I was pleased to see the intergenerational conversations between black British artists in G2 (Black British Culture special, 25 June) on racism in the arts. But I was surprised that no mention was made of the visual arts. No black or ethnic minority person has run a major art institution in this country. The first big retrospective exhibition of a black British artist at the Tate – Frank Bowling – only took place last year. Sonia Boyce will be the first black British female artist to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2022, 113 years after it was established.
The Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) was set up in 1994 to address the absence of BME artists from public museums and galleries, despite the fact that in the 1990s, as today, the UK was witnessing a flowering of young artists, film-makers and intellectuals coming up in the wake of earlier generations of visual artists such as Aubrey Williams, Althea McNish and Kim Lim. Almost three decades later, a significant part of the British population cannot see themselves represented by the institutions they fund. In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, we must ask: who owns our art institutions and how should they represent us?
Gilane Tawadros
Chair, Stuart Hall Foundation; founding director, Iniva
