Diversity Grants Elisabeth Murdoch’s Freelands Foundation has announced the irst recipients of its grants to tackle racial inequality in the visual arts. The scheme was announced in June, with an initial £3m dedicated to the initiative and the promise that 15% of all future grants from the Foundation will go towards projects that promote the involvement of black and ethnic minorities in the visual arts. The irst recipients are: Iniva in London, which receives £500,000 over three years for national educational programmes based on the institute’s prestigious Stuart Hall library; New Art Exchange in Nottingham, which also receives £500,000 over three years to develop its ‘Power to Change’ programme of community development; and Create London, which receives £270,000 over two years to support its work with Hackney Council on an education programme centred around the Windrush generation.

Creative Bursaries The Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries programme has announced its tenth set of institutional partners. The scheme provides bursaries covering up to 90% of the salary for new positions which are open to applicants from low socio-economic backgrounds. The 50 partners and the new positions they have created include several from the visual arts sector, such as Artes Mundi (curatorial assistant), Aspex Gallery (assistant curator), Grand Union (curatorial fellow), Museums Shef ield (curatorial assistant – exhibitions), Site Gallery (programme assistant), The NewBridge Project (programme coordinator) and Yorkshire Sculpture Park (programme assistant).

People Skinder Hunda is to be the new director of arts at the British Council, taking over from Kate Arthurs, who le in the summer. Hunda is currently CEO and director of Nottingham’s New Art

Exchange, where he has been based for 12 years, and his new role will include overall responsibility for the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Yesomi Umolu has been appointed director of curatorial affairs and public practice at the Serpentine Galleries where she will oversee the curatorial, interpretation and editorial activities across all programmes. Umolu joins from the University of Chicago, where she not only teaches but is also director and curator of the institution’s Logan Center Exhibitions.

Say What? Facebook is literally horri ic in every way except as a way to learn which Turner Prize nominated artists are crowdfunding puppies. – Tausif Noor The curator inds that 2020 has remained weird to the end. (The PayPal pool he refers to, ‘Operation Puppy Love’, is raising €2,500 so that The Otolith Group’s Anjalika Sagar may buy a puppy for emotional support.)

Carey Young, Income Tax, 2020

Included in subscribers’ copies of this issue is a gi print commissioned by Art Monthly as a thank you to its supporters. For more about Carey Young, read Maria Walsh’s 2019 interview with the ar tist in AM424.

Art Monthly no. 442, December 2020 – January 2021

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