Since its launch in 2017, The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund has acquired 48 works of art for Manchester Art Gallery’s permanent collection — a collection that belongs to the people of Manchester. It is now one of the largest and fastest-growing philanthropic acquisition funds in the UK.

It brings together a diverse group of individuals — from lawyers, academics and property developers to entrepreneurs in fashion, media and tech — united by a love of Manchester’s cultural life, a commitment to supporting emerging artists, and a belief that outstanding art should be accessible to everyone.

2025 TMC Art Fund Members

Why join The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund?

Support from The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund enables Manchester Art Gallery to collect with vision and purpose, as it has done for over 200 years, continuing the legacy of the city’s Victorian benefactors. At a time when Manchester is once again generating and attracting unprecedented wealth, the fund is helping to rekindle a tradition of cultural philanthropy for a new generation. Members’ names are linked in perpetuity to the works acquired — a lasting contribution to the city’s story.

Membership of The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund offers you the chance to make a lasting impact on the gallery’s collection while joining a community of like-minded patrons who share a passion for art and for Manchester. Members also enjoy a programme of exclusive benefits, including VIP invitations to Manchester Art Fair, a private reception to see newly acquired works unveiled, a special lunch at the gallery to view the collection on display, and access to social events throughout the year.

TMC Art Fund News

Manchester Art Gallery is dedicated to making sure that the collection we hold in trust for the people of Manchester remains representative and relevant. To do this, we rely on the generosity of gifts, bequests, trusts and foundations for the purchase of artworks to expand our collection. MCAF is unique in the immediacy and freedom it gives us as an organisation to make decisions about what to purchase, allowing us to prioritise works that build areas of our collection that are currently underdeveloped; namely works by women, global majority, LGBT+ and emerging artists. The artworks purchased over the life of the fund so far, have helped shape our contemporary art collection in a way that both pays homage to 200 years of institutional collections, but also looks forward to what future generations of residents and visitors in Manchester will want their civic art collection to be.

Dr. Inbal Livne
Senior Creative Lead |  Manchester Art Gallery

Building on Manchester Art Gallery’s incredible collection
Thom Hetherington, Founder, The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund

The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund is delighted to announce that it raised a record-breaking £41,000 for Manchester Art Gallery’s curators to select works from the 2025 art fair, adding to their public collection which spans two centuries.

The fund forms a vital part of Manchester Art Gallery’s acquisitions programme. It has huge significance for the artists whose works are collected and the galleries who represent them, and the fact that those artists are on show at The Manchester Contemporary art fair itself helps to develop new audiences of collectors.

But more than that. The Manchester Contemporary Art Fund offers the chance for a new generation of successful Mancunians, diverse in demographics but united by their wish to shape their city for the better, to echo the Victorian industrialists who created so many of the great Northern arts institutions and collections.

For many, we are their first opportunity to leave their mark on Manchester’s cultural ecology, but I have no doubt that we will not be their last. We see the fund as a vital gateway to arts patronage and cultural philanthropy in that regard, and it is one which is growing every year.

TMC Art Fund Purchases 2017-2025

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2020

Grayson PerryIn 2020, the TMC Art Fund sponsored Grayson’s Art Club exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. The exhibition featured works selected by artist Grayson Perry during Grayson’s Art Club, the popular Channel 4 TV series. All the works on show were very personal visual representations of lockdown, made by the public, well-known artists and celebrities.

Thom Hetherington, CEO of The Manchester Contemporary, said, “Although the fund was initially established to acquire works for public institutions these were unprecedented times, so we remained open to new opportunities which remained true to our ethos of supporting artists and galleries, and ensuring people in the North had access to world class contemporary art."

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