LONDON.-Ten UK museums and galleries have been selected to go forward to round two of The Art Fund's new international contemporary collecting scheme, Art Fund International. The Art Fund announced it was committing £5 million to a new initiative aimed at developing the collections of international contemporary art in UK regional museums and galleries in April this year.

A total of twenty-nine museums in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland responded to the call for entries.

Applicants were asked to set out how they would use the money to form a collection of international contemporary art, and establish a partnership with at least one other non-collecting organisation like a commissioning agency or exhibition space.

The ten selected partnerships that will go through to the next round are:

Marischal Museum, Aberdeen in partnership with Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and Pier Arts Centre
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall in partnership with Ikon
Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives in partnership with Arnolfini
University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art in partnership with firstsite:newsite and El Museo de Barrio, New York
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne in partnership with Photoworks, Brighton Photo Biennial and Artsway
Falmouth Art Gallery in partnership with The Eden Project, The October Gallery, The Penrose Collection and other supporting institutions
Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow in partnership with The Common Guild
mima (Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art) in partnership with The Drawing Centre, New York and a number of other institutions
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery in partnership with EASTinternational, Norwich School of Art and Design
Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston in partnership with Sandbox (UCLan)
The final list of museums and their proposed collecting areas will be announced in November 2007.