Global Futures Seminar: Stephen Foster Event

 

Running the John Hansard Gallery: Past, Present and Future

Stephen began his career as an artist, teacher and lecturer, and began his curatorial career as the Director of Axiom, an artist-run Gallery space in Cheltenham from 1982 to 1987. Since 1987 he has been the Director of the John Hansard Gallery, which is a part of the University of Southampton. Over this time the Gallery has won a substantial reputation for seminal work with artists and curators, and collaborations with international museums and galleries, as well as groundbreaking access and audience work

Stephen will talk about his time as Director of the John Hansard Gallery and the different pressures in developing a consistent research agenda alongside maintaining the Gallery’s position as a key Arts Council gallery. He will then discuss plans for the new Hansard Gallery building planned to open in Southampton in 2015 and the challenges in keeping the dual role of a research centre and major public gallery in its new context of a city centre site.

He is a Board Member of VAGA, was the founding Chair of the Southampton Cultural Consortium and is a Trustee of its successor, the Southampton Cultural Development Trust. He is a founding member of the Southampton Partnership (Southampton’s LSP) and is also a Trustee of the Flat Time House Institute.