Cultural Management: Cunningham Dax Collection Internship
Congratulations to MA Curatorship students Anna Olah and Zoe Evershed, who have just started their scholarship supported internship with the Cunningham Dax Collection on 1 August 2007.
The Cunningham Dax Collection is a unique world-renowned collection of more than 12,000 works by people who have experienced mental illness and/or trauma. The Collection, amassed over a 60 year period, consists of works on paper, paintings, ceramics & textiles. The collections mission is to promote widely a greater understanding of the experience of mental illness and trauma through the preservation and ethical presentation of these unique works.
The Collection has an active acquisition, cataloguing and conservation rogram to support its busy innovative on-site and touring exhibition schedule. The Collection is a world-leader in its approach to these complex works. Instead of viewing the works exclusively as either art or clinical material, the Collection has developed a multi-dimensional approach that embraces the many different complexities surrounding works made by people with an experience of mental illness. The Collection takes seriously the ethical issues that arise from the acquisition and presentation of these works and, in view of this; an ethics committee consisting of ethicists and experts from various disciplines advises it.
The Cunningham Dax Collection is committed to training curatorial students who wish to gain experience in working in the field of art and mental health, an area that has traditionally been perceived as marginal or non-mainstream art. As part of this commitment, the Collection has recently developed a scholarship program for art curatorial/museum studies students.