Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage was a 3-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 was 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 14 national and international collections and archives.
Transforming Collections was 1 of 5 ‘Discovery Projects’ and part of the 5-year Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme. Funded by UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, Towards a National Collection sought 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.
Summary
Transforming Collections was underpinned by the belief that a ‘national collection’ cannot be imagined without addressing structural inequalities and systemic biases in the arts. Acknowledging the contentious histories imbued in collection objects and their associated interpretations and data, the project combined critical art historical and museological research with participatory interactive machine learning design – to surface the sometimes uncomfortable stories that collections tell, while also re-evaluating artists and artworks, and opening up new interpretative frames and ‘potential histories’ (Azoulay, 2019).
Project outputs so far include an interactive ML tool; critical case studies in the form of conference papers, journal articles and book chapters; a TaNC programme Ethics as Practice report, the partial digitisation of iniva’s artists archive towards a unique public research resource; and a special issue of Tate Papers (February 2025).
Read more Stories on the Transforming Collections research further down on this page.
Read more on the project outputs below.
Project Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigators
- Professor Sonia Boyce
- Professor Rebecca Fiebrink
- Professor Mick Grierson
- Dr Anjalie Dalal-Clayton
- Dr Peaks Krafft
- Dr Athanasios Velios
- Christopher Griffin (Tate)
- Dr Hannah Barton (National Museums Scotland)
- Mark Miller (Tate)
- Liam Darbon (Tate)
- Hilary Knight (Tate)
Researchers
- Dr Tiffany Boyle
- Kit Bower-Morris
- Dr Alice Correia
- Dr Andrew Cummings
- Dr Jon Gillick
- Dr Tehmina Goskar
- Dr Ireti Olowe
- Veera Jussila
- Ananda Rutherford
- Dr Ian Sergeant
- Dr Charlotte Webb
AI Software Development Engineers
- Kathryn Webb
- Polo Sologub
iniva Archivist
- Kaitlene Koranteng
Project and Partnerships Manager
Public Programme Coordinator
Project Administrator
Displays Producer
- Rebecca Gremmo
Project Partners
- Tate
- Arts Council Collection
- Art Fund
- Art UK
- Birmingham Museums Trust
- British Council Collection
- Contemporary Art Society
- iniva (Institute of International Visual Art)
- JISC Archives Hub
- Manchester Art Gallery
- Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
- National Museums Liverpool
- National Museums Scotland
- Van Abbemuseum (NL)
- Wellcome Collection
Museum x Machine x Me
Museum x Machine x Me was a week-long public programme across Tate Modern and Tate Britain marking the culmination of the Transforming Collections project.
Read more about the conference, displays, talks, conversations and performances, along with short texts from project researchers, in the Museum x Machine x Me catalogue.
Download the Museum x Machine x Me catalogue (PDF 3.7MB)
Watch the Museum x Machine x Me Conference here (opens in new window)
Practice Research Residencies
Four artists undertook 15-month practice research residencies, generating insights and understandings of the ways in which the Transforming Collections research can interrogate the nation’s heritage and enable new stories to be told. Their residencies culminated in showcase displays at Tate Modern as part of the Museum x Machine x Me programme.
Art UK Showcase
Transforming Collections collaborated with Art UK to spotlight selected artworks and artists that feature in the project research case studies, who have been historically underrepresented in UK collections. This led to the addition of 10 new artists, 65 new artwork records, and 76 new artwork images.
Discover Art UK’s Transforming Collections stories and curations:
- '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
Transforming Collections, Rewinding Internationalism
In April 2023, the project held an international conference in partnership with Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Transforming Collections, Rewinding Internationalism brought artistic, curatorial, art historical and museological practices into critical dialogue with machine learning development, sharing ongoing research and emerging project findings.
Stories
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Still from aNceStrAL ®EVoCAtiONs, 2024. Erika Tan, 2024. Location and images courtesy of Wellcome Collection.
Museum x Machine x Me: UAL and Tate announce conference exploring art, technology and national collections
Tate and University of the Arts London’s Decolonising Arts and Creative Computing Institutes are excited to announce a two-day conference at Tate Modern on Wednesday 2 October 2024 and Thursday 3 October 2024.
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Stephanie Dinkins, On Love and Data (installation view), Stamps Gallery. Michigan, 2021
Transforming Collections, Rewinding Internationalism at the Van Abbemuseum
The Transforming Collections, Rewinding Internationalism conference aims to bring artistic, curatorial, art historical and museological practices into critical dialogue with machine learning development.
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Organic shape textile design by Anograini Stiady, BA Textile Design, Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London (UAL) Photography by Alys Tomlinson.jpg
Art UK partner with UAL to platform underrepresented artists
University of the Arts London (UAL) has partnered with Art UK to spotlight the work of artists who have been historically underrepresented in UK collections. This groundbreaking collaboration has led to the addition of 10 new artists being featured on the Art UK platform, bringing forward voices and stories that have long been overlooked.