Gavin Jantjes is right to say that many British art institutions deployed kneejerk/stopgap responses in retrospective collecting (UK galleries rushed to diversify art after Black Lives Matter, artist says, 4 June). However, many provincial galleries like Bradford, Rochdale, Coventry and Birmingham were ahead of the game in either collecting or exhibiting. It was indeed the metropolitan Tate Gallery and the British Museum that failed to take an interest, as did the V&A until, thanks to a head of department willing to trust my judgment, I was allowed to start exploring – from the very late 1980s up to the early 2000s – this field.
The acquisitions were prints at first, subsequently some paintings and drawings too – beginning with Tony Phillips and adding many, including Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Chris Ofili, Hew Locke, Tam Joseph, Faisal Abdu’Allah, Frank Bowling and Aubrey Williams. I am the first to acknowledge that the V&A was late to the table, but we did acquire far more works than the British Museum or the Tate.
