Will Cooper
Details
Name
Will Cooper
Job title
Director at The Wyllieum
About
Will Cooper is the director of The Wyllieum, a centre for the art, ideas, and legacy of pioneering Scottish artist George Wyllie. Prior to this, he developed and implemented a new strategic directions for, first Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, and more recently for Bath’s Holburne Museum. This saw contemporary art become a core strand of the Holburne’s otherwise historical offer. Will worked in close collaboration with colleagues from the National Gallery to deliver Nalini Malani’s My Reality is Different, the inaugural National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship.
With a practice rooted in care and compassion, Will makes exhibitions about love. Nicolas Pope’s Portraits of Marriage, for example, saw the display of 14 sculptural portraits of Nicolas and his late wife Janet in an exhibition chronicling their lifetime together. His long standing friendship with Alberta Whittle led to her Holburne exhibition Dipping below a waxing moon, the dance claims us for release, which unpacked the museum’s colonial legacies with empathy and understanding. Will conceived and curated My Kid Could’ve Done That! with his daughter Astrid. The show featured newly commissioned works by 17 artists and their young children each exploring the endlessness of our parental love.
At GoMA Will delivered exhibitions including; Jack Knox: Concrete Block, Margaret Tait: Stalking the Image, and Aaron Angell’s solo show. He led on major acquisitions by artists including Sharon Hayes, Hal Fischer, Walter Price, Charlotte Prodger, and Sarah Forrest. Prior roles at Tate, BALTIC, Whitechapel Gallery and in the commercial sector.
Will regularly lectures at academic institutions across the UK, has sat on award panels and prize juries, he has written and edited numerous publications, journals, and magazines. Will holds a BA in The History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and an MA in Curatorial Practice from Whitechapel Gallery & London Metropolitan University.
Between 2018 and 2019 Will was a board member at Baltic Street Adventure Playground, Dalmarnock.
Region
Glasgow