Artists’ Legacies in the Museum Toolkit launch
- 9 October 2023, 9am
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This blog post presents a summary of content produced as part of the Art360 Foundation Programme (2014 to 2025). It is shared here with the intention of preserving and extending access to the important learnings from this programme of work.
This digital toolkit aims to increase visibility for nuanced legacies of Black British Artists in UK institutions. It intends to begin empowering museum staff to enact transformative change within their institutions. The Toolkit website states:
“The toolkit addresses important questions, such as who can take responsibility for different aspects of an artists’ archive and legacy, how an artists’ legacy can be embedded within, and embraced by, a public institution, and what actions are needed to preserve the legacies of Black British Artists across different regions of the UK. It explores key themes and concepts through sections on: Access, Archiving as Practice, Transparency, Trust and Relationship building, Care, Private vs Public, and Capacity Building, all of which have emerged from the Artists’ Legacies in the Museum (ALitM) project.
This toolkit is intended for individuals working in museums and galleries, particularly senior team members and those responsible for public programmes, curation, acquisitions, and equity, diversity and inclusion policies. It also aims to support artists, estates, curators, researchers, archivists, funders, and policymakers. The toolkit is organised into six main sections, each offering insights, provocations, and reflective exercises to encourage discussion, action, and the integration of Black British Artists' legacies into institutional practices.
By engaging with this toolkit, institutions and individuals can gain a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding the preservation and representation of Black British Artists' legacies, and work towards creating more inclusive and equitable spaces within the UK arts sector.”
Artists’ Legacies in the Museum ran in collaboration with the International Curators Forum, engaging independent curators and museum curatorial teams with the archives of Vanley Burke, Donald Rodney and Maud Sulter, to help recalibrate how museums collect, share and preserve art and cultural heritage for the present and future.
Museum participants took part in three study days delivered by independent curators, central to the proposed new art ecology, with learnings from the project shared through short films, documentation and a toolkit on preserving the legacies of Black British Artists in museum and non-institutional contexts.
