“Bristol Museum and Art Gallery presents the fruits of an ambitious Art Fund scheme to inject international contemporary art into public collections. In 2007, the £5 million Art Fund International project awarded substantial grants to five collections in the UK. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, in partnership with Arnolfini, for its part has acquired works that reflect the area’s history as a port and a site of global transaction. Julie Finch, head of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, said of the project: ‘This has been an opportunity to develop our art collections in a totally new direction, engaging with international art through contemporary media such as video and installation. We intend for No Borders and future exhibitions in the Global to Local series to draw visitors to Bristol to see these acquisitions by high profile artists.’ (Art Fund)
“it might be interesting, and less exotic, if the show was framed in a way that more directly tackled subjects such as why Britain can afford to buy international work for the edification of its populace, whereas Egypt, for example, cannot, and how that fact might relate to how Britain was able to buy Ancient Egyptian artifacts that Egypt could not hold on to.” (Jennifer Evans in Egypt Independent)
