Developing Amgueddfa Cymru's contemporary art collection as a resource for research and community-led display

This proposal aims to enhance research capability at Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales to support the delivery of a national contemporary art collection for Wales. We aim to deliver the collection via a distributed model where artworks and other objects are displayed in venues across Wales, making them accessible to new audiences who would not usually travel to our sites in Cardiff. A second important strand of this work is a major digitization project of our contemporary art collection. Digitisation aims both to make the collections more accessible to the public and to provide a valuable resource for contemporary art research within Wales and internationally. In order to deliver the national contemporary art collection for Wales we need to:
A. Increase our capacity to conduct research on the materiality of our collections so that we can confidently share them physically with communities across Wales
B. Increase our capacity for digitisation of our collections including textiles, fashion, and furniture to make them more accessible for researchers and the public
Delivering the national contemporary art collection for Wales will both require research on our collections to make them more accessible to new audiences and facilitate new research on parts of our collection that have historically been difficult to access. In supporting the delivery of this important programme of work the equipment requested here will help us to;
1. Collaborate with communities across Wales to develop exhibitions and programmes of activity in their localities, in some areas for the first time
2. Improve access to visual art which has a strong appeal to younger and more diverse audiences
3. Raise the profile of contemporary art collections in Wales with national and international audiences.