In partnership with the Transforming Collections project and using its extensive collection of works from public collections, Art UK is showcasing project researchers' case studies and ongoing work through a series of Curations and Stories, highlighting project research and the artists, artworks and exhibitions that form their focus, to reach wider audiences.
Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage is a three-year project led by Dr susan pui san lok, UAL Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the Decolonising Arts Institute. Running from November 2021 to January 2025, the work is being carried out by an interdisciplinary team of colleagues from UAL Decolonising Arts Institute and UAL Creative Computing Institute, working closely with Tate and a further 15 national and international collection and archive partners.
Transforming Collections discovery projects
Left to right: Claudette Johnson, 'Seated Figure', 2017, courtesy of Arts Council Collection; iniva archive; Daphne Oram Collection visualization (detail), 2012 
The project is one of five 'Discovery Projects' and part of the five-year Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme. Funded by UKRI's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Towards a National Collection is supporting research that seeks to address the barriers that exist within and between the UK's cultural heritage collections, with the aim of opening them up to new research opportunities and encouraging the public to explore them in new ways.
The Transforming Collections project is underpinned by the belief that a 'national collection' cannot be imagined without addressing structural inequalities and systemic biases in the arts. It sets out to engage with the contentious histories imbued in collection objects and their interpretative material and collection data, to reveal the sometimes uncomfortable stories that collections tell.
Explore content by Transforming Collections project researchers
'A Tall Order!' Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s (Touchstones Rochdale, 4 February – 6 May 2023) by Alice Correia
Gurminder Sikand: interpreting the work of a South-Asian diaspora artist by Alice Correia
Hamad Butt and art in Britain at the end of a century by Andrew Cummings
Spotlight on: David Medalla (1938–2020) by Andrew Cummings
Misrepresenting orientalism? Singer Sargent's Wertheimer portraits by Tehmina Goskar
'The more things change…' (Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 29 April – 9 July 2023) by Ian Sergeant