The British Council is launching an innovative programme to find an international curator to select its final exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.

The Fifth Curator competition is a unique new opportunity for an aspiring curator to select an exhibition of works from the British Council Collection. We are looking for someone who is based permanently outside the UK, who believes they have the passion and knowledge to be a leading curator.

The winning curator will be given unlimited access to the Collection, which includes over 8500 key works of British art and the resulting exhibition will be shown at the prestigious Whitechapel in the vibrant East end of London in April 2010.

The Fifth Curator exhibition will be the fifth and final exhibition in a series of five exhibitions showcasing the British Council Collection in the Whitechapel Gallery. Artist Michael Craig-Martin selected the first exhibition Passports - Great Early Buys from the British Council Collection, focusing on some of the most prescient acquisitions in the Collection’s long history.

For The Fifth Curator exhibition, aspiring curators from outside the United Kingdom are invited to submit an exhibition proposal which features works drawn exclusively from the British Council Collection. We particularly encourage new views and fresh perspectives on the Collection, as these are vital to ongoing debates about British art within an international context.

The Fifth Curator competition forms part of the British Council’s ongoing commitment to promote the Collection to new audiences, both in the UK and worldwide and to engage aspiring curatorial talent with one of Britain’s finest collections of British Art.

To download the application form and for guidelines go to: http://collection.britishcouncil.org/about/news/2210/2212