According to a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announcement, ten new works from Yorkshire and the Humber and the East of England have been acquired for the Government Art Collection as part of the 2025-26 Art X-UK round. The pieces are due to appear in government buildings in the UK and in British embassies and ambassadors' residences overseas, with named posts including Washington DC, Ankara, Abu Dhabi and Paris. For a policy audience, the significance goes beyond exhibition. The Government Art Collection sits within the state's official estate, so acquisition places regional contemporary art in spaces used for diplomacy, ministerial meetings and public representation.
DCMS launched Art X-UK in 2022 after a 2020-21 pilot, using the Government Art Collection, which sits within the department, as the delivery vehicle for a five-year acquisitions programme. The department said the aim was to ensure the collection reflected artists from across the UK while also promoting the country's creative sector through displays used in more than 125 countries. Since the start of the programme, more than 170 works by 80 contemporary visual artists have been added to the collection. The 2025-26 acquisitions are the fourth instalment, following earlier rounds covering Wales and the Midlands, Scotland and the North East, and Northern Ireland and the North West.
The selection model is equally important. In 2025-26 the Government Art Collection worked with the Yorkshire and Humber Visual Art Network and CVAN East, each of which convened artists and curators to propose a regional shortlist for the collection team to research. That approach gives regional bodies a formal role in shaping a national collection, rather than leaving judgement to central institutions alone. CVAN England's national director, Paula Orrell, presented the programme as evidence that regional expertise matters as devolution changes how culture is recognised and invested in. In plain terms, the scheme relies on place-based knowledge to identify artists, explain local context and connect regional practice to national cultural policy.
The Yorkshire acquisitions carry clear social and historical themes. Grace Clifford's practice uses everyday objects and industrial materials to test assumptions about working-class communities, family history and local heritage; the department's announcement singled out the artist's bronze pub stool. Kedisha Coakley's work, including Collection 15 and I AM HERE: Breadfruit II, examines colonialism, botany, extraction and Black British identity, placing questions of historical memory inside a national collection. Sam Metz was presented by regional partners as part of a Yorkshire support structure that has backed disabled artists and experimental drawing, while Karanjit Panesar was also selected for acquisition. Taken together, the Yorkshire group points to a programme willing to place class, labour, disability and contested history inside official national settings.
The East of England selections widen that brief. Issam Kourbaj, a Syrian-born artist based in Cambridge since 1990, explores migration, memory and displacement through layered materials and found objects; the acquired work Water Awash With Memory was described as drawing on crossings, exile and the traces people carry from home. Claire Cansick's practice brings Norfolk's coastal setting, working-class experience and concern for the natural world into view, while Amartey Golding linked his work to eastern England's histories of resistance and social reform. Sikelela Owen was also included in the regional cohort. The result is a regional picture that is not limited to heritage promotion. It places migration, race, environment and political memory alongside place-based identity.
Ministers framed the acquisitions as both regional recognition and international promotion. Arts Minister Ruth Mackenzie said the scheme was designed to champion artists from every part of the country and help them gain national and overseas visibility. That ministerial language matters because it sets out a clear public purpose for acquisition: representation inside the collection is being tied to the external projection of the UK's creative identity. There is also a practical gain for artists. Entry into the Government Art Collection can place work before diplomats, officials, visitors and business audiences in high-profile settings, giving public acquisition a reach that differs from a conventional gallery display. In policy terms, Art X-UK uses collecting not simply as preservation, but as a form of cultural diplomacy.
The scheme's chronology shows how ministers are trying to build a UK-wide narrative through staged regional rounds. The first year brought in more than 30 works from Wales and the Midlands; 2023-24 added more than 20 works from Scotland and the North East; 2024-25 covered Northern Ireland and the North West. The final 2026-27 round is scheduled to focus on the South East and South West. What emerges is a straightforward model for national identity in cultural policy. The Government Art Collection remains a central institution, but it is being reshaped through regional nomination, regional knowledge and work that reflects local histories with national and international relevance. For civil servants and arts bodies alike, that is the clearest message in the latest Art X-UK round.