Art Council Curator Day – Birmingham

Women Power Protest: Gender and Diversity

The Arts Council Collection are delighted to be working with the Art Fund again this year to develop a series of joint events designed to provide an informal forum for curators from around the country to meet and network.

There are six Curators’ Day events organised every year, each with a special focus, either looking at particular areas of professional practice or visiting important exhibitions with talks from artists, curators and specialists on a range of topics.

Creating exhibitions and collection displays that are relevant to today’s audiences is something most museums and galleries strive to achieve. With this in mind, for this Curators’ Day we explore the National Partners Programme exhibition Women Power Protest at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The show commemorates the centenary of women gaining the right to vote, and uses women’s suffrage as a starting point to trace some of the legacies of protests against inequality. It includes artists such as Christine Borland, Zarina Bhimji, Mary Kelly, Susan Hiller, Tania Kovats, Rose Wylie, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Sonia Boyce, as well as earlier work relating to the history of suffrage.

The day will begin with a tour of the exhibition led by Birmingham curator Emalee Beddoes-Davis, followed by a talk about the representation of women artists and gender balance in public collections by Eliza Gluckman (co-founder of A Woman’s Place and until recently curator at the New Hall collection of women’s art in Cambridge). There will also be presentations by exhibiting artist Michelle Williams Gamaker, whose work House of Women was recently acquired by the Arts Council Collection, and by Natalie Rudd, Senior Curator, Arts Council Collection, who will introduce a forthcoming Arts Council Collection initiative investigating our holdings of sculpture by women.

Our Curators’ Days are free, however places are limited and priority will be given to curators or those working with Collections in museums, galleries and historic buildings in the UK.

Please note: this year you can only register interest for one place per email address, per event.

Please click here for more information

Location

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery