Roberts Institute of Art
art centre
The Roberts Institute of Art, formerly operating as David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF), is a non-profit contemporary arts organisation based in London. It commissions pioneering performance art, collaborates with national partners on exhibitions and works to research and share the David and Indrė Roberts Collection.
British property developer and art collector David Roberts founded the organisation in 2007 and since then it has had over 135,000 visitors, partnered with over 100 museums and organisations and worked with over 1,000 artists.
History
Founded in London, UK in 2007, the Roberts Institute of Art operated as the David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF) until April 2021. Named after its founder David Roberts, DRAF was set up to share what was then known as the David Roberts Collection and is now called the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. Roberts is a commercial property developer who founded and became CEO of Edinburgh House Estates. He began collecting in the early 1990s and, after founding the organization, appointed curator Vincent Honoré to direct a programme of free public events.
DRAF originally ran an exhibition space on Great Titchfield Street, central London, presenting group and solo exhibitions and hosting talks and performances. The annual Evening of Performances (2008–ongoing), a showcase of work by artists, musicians and choreographers, began there. The Curators' Series (2009–2020) was also established to support curatorial research and practices. Over 11 years DRAF invited curators, duos and organisations, including Arcadia Missa (UK), Christine Eyene (Cameroon), and Mihnea Mircan (Romania) to create exhibitions.
“Roberts Institute of Art” enters the record as art centre. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Roberts, Institute and centre can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19587186. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2021, 2008 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roberts Institute of Art” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.