Expanding Horizons
Will you donate to support the people who enrich our museums?
The people who work in the UK’s museums and galleries do brilliant work caring for our public collections, delivering world-class exhibitions and inspiring visitors.
But, due to increasing financial pressures, they face mounting obstacles to their work and a lack of opportunities for career development.
Two years ago, half of museum directors were concerned about funding shortfalls. That figure is now two thirds.
This has an impact, with understaffing now a key barrier to growing and sharing collections. What’s more, we know that only 6% of museum staff are from Global Majority backgrounds. But an empowered and diverse workforce is what museums need to keep delivering engaging and relevant programming.
Watch this short film, where we spoke to some curators who’ve recently benefitted from Art Fund support and learn more about the range of opportunities our funding can unlock.
We want to invest in the curators and museum professionals who bring museums to life
In 2025 our goal is to commit at least £700,000 to kickstart a bold new investment in projects and opportunities that support a diverse and skilled museum workforce, enabling them to tell even more compelling stories for everyone to enjoy.
Can you help us expand their horizons?
What we’ll do with your support
Your donation will help us do three important things:
Fund new opportunities
We’ll introduce a new funding programme, Empowering Curators, which will invest in career-building opportunities for museum professionals from diverse backgrounds.
Boost learning and development
To care for collections and produce exhibitions, curators need to be able to network and learn from their peers. With your support, we can provide bursaries to help them travel for research, connect with each other and gain new skills.
Invest in expertise and collaboration
At a time when museums face a range of challenges, we’ll help their staff to come together and collaborate. This will help everyone from curators and programmers to learning teams to share their experiences and find new ways forward together.
The difference your support makes
We’re already doing the work to support museum professionals. Help us do more of it.
Take curators, who are central to making museums the places we love to visit. That’s why we provide bursaries to help curators take part in London Gallery Weekend, the largest event of its kind in the world. Since 2016, we've also helped curators to attend a two-day programme of talks, tours and workshops at Frieze Masters.
Attending an event in London can be expensive, but with our support curators from across the UK can connect with their peers and make crucial contacts.
The bursary provided me with a much-needed opportunity to see new work and connect with galleries, gallerists and organisations directly.
We also fund projects that create exciting opportunities for curators from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds. Recently, the New Art Gallery Walsall teamed up with GRAIN Projects to create REFLECTOR, a programme offering mentoring for 20 early-career curators, artists and photographers, resulting in an exhibition at the gallery this autumn.
And we want to go further. Our upcoming funding programme, Empowering Curators, will help create new posts and support existing roles for curators from diverse backgrounds – helping museum teams to better reflect society today.
The barriers – race, gender, class – that hinder myself and so many other people from getting into the field; I think this programme has really levelled the playing field for us.
Can you help us fund more opportunities like these?
We’re already working hard to support the brilliant people who make our museums. But to go further we need your help.
By donating to this appeal, you’ll be helping to fund more opportunities for curators and museum professionals – so that they can keep telling the stories that inspire and connect us.
Anything you can give, big or small, will make a difference.
Thank you.
We are a charity dedicated to helping museums and galleries across the UK.