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Sharing expertise, research and ideas on British art

The British Art Network (BAN) promotes curatorial research, practice and theory in the field of British art. Our members include curators, academics, artist-researchers, conservators, producers and programmers at all stages of their professional lives.

All are actively engaged in caring for, developing and presenting British art, whether in museums, galleries, heritage settings or art spaces, in published form or in educational settings, across the UK and beyond.

Homepage collage of artworks

Our Members

BAN provides a place for sharing expertise, helps forge connections, and creates time and space for critical exchange and debate. Our activities are defined by our membership and reflect a broad range of expertise, experience and viewpoints.

At the heart of everything we do there is a collective commitment to expanding definitions of British art, acknowledging complex historical truths and their present-day resonances, and communicating the continuing public value of British art collections and curatorial expertise around the UK.

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portrait photo of Will in a strongly coloured red jacket and blue shirt, head and shoulders with a plain grey background portrait image of Martin Myrone talking head and shoulders portrait of David, outside, trees behind, looking upwards beyond camera A photograph of Kate Nicholls standing in front of a fence, looking directly into camera. portrait image of Jessie Petheram Eliza is in front of a concrete wall. headshot of Simon, slight smile and look of concentration, looking square at camera, plan backdrop portrait head and shoulders photo of Ysanne, smiling slightly, standing against a wall - light filtered through screen falling onto wall behind half length portrait photo of Alex in outdoor clothes, standing on beach

Highlights

2012/2022: A Decade of British Art Curating, November 2022

This year’s conference will reflect on a decade of changing ideas about British art and identity, curatorial practice, inclusion and representation, and the place of collections and institutions.

Seminars

BAN supports a range of seminars through annual bursaries and collaboration with other organisations. We are pleased to announce that this year, the British Art Network will be supporting 15 new seminars covering a wide range of curatorial topics.

BAN/YCBA Curatorial Forum

British Art Network (BAN) and the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and the have joined forces to create an exciting new opportunity for 2022. The Curatorial Forum will bring together a select group of up to 12 participants from a range of backgrounds and working contexts, and from all career stages, drawn from the UK, US and beyond.

Upcoming Events

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Enlightened Women: British Women Artists in the 18th Century, 9 September 2022

September 9th, 2022

A collaborative curatorial workshop on curating eighteenth-century women artists in British and Australian collections.

The Artist Interview in Britain, 9 September 2022

September 9th, 2022

This seminar aims to create a network of historians, curators, artists and critics who are interested in discussing methodological and ethical questions about interviews, as well as uncovering and mapping British interview collections.

Art, Memory and Place, September 2022

September 14th, 2022

This event is one in a series of 15 BAN supported seminars for 2022. Organised by Ellie Porter, Art360 Foundation More information coming soon.

Current Research Groups

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Black British Art
Image of Siobhan McLaughlin's mixed material depiction of Landscape in Lockdown

British Landscapes
Image of Donald Rodney's sketch: First of England 1983 . A sketch of a man and woman on a rough crossing is presented next to the original victorian painted depiction.

Race, Empire and the Pre-Raphaelites
An artwork showing a protest scene with people holding placards

Art and the Women’s Movement in the UK 1970–1988
Still image from Seo Hye Lee’s artist film titled [sound of subtitles]. The image is split into three identical film frames. Different subtitles are overlaid on each frame. The subtitle on the left reads ‘shaping’, the subtitle on the middle frame reads 'sound of emptiness in the room’, the subtitle on the right reads 'mysterious string music'. In each individual frame, there is a close up of a pair of hands moulding a rotating brown clay clod on the potter’s wheel. All subtitles are white and inside square brackets.

The Art of Captioning
Image of Wolfgang's Tillmans' Installation at Walker Art Gallery in 2010. A statue of a topless man holding a scythe facing away from camera, and a large grainy photograph of another man.

Queer British Art
Image of Mary McIntyre's: Aura of Crisis 1998. The photograph shows a ring of empty leather backed chairs arranged in an empty hall.

Northern Irish Art
An Image of Alberta Whittle's: RESET 2020

The Re-Action of Black Performance
Image of Mark Leckey's: Parade, 2003. A man is silhouetted against a larger photograph of a woman's face.

Working Class British Art
a visibly digitally generated image resembling a dense forest in emphatic colours, the dense tree trunks a deep brown-purple, bright green waves like grass on the ground. In the midst of this, in a middle distance, a female figure in a blue dress wearing a silvered visor, which obscures their face.

British Digital Art
a boldly designed image of two figures embracing, one pale yellow apparently seated and female, the other standing and pale green, in an burnt orange setting

Disability in British Art

British Art UnCanon

A virtual collection of artworks selected by BAN Members

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