Displaying items by tag: nicholas serota

Tate Britain has hired the founder of Nottingham Contemporary to replace director Penelope Curtis, who presided over an often controversial five years at the organization.

Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, said Alex Farquharson had established Nottingham Contemporary “as one of the leading galleries in the UK”. It is one of a number of regional contemporary art galleries to have opened in the past 10 years. “He has created a programme that serves local and national audiences, working closely with artists and reflecting history as well as the present,” Serota said.

The Tate will receive an extra £6m from the government to help fund the cost of running Tate Modern, we have learned. The agreement, which has not been formally announced, was made ahead of the General Election, which saw the Conservative Party win a slim majority.

The promise of extra money for the Tate is a remarkable achievement by the Tate’s director, Nicholas Serota, who 15 years ago secured an extra £5m from the then Labour government so that Tate Modern could open without charging for admission.

The man who runs London's Tate Modern - an art gallery in a former power station that looms over the River Thames - was named on Thursday the most powerful figure in the world of contemporary art.

Nicholas Serota has been in the top 10 of the "Power 100" every year since the list was launched by ArtReview magazine in 2002, which said his museum "has come to epitomize almost all the elements of the current 'global' artworld."

Tate has acquired 100 works as an addition to their collection thanks to The Outset /Frieze Art Fair Fund to benefit the Tate Collection. The selection panel includes Agustín Pérez Rubio (Artistic Director, MALBA, Buenos Aires) and Laurence Rassel (Director, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona) and also Frances Morris (Head of Collections, International Art, Tate), Ann Gallagher (Head of Collections, British Art, Tate), Tanya Barson (Curator, International Art, Tate) and Clarrie Wallis (Curator, Contemporary British Art, Tate). The fund is organized and financed by Outset and in 2014 enjoys continued support from Leviev Extraordinary Diamonds. The annual fund at Frieze London, allows Tate to acquire important works of art at the fair for the national collection. This year the Fund is set at £150,000.

Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate said of the fund: “For more than a decade, the Outset Contemporary Art Fund has played a major role in helping Tate to build the national collection of contemporary art for the benefit of audiences across the country and in London. We are immensely grateful to Outset for this support."

Although major figures in the British art world including Tate director Nicholas Serota, filmmaker Danny Boyle, and artist Jeremy Deller have voiced their opposition, the council of the Borough of Tower Hamlets in London’s East End decided on Wednesday to sell Henry Moore’s Draped Seated Woman. In addition to the big name opponents, more than 1,500 signed a petition against the sale in just a few days.

Completed in 1957, Moore sold the bronze sculpture to the London County Council in 1960 for a fraction of its worth. When the sale was made, Moore and the now defunct London Council agreed that the statue would be on view permanently near a housing project. When the project was leveled in the late 1990s, Draped Seated Woman was moved to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Lutfur Rahman, the mayor of the Tower Hamlets, blamed the government’s severe budget cuts for leaving him with little choice in the matter. The sculpture is expected to bring in about $32 million when it goes to auction in early 2013.