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Research at the University of Bristol on the international contexts of British art has made a distinctive contribution to a renaissance of British art studies that began in the late 1980s. Over the past five years, scholars at Bristol have worked with museums in London, the regions and overseas to engage the widest possible audience in fresh thinking about British art. Exhibitions and catalogue essays informed by their research have raised awareness of individual artists and changed public and critical perceptions of British art as a whole. They have also brought many benefits to the museum partners, attracting visitors, generating income and enhancing the museums' understanding of their own collections. Some exhibitions have inspired additional collaborations which have fed back into research and further extended audiences for British art.
The primary impact of the research in the exhibition and the catalogue entitled The Bruce Lacey Experience is the Tate's commitment to acquiring additional pieces of Lacey's work (the gallery presently owns two works) and to purchase Lacey's archive. The exhibition that David Mellor curated at the Camden Arts Centre (CAC) jointly with Jeremy Deller also directly affected contemporary art curators and the public by influencing outputs on Lacey in film: both the film of the artist made by Deller, and Lacey's own films, released as a DVD set through the British Film Institute (BFI) in conjunction with the exhibition.
The impact that will be described within the case study focuses on how the research — which centered upon the multifarious applications, conceptualisations and roles drawing has today within various professions and disciplines - was beneficial to a group of educators with respect to their planning and implementation of an art and design based curriculum. To this end the case study will detail how the research undertaken around drawing by Staff and Cureton directly affected how both drawing was conceived by these teachers and how this informed the development of their curricula.
York's British Art Research School, judged `world-leading' in RAE 2008, aims to change the way key cultural institutions represent British art. To advance this aim we have fostered partnerships with museums and galleries at local, national, and international levels. The partnerships have influenced curatorial practices through:
These initiatives have helped partners to display and promote a significantly wider range of British art and to generate new kinds of interpretation for larger and more diverse publics.
The two-year ROTOЯ programme of exhibitions and events has been a cornerstone of the University of Huddersfield's efforts to introduce new audiences to contemporary art and design, as encouraged by successive Arts Council policies for enhancing public engagement. As well as raising awareness, inspiring curiosity and providing cultural enrichment, it has initiated changes to local authority policies on providing cost-effective, high-quality cultural services and has functioned as a vehicle for research into how the impact of such programmes can be captured. As such, it has served as a model partnership for local authority and university sectors in offering cultural leadership, generating and measuring engagement and delivering public services.
The impact comes from Ekserdjian's authentication and attribution of Renaissance paintings and the curatorship of international exhibitions, both of which have had substantial financial impact on institutions and individuals involved in the art market, in particular the auction house sector, galleries and museums. This also includes cultural impacts on the art-loving public by introducing them to newly-discovered and attributed artworks which might previously have never been exhibited publicly and by offering innovative ways of exhibiting and understanding masterpieces gathered from around the globe.
Nicholas Alfrey's work has led to a reassessment of modern British art of the 1960s and 1970s concerned with landscape and the environment. This has been achieved through his curatorship of exhibitions at the Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham (2009) and at Southampton Art Gallery, the latter under the aegis of Arts Council England (2013), and their subsequent press reception. Alfrey has selected work for these exhibitions by leading British artists never before displayed and he has therefore increased the visibility of this material. Through his activities, the dominance of American Land Art has been questioned. In a related strand of activity, Alfrey's Land Art Network, funded by the AHRC, has initiated a dialogue between different generations of contemporary artists and created new networks and interaction between art historians, museum and gallery curators, artists and writers. The careers of individual artists, notably Katie Paterson, have been transformed by their participation in the Network. The institutions concerned have thereby invested and promoted Land Art as part of their exhibition strategy, which has been linked to Arts Council England's historic promotion of British Land Art and the more recent revival of Southampton Art Gallery.
An exhibition researched and co-curated by the University of Reading's Alun Rowlands — The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art — at Tate St Ives presented an accessible new approach to the display of the Cornish gallery's artworks. It widened public access to this important resource and enabled public understanding and appreciation of 20th-century British art by juxtaposing, and drawing connections between, famous historical artworks, contemporary pieces and examples from popular culture, literature, film, music and local folk ritual. This democratic approach was extended through the associated educational projects, performance events and publications. The model has subsequently influenced strategy at Tate museums across the UK, demonstrating that connections can be drawn across different categories of culture as a way of emphasising the contemporary relevance of previously underused and obscure public collections and as a way of promoting public interaction.
Afterall is a research and publishing organisation founded in 1998 by Research Fellow Charles Esche and Professor Mark Lewis at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (UAL). Afterall focuses on contemporary art, and its relationship to wider theoretical, social and political fields. Researchers associated to Afterall undertake and commission research, which is disseminated to an international audience through publications and events. Afterall impacts on the cultural sector and an extended audience by providing a platform for critical and creative responses to art, curatorial and cultural practice and by shaping discourse in this area. The significance and wide reach of this impact is demonstrated through partnerships and high-profile cultural events, publication reach, and support from the cultural community.
Through a partnership forged with the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Briony Fer developed international exhibitions building on research into the materials and processes underlying art's making and thinking. This reached both general and specialist publics, including artists and conservators in the UK and beyond. The exhibition Eva Hesse: Studiowork from 2009 travelled across Europe and North America over two years, attracting over 200,000 visitors. It provided cultural enrichment and raised public awareness about how art is made; deepened specialist knowledge of fragile materials crucial to the conservation of modern sculpture; brought previously unknown artworks into the public domain and contributed to the tourist and heritage industry as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival.