bio | Alistair Hudson was appointed director of the Whitworth and Manchester Art Galleries in 2018. Here he has developed a new vision and mission-based public usership and the history of these institutions and their social imperative. Key projects include School of Integration with Tania Bruguera, What Kind of City? with Suzanne Lacy, the redevelopment of Platt Hall as a non-exhibitionary museum and Economics the Blockbuster. From 2014 to 2018 he was director of MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, where he implemented a vision based on the concept of the Useful Museum, as an institution dedicated to the promotion of art as a tool for education and social change. For the preceding ten years he was deputy director of Grizedale Arts in Coniston in the Lake District, which gained critical acclaim for its radical approaches to working with artists and communities, based on the idea of art as a social process not just an object of contemplation. He was educated at Goldsmiths’ College from 1988 to 1991 and has previously worked at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery London (1994–2000) and the Government Art Collection (2000–04) where, as projects curator, he devised a public art strategy for the new Home Office building with Liam Gillick. He is co-director of the Asociación de Arte Útil with Tania Bruguera – an expansive international project and online archive.
