Art Fund at Collect
James Beighton from mima, behind bracelet by Giovanni Corvaja
Five lucky museums shared the £75,000 Art Fund Collect pot to buy a piece of contemporary craft for their collections during Collect
The two institutions to win the biggest award were Aberdeen Art Gallery (£26,550) and mima (£29,000), who both used the money to buy gold jewellery made in Italy. Aberdeen Art Gallery’s necklace was made by British-born Jacqueline Ryan who lives in Umbria, while mima’s bracelet was made by the Italian Giovanni Corvaja. Aberdeen’s curator Kate Gillespie says: ‘Although we have an international collection, we don’t have any examples of the Padua school of goldsmithing and we really wanted an example of a piece from that area as it’s such an important school with a huge tradition of producing master goldsmiths’. Ryan’s work also fits nicely with Aberdeen’s historic collections as it ties in with the museum’s collection of gold and enamel jewellery by locally born Arts and Crafts designer James Cromar Watts. ‘Jacqueline’s necklace is in gold and enamel and it shows contemporary developments in the technique so it makes a good historic-contemporary comparison’, Gillespie explains.
The three other winning museums were the V&A, who bought glass by Niyoko Ikuta, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum of Wales, who got Red Stripe by glass artist Rachel Woodman, and Bilston Craft Gallery who chose a hand-forged steel sculpture by Junko Mori.
