Ane Tonga courtesy Paul Chapman. 

British Council New Zealand and the Pacific is proud to support Ane Tonga, inaugural Curator, Pacific Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, as part of the Glasgow International x British Council International Delegates Programme.

Ane joins eight delegates from around the world for a unique opportunity to experience Glasgow International, engage with peers, and build meaningful relationships towards future collaboration.

About the International Delegates Programme

The delegation is co-hosted between Glasgow International and British Council Visual Arts, taking place Wednesday 3 to Tuesday 9 June 2026.

The programme is designed to develop scope for collaboration between Scotland-based curators, organisations, artists and organisers, and early to mid-career curators and organisers from around the world. Delegates will join from New Zealand, Senegal, Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, Palestine, Ukraine, Turkey and the Philippines and meet the artists and curators taking part in the festival, alongside wider members of Scotland’s rich visual arts sector.

During the visit, delegates will attend Glasgow International 2026 opening week/weekend events and visit a range of projects within the festival programme. They will take part in meetings and studio visits with Glasgow-based artists, organisations and independent organisers, including sessions tailored to individual interests, and join a sharing event with representatives from the visual arts sector in Scotland. The programme also includes a visit to a Scottish arts organisation outside Glasgow, followed by post-visit evaluation.

Ane is an artist, scholar and curator who specialises in gender and the politics of representation, Indigenous photographic histories and feminisms. Since 2020, she has held the inaugural role of Curator, Pacific Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Aotearoa New Zealand's premiere art gallery. Her appointment marked the first time in the Gallery's history that a person of Pacific descent held a curatorial position, and hers remains the only curatorial role dedicated to Pacific art in the country.

In this role, Ane has led an ambitious Pacific-focused programme of exhibitions, public programming and collecting, beginning with the critically acclaimed exhibition Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda (2022), which produced a significant publication and public programme. Her upcoming projects include a major retrospective and commissions with senior Pacific artists who have been instrumental in bridging contemporary art practice and Indigenous knowledge.

Ane also holds a Masters in Art History (First Class Honours), a Post-Graduate Diploma in Museums and Cultural Heritage (with distinction) from the University of Auckland, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (with honours) from the Elam School of Fine Arts. She is an experienced governance practitioner, having served on the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa (2021 to 2024), as Deputy Chair of the Contemporary HUM Trust Board (2019 to 2021), and as Chair of Auckland Council's Rōpū Torotoro Mahi Toi Tūmatanui I Public Art Advisory Panel (2025).

Find out more about Ane's practice at anetonga.net.

Glasgow International is Scotland's world-renowned biennial festival of contemporary art, presenting the best of local and international work for wide-ranging audiences. Taking place across the city's major art spaces and cultural institutions, the festival showcases Glasgow as a unique centre for the production and display of contemporary visual art through exhibitions, talks, performances and projects by international and Glasgow-based artists.

The 2026 edition builds on the festival's polyvocal and collective character, with no overarching theme, instead drawing on shared concerns emerging across projects: artistic experimentation, congregation, cross-cultural and cross-historical resonance, the textures and rhythms of land and water, and personal, ancestral and intergenerational memory.

 

Glasgow International 2026 is made possible through the support of Creative Scotland, Glasgow Life, Glasgow City Council via the Glasgow Event Board, and the Scottish Government's Festival Expo Fund, with additional support from British Council, the Henry Moore Foundation, Art Fund, the Embassy of the Netherlands, SWG3, Urban Office, and a new partnership with Wasps.

Find out more at glasgowinternational.org.

 

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