Folk Art and the Art Museum
September 2009
Tate has been successful in securing Research Networking funding of £18,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council which will bring together a range of international scholars from the fields of art history, museology and anthropology to identify the key research areas in the under-worked field of British Folk Art. In a series of four exploratory seminars, the researchers will discuss how folk art stands in relation to the established narratives of art history and explore the emergence of folk art as a theme in modern and contemporary practice.
These networking events will give Tate curators a clearer sense of the future role of folk art within the museum's collections and offer insights into the particular challenges that this material represents in relation to classification, presentation and exhibition in our gallery spaces and online. The principal investigator will be Dr Martin Myrone, who developed and led the successful bid in partnership with collection and learning curators at The American Museum in Britain and at Compton Verney, and with support from the Development and Research Departments at Tate. The seminar sequence, which will take place at Tate, Claverton Manor (Bath) and Compton Verney, will start in April 2010. The outcomes will appear in a future issue of our online research journal, Tate Papers.
Nigel Llewellyn, Head of Research
