The Hunterian

The Hunterian is one of ten museums to receive funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund.

The Hunterian at the University of Glasgow was awarded £90,000 in the December 2021 round of funding for the project ‘Power in this Place: Unfinished Conversations’.

The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund is run by the Museums Association, funding projects that develop collections to achieve social impact. Two rounds of funding were available in 2021 in response to the changing needs of museums during the pandemic.

‘Power in this Place’ is a new three year project which will enable The Hunterian to work with communities and across its collections to embed anti-racist, participatory approaches and create opportunities for engagement, debate and reflection.

It will build on The Hunterian’s sector-leading ‘Curating Discomfort’ project, due to finish in April 2021.

As an organisation The Hunterian is committed to becoming a more relevant and meaningful place for more diverse audiences and has started to engage in an active process of institutional ‘discomfort’, using its collections to address Scotland’s historical relationships and impact around the globe.

‘Power in this Place’ will leverage the research strengths of The Hunterian collections to connect with communities in a unique way that not only transforms the collections stories but also its relationships with community partners.

Over the next three years, The Hunterian will collaborate with the multi-ethnic society in Glasgow and beyond to deliver public engagement that will advance understanding of the shared history and impact colonialism and migration have on the present day.

A mix of oral history, art and objects from The Hunterian collections will tell stories that build social, educational and economic capacity in communities, ensuring that social capital is returned, that they feel museums are relevant and that they have a stake in their purpose.

The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund is run by the Museums Association, funding projects that develop collections to achieve social impact. Since its launch in 2011, it has awarded 162 projects with grants totaling over £11 million. 

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Notes to Editors

The Hunterian

The oldest public museum in Scotland, with collections spanning arts, sciences and humanities, The Hunterian is at the forefront of university museums around the world. Since it opened at the University of Glasgow in 1807 The Hunterian has been an invaluable academic and community resource. Recognising that it has also been shaped by systematic exclusions and inequalities, The Hunterian is committed to becoming a more meaningful place for more diverse audiences.

As a university gallery and museum, The Hunterian creates space for intellectual inquiry and a process of learning and experimentation. The Hunterian collection’s Enlightenment history created a repository of knowledge that materialises the problematic history of Western modernity and its fundamentally colonial and capitalist underpinnings. Taking this as point of departure and critical reflection, The Hunterian’s contemporary art programme seeks to interrogate the institution’s genealogy, and to introduce different perspectives into its spaces. Working with a wide range of artists on acquisitions, commissions, exhibitions and events, our contemporary art programme allows The Hunterian to find new ways of using our historic collections to understand the contemporary world.

glasgow.ac.uk/hunterian
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First published: 10 January 2022