our work with public collections / Acquisitions Scheme

The new Acquisition Scheme
During the last 100 years, the Contemporary Art Society has gifted over 8,000 works to public collections across the UK and Commonwealth countries. The schemes we have offered to acquire and gift works have changed over the years, depending on funds available and the priorities of the time.

The new Acquisition Scheme was initiated in 2008 and has been developed to enable us to work closely with collections curators and other museum and gallery staff as we acquire new works with them for their collections and. There are 63 member museums that hold 90 collections of art and craft.

The programme for Scheme includes:-

- The researching of particular artists
- Studio visits
- Assistance with funding applications where additional funds are required beyond the Contemporary Art Society's contribution.
- The support of interpretation relating to the newly acquired works where this is possible.

Over a four-year cycle we will work with the curators of each of the sixty-four art collections and thirty craft collections to research and purchase works that fit or extend existing collections. Our tendency is to purchase the work of artists at an earlier stage in the development of their practice. This is a consistent emphasis within our overall programme, for example the Annual Award, commission to collect; the aim of the £60,000 Annual Award is to support a museum to commission and collect the work of an artist who is at a stage in their career where they are showing regularly nationally and internationally but do not yet have major works acquired into public collections.