The Artists’ Research Centre (ARC) is an international curatorial studio and consultancy. We offer an innovative collaborative curatorial consultancy supporting universities, collections, foundations and galleries develop and deliver unique exhibtions, public programmes, reseach projects and organisational developenment.
Our research expertise centres on interdisciplinary, practice based resarch with a particular focus on histories of performance, socially engaged practices and their evolution in contemporary society.
If you’re looking for support developing your programmes, thinking about new ways to work with artists or engage with audiences we’re here to work with you closely, to focus your ideas and build practical frameworks that will achieve your aims with more than 25 years of experience in the cultural sector and a international network of experts.
Our partners understand the value of objective, informed advice, fresh creative persectives and a genuniely collaborative approach. Across these pages you can explore our work and discover how we can work together.
ARC was founded by Ben Roberts in 2016, his curatorial practice uses exhibition-making, residencies and publications as frameworks to examine questions of identity, politics, history and the conditions through which art is produced and encountered.
Foregrounding experimental and interdisciplinary forms of artistic practice, Roberts cultivates sustained dialogues between artists, researchers and institutions to generate spaces for critical exchange, social participation. He has held senior roles at Tate, Modern Art Oxford, Camden Arts Centre and The Brown Mountain School of Performing Arts. He was Chair of Cubitt Artists in London (2017-22) and holds an MA in European Cultural Policy and Art History from the University of Warwick.
- ARC is 10 - Join us!
In 2027 ARC is 10! We will be launching a new programme of fellowships, residencies and commissions.
We’re also working on a new publication which will bring together a decade of collaboration, artists’ projects and research
We’re looking for new collaborators, partners and artists to join us...if you have an idea in development, a research plan or an ambitious new project get in touch, we’d love to hear fromy you...
- SYMPOSIUM CALL FOR PAPERS
In April 2027 ARC is partnering with Bath Spa University to deliver a landmark symposium examining artists’ research as a framework for building collaborations, new knowledge and audiences between creative practitioners, museums and academic centres. The symposium asks how curators are engaging with these ways of working to imagine wasy to engage with contemporary art and resarch.
Yorkshire Contemporary
Focal Point Gallery
IKON Gallery
Towner Eastbourne
Delfina Foundation
Institutio Tomie Ohtake
Tramway Glasgow
John Hansard Gallery
The Approach Gallery
Brighton Festival
Lehmann Maupin NYC
Thomas Dane Gallery
Landsec Development
Omni Colour
Royal College of Art
Essex University
Leeds University
Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London Birmingham City University
Bath Spa University
Hunterian Museum Glasgow
Arts Council England,
Henry Moore Foundation
Art Fund
Brighton and Hove City Council
Brazilian Embassy London