Nicholas Serota
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Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota (born April 27, 1946) is a curator, and is currently Director of the Tate Gallery, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art.
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[edit] Early life
Sir Nicholas Serota was the son of a Labour minister, Beatrice Serota. He grew up in North London and attended the Haberdashers' Aske's School. He then studied Economics at the University of Cambridge (Christ's), before switching to History of Art. He completed a Masters degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art under the supervision of Anthony Blunt; his thesis was on the work of J. M. W. Turner.
In 1970, he joined the Arts Council of Great Britain's Visual Arts Department as a regional exhibitions officer, and in 1973 he was made Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. There he organised an important early exhibition of work by Joseph Beuys and formed an important working relationship with Alexander "Sandy" Nairne, who would work with Serota at various points in the following years.
[edit] Whitechapel directorship
In 1976, Serota was appointed Director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London's East End. The Whitechapel was well regarded but had suffered from lack of resources, and during his Directorship it was possible to organise only a limited number of major exhibitions a year. Serota assembled at the Whitechapel a talented staff including Jenni Lomax (later Director of the Camden Arts Centre) and Susan Fergler Brades (later Director of the Hayward Gallery), and organised influential exhibitions of Carl Andre and Gerhard Richter as well as early exhibitions of then emerging artists such as Antony Gormley.
In 1980, assisted by Alexander "Sandy" Nairne , he organised a two-part exhibition of 20th Century British Sculpture, on a scale which had not been seen in the UK before. In 1981 he curated 'The New Spirit in Painting', with Norman Rosenthal for the Royal Academy. In 1984-5 Serota took the bold step of shutting down the Whitechapel for over 12 months for extensive refurbishment. The success of this was instrumental in Serota's appointment in 1988 as Director of the Tate Gallery
[edit] Tate Gallery directorship
The Tate Gallery that Serota took over was in a perilous state. The UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had declared a policy that the arts would be subject to market forces. Although the Tate Gallery received a government grant, it was not enough to provide for major purchases, especially at a time when the art market was inflated, as it was in the late 1980s. Moreover, the Tate Gallery was in need of expansion, as the existing exhibition space could show only 10% of the collection. The opening of the Clore Wing (1987) and of affiliate galleries Tate Liverpool (1988) and Tate St Ives (1993) helped to alleviate the problem.
In 1989 Serota inaugurated a programme called 'New Displays' in which the central Duveen Galleries were restored and collection works were rotated. A more ambitious programme of special exhibitions was started with 'Late Rothko' in 1988, and the Turner Prize was redefined as a showcase for emerging contemporary art (Serota as Director has a permanent place on the judging panel for the prize).
Major expansion of the Tate Gallery had been seen as inevitable for two decades. In 1993 the creation of the National Lottery made it possible to anticipate the availability of major public funding for an enlarged Gallery. In 1995 Tate received £52 Million towards the conversion of the former Bankside Power Station to create Tate Modern. The final cost was £150 million; Serota managed to secure the funds to make up the shortfall from a range of private sources. Tate Modern opened in May 2000 and quickly became a sightseeing fixture of London. As well as housing acclaimed new works by Louise Bourgeois and Anish Kapoor, the Gallery has also provided the base for successful exhibitions of Donald Judd, Picasso, Matisse and Edward Hopper.
In 1998, Serota conceived of Operation Cobalt, the secret buyback of two of Tate's paintings by J. M. W. Turner that had been stolen from a German gallery in 1994. The paintings were recovered in 2000 and 2002, resulting in a profit of several million pounds for Tate. See Frankfurt art theft (1994).
Serota was awarded a Knighthood in 2001.
[edit] Controversies
Serota has frequently been at the centre of controversy.
In 2000, the Stuckists art group held a show called The Resignation of Sir Nicholas Serota. Stuckist demonstrations held for six years (2000-05) outside the Turner Prize at Tate Britain were critical of his role.
Charles Saatchi has publicly stated that an offer of a major gift of works was rejected by Serota - while Serota responded that no such offer had ever been made.
A campaign was launched by Serota in 2004 to create a £100m endowment fund to support future purchases and encourage artists and collectors to gift works to the Tate in order to fill gaps in the collection. However, in October 2005, it was disclosed that the Tate had purchased a series of works known as The Upper Room (1998-2002) by Chris Ofili for £705,000 (approx. £585,000 coming from private donors), despite the artist being a serving trustee and already well represented in the collection. Defenders of this purchase have claimed that it was done at a significant discount, and Ofili was not involved in the trustees' discussions.
175 paintings from the 2004 Liverpool Biennial The Stuckists Punk Victorian show with a value of £500,000 were offered as a donation to the Tate Gallery gallery in 2005. This offer was rejected by Serota, who wrote, "the works in question have been reviewed by our curators and presented to the Board of Trustees … We do not feel that the work is of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation or originality of thought to warrant preservation in perpetuity in the national collection." The Times reported a page lead on the rejection, stating,
- "The Tate was accused yesterday of snubbing one of Britain’s foremost collections after it rejected a gift of 160 paintings that had been given pride of place at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Its director, Sir Nicholas Serota, said that the works did not deserve to be in a national collection, even though their five-month exhibition last autumn drew thousands of people to the Walker, one of the outstanding collections of fine art in Europe and part of National Museums Liverpool." [1]
[edit] Personal life
Serota's first wife was ballet dancer Angela Beveridge. They married in 1973 and had two daughters. Serota married his second wife, Teresa Gleadowe, in 1997.
| Preceded by: Alan Bowness | Director of Tate Gallery 1988– | Succeeded by: Current |
[edit] External links
- Profile in The Guardian newspaper (2000)
