The Roberts Institute of Art (RIA) is a non-profit organisation that supports contemporary art through an artist residency programme in Scotland and by sharing works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection through exhibitions and collaborations. Founded in 2007 as the David Roberts Art Foundation and re-launched as the Roberts Institute of Art in 2021, the organisation’s work spans nearly 20 years of ambitious and experimental programming across solo and group exhibitions, live performance commissions and events. The collection has been evolving since the early 1990s and has grown into one of the UK’s most significant private holdings of modern and contemporary art, comprising close to 2,500 works by over 900 artists from the mid-20th century to today.

“I believe there are certain people in the world who just have to collect things. I do not come from an art background at all. Meeting artists and meeting curators and engaging with them has been as educational as reading a lot of books. You meet a couple of artists, and they introduce you to their friends and their artists. And then you meet the gallery. It's a snowball thing. It was part of my journey.” — David Roberts

From the outset the collection has championed artists at every stage of their career and spans sculpture, painting, photography, drawing, video and installation. Alongside established names such as Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Mark Bradford and Mona Hatoum, there is a particular emphasis on early-career and emerging voices, including Daisy Parris, Francesca Mollett and Gabriella Boyd — all of whom have also taken part in RIA’s artist residency programme.

RIA aims to share the collection as widely as possible and to offer opportunities to support artists and arts organisations. Across the UK, RIA has presented and co-curated a series of in-depth collection exhibitions with partners including Hastings Contemporary, the Courtauld in London, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and The Hunterian in Glasgow. Since 2021, RIA has welcomed over 130,000 visitors through its collection partnership programme.

Through its active lending programme works are made available to museums and institutions in the UK and internationally. From 2021 to 2025, over 300 works were loaned to more than 50 institutions worldwide, including to the Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut, the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens and the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. RIA aims to be responsive to loan requests and to facilitate research enquiries from curators and cultural organisations. Collection works have also travelled widely to major UK venues including the Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London, Turner Contemporary in Margate, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich and the National Galleries Scotland in Edinburgh.

The RIA Residency programme was launched in 2022 in rural Scotland to offer support for contemporary artists. Artists have a dedicated studio space for making but without the pressure to produce finished work and have the opportunity to develop their practice through time and space for research, experimentation and through RIA’s creative network. The residency has welcomed UK and international artists from different stages of their career including Miroslaw Balka, Jesse Wine, Monica Sosnowska and Clare Woods.

This place is very special — the landscape, the studio, the environment and the quietness. There are no expectations from me. And that's incredibly freeing.
— Clare Woods, RIA Resident June 2025“

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