New Hall College, Cambridge

New Hall College, founded in 1954, houses a unique art collection which now contains nearly 350 contemporary works by women artists. The collection, which includes works by Elizabeth Blackadder, Sandra Blow, Maggi Hambling, Ana Maria Pacheco, Barbara Hepworth, Beth Fisher, Gwen Hardie, Ann Redpath, Barbara Robertson and Paula Rego, is regularly visited, consulted, written about and photographed by artists and art historians, school and college students, and others energized by the talent displayed by contemporary women artists.

From its foundation, New Hall was fortunate in receiving valuable donations and loans of works of art. However, in 1986, they were able to acquire Mary Kelly's work 'Extase' following her stay as artist-in-residence at New Hall and Kettle's Yard. The Women's Art Collection, as it is also known, has evolved through gifts and loans from artists and alumnae since 1986. This was the spur the college needed to build its collection. Its ambition began to be realised by the early 1990's when a core group of professional women artists donated their works. Since then, the Collection has continued to grow to the point where, by virtue of its quality and specialisation, the Collection has become the most significant of its kind in the UK, and second in size only to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. In 2004, an exhibition at Agnew's, London, celebrated the collection's half-century. In 2008, New Hall announced its renaming as Murray Edwards College, following a generous donation of £30 million from Ros Edwards, a former student, and her family.