Displaying items by tag: penelope curtis

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.

After five difficult years at the helm of Tate Britain, Penelope Curtis has announced that she was leaving London to become the new director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.

“I am delighted to be the first international appointment to Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum," Curtis said in a statement released by the Gulbenkian. “I look forward to working in Portugal and working with a strong institution which is looking for change."

The Tate Britain Museum in London has completed its $72 million renovation, which was led by the architectural firm Caruso St. John. Penelope Curtis, Director of the Tate, announced that the project had wrapped up “on time and on budget” during a showing of the refurbished museum on Monday, November 18. The Tate opened to the public the following day.

The Tate has remained open during the renovations but its main entrance has been closed since April 2012, in addition to 10 galleries, which reopened in May following a major overhaul. The newly designed sections of the museum include a showpiece spiral staircase, a new café, educational studios, an archive gallery, and the Grand Saloon, a large space overlooking the Thames that had previously been closed off from the rest of the museum. Visitors will also be able to catch a glimpse of Rex Whistler’s The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats in the Tate’s café. It is the first time that the fully restored mural has been on display since a flood damaged it in 1928.

90% of the funding for the museum’s major overhaul came from private contributions, including donations from Tate members and a donation from the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

Tate Britain will unveil its new look on November 19, 2013 as part of The Millbank Project. The renovation, which was helmed by Caruso St. John Architects, follows the opening of ten new galleries and is part of the first phase of the twenty-year project.

The recent $70 million project includes the reopening of Tate Britain’s main entrance on Millbank, the reopening of the Whistler Restaurant, new learning studios, the reopening of the museum’s balcony in the Rotunda, which has been closed since the 1920s, and site-specific works by three contemporary artists. Penelope Curtis, the director of Tate Britain, said, “The new Tate Britain opens up the Millbank entrance to reassert and enhance the original grandeur and logic of the galleries. Adam Caruso and Peter St. John have created new spaces out of old ones and artists have helped to articulate a new sense of the public realm.”

The subsequent phases of the The Millbank Project will be implemented after 2014 and will aim to restore the galleries in the museum’s south-west quadrant, create a new suite of galleries and transform Tate Britain’s landscape facing the River Thames.