in partnership with organisations across the South East, to build a collection of contemporary art of international importance.

The Committee’s selection of the Towner represents an amazing endorsement of a regional museum in a south coast town currently involved in a period of change and transformation through significant investment in the visual arts. The Towner’s participation in the Art Fund International is a fantastic enhancement to the gallery’s relocation to a new £8.6million building designed by award winning Rick Mather Architects due to open in summer 2008.”

The Art Fund International application process required museums to form partnerships with contemporary art organisations for the first time. The Towner Gallery is in partnership with Photoworks, Brighton Photo Biennial and Artsway. These partnerships will work closely together to research and identify artists and artworks that are appropriate to the specified collecting theme.

The theme of the collection will be in keeping with and redefine Eastbourne’s identity through its position on the south coast beside Beachy Head and will subsequently collect art that reflects upon images of edges. These could be real physical boundaries such as the beach, cliffs, the horizon and the edge of urban development, or social frontiers such as national boundaries, conflict zones like the Balkans and Israel and Palestine, or of social migration such as across Europe or between the United States of America and Mexico.

A total of 29 applications were received from all over the UK, involving nearly 90 organisations. Ten of these were selected to make full proposals, from which five winners have been chosen. The £1million will be allocated to specific purchases and commissions over the next five years.

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