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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 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.
Research by Daniels for Picturing Britain, an exhibition about the life and works of the pre-eminent Nottingham-born landscape artist Paul Sandby (1731-1809), shaped the policy and practice of Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery (NCMAG). While NCMAG previously imported exhibitions of international standing produced elsewhere, Picturing Britain reversed this relationship. This exhibition, conceived in Nottingham and based partly on works held at NCMAG, was exported to two internationally important venues, strengthening the city's national and international cultural reputation. Inspired by the success of Picturing Britain, NCMAG re-assessed its permanent collection with a view to securing Arts Council recognition and is currently investigating other `home-grown' touring exhibitions.
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.
This case study focuses on three areas in relation to the social impact of art, across the categories of `cultural life' and `public discourse'.
1) Artistic collaborations with non-artistic specialists in order to generate new interdisciplinary pathways
2) Artistic collaborations with non-artists within a given community or non-artistic institutional setting in order to create new forms of artist-audience participation
3) The sharing of knowledge/skills between either non-artistic specialists or a non-specialist audience and artists in the production of a shared task or project.
4) Performance-based practice inside and outside of the gallery
The outward facing nature of this research, then, addresses the way such work tests the prevailing competences, boundaries and identities of artist and audience alike. This means researchers are involved with both artistic and non-artistic funding-bodies and agencies as the basis for work on a range of critical issues affecting the borders between the art institution and non-artistic settings and contexts.
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.
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.
Dr Antonello's research on the Italian designer and artist Bruno Munari and his relation with Futurism was instrumental for the realization of an exhibition at the Estorick Collection in London, titled `Bruno Munari: My Futurist Past', held on 19 September - 23 December 2012. This was the first exhibition of Munari's work in the UK and the very first exhibition outside Italy since he passed away in 1998. It caught the attention of international media, and prompted the engagement of scholars, teachers, and schools at all levels (from primary to university), as well as discussions among practitioners and graphic designers. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Miroslava Hajek Archive, Novara, Luca Zaffarano at munart.org, and the Massimo and Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York.
The impact of Professor Taylor's work in interpreting modern and contemporary art has taken place on two complementary levels: on the one hand the lucid and accessible exposition, for a wide international reading public, of some of the most difficult, intractable, or provocative works of recent and contemporary art; and on the other, more specialist readings, again for an international reading public, of key tendencies in the broader range of modern art, from Cubism to the present day. Wide readership across Asia, Europe, and the United States has secured increased public understanding of art, and has influenced both policy and art practice.