Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Andrew Serota CH ( * April 27, 1946 ) is a British art historian. Since 1988 he has headed the painting Tate Britain in London.
Education and professional beginnings
Nicholas Serota is the son of Stanley and Beatrice Serota. He grew up in Hampstead. His father was a civil engineer and his mother, Minister, senior administrative assistant and later life peer. Serota attended the Haberdashers ' Aske 's Boys ' School and enrolled in economics at Christ 's College, Cambridge, before he changed the subject and began studying art history. He completed his studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London with a Masters Degree; his thesis was the work of the painter William Turner on the subject.
1969 Serota became chairman of the new association Young Friends of the Tate with 750 members. The club took over a building at Pear Place, south of Waterloo Bridge, where lectures held on Saturdays and painting classes for children from the neighborhood were offered. The Young Friends organized their own events and competed for financial support from the Arts Council of Great Britain. The former board of the Tate and the curators, they asked, however, to refrain from doing so because they feared that the actions of the Young Friends would be considered "officially" considered. Serota and the entire board resigned, whereupon dissolve the association. The following year was Serota Head of Department at the Arts Council of Great Britain, responsible for regional exhibitions. In 1973 he became director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. There he organized a successful exhibition with works by Joseph Beuys.
Whitechapel Gallery
1976 Nicholas Serota was appointed director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London's East End. This museum had a good reputation, but suffered from financial problems. Serota gathered in Whitechapel a first-class staff and organized influential exhibitions of works by Carl Andre, Eva Hesse and Gerhard Richter as well as early exhibitions of emerging artists such as Antony Gormley. In 1980 he organized with the assistance of his longtime collaborator Alexander Nairne a two-part exhibition of British sculpture in the 20th century with a bandwidth as it had not been seen before in the UK. In 1981, he was responsible for the Royal Academy The New Spirit in Painting with Norman Rosenthal and Christos M. Joachimides.
The exhibitions organized Serota, came in the press often negative reviews, which reacted with aversion to contemporary avant-garde art. This left Serota at a distance to the British establishment, while he enjoyed an ever more excellent reputation in the international art world. From 1984 to 1985 was Nicholas Serota Whitechapel to close due to extensive renovation work for twelve months. Another, one-story building was built with a restaurant, auditorium and other rooms on an additionally acquired property. The cultivation was generally received with applause, but caused a deficit of 250,000 British pounds. 1987 Serota scored at an auction of works of art, the artists had provided a profit of 1.4 million pounds, with which he could not only settle the debts of the gallery, but also establish a fund to finance future exhibitions unconventional art can. Due to this success Serota in 1988 appointed director of the Tate Gallery and beaten a year later knighted.
The news of the appointment of Nicholas Serotas director of the Tate Gallery was enthusiastically welcomed by the Sunday Times columnist: " Nick Serota Has enormous energy and demostrated at the Whitechapel a tremendous sense of diplomacy. He is a passionate one, and indeed is quite unusual in this country in his commitment to modern painting and sculpture " Peter Fuller by the magazine Modern Painters, however, criticized Serotas appointment sharp.; this was incapable of temperament and talent here to take care of the historical collection of the Tate.
For about two decades, it was known that the Tate would have to be enlarged. With the establishment of the National Lottery opened up prospects to take from their means the enlargement of the museum in attack. In 1995, the Tate Gallery £ 52 million to rebuild the former power station Bankside Power Station in Bankside into the Tate Modern. The final cost was 135 million pounds; Serota contrived to acquire the shortfall from private sources. The Tate Modern was opened in 2000 and quickly a tourist magnet. In addition to permanent exhibitions of works by, among others, Louise Bourgeois and Anish Kapoor, the Museum organized successful exhibitions of works by Donald Judd, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Edward Hopper.
Art and Criticism
On 21 November 2000 Nicholas Serota Richard Dimbleby Lecture held the under the title Who's Afraid of Modern Art in London.
"For in spite of much Greater public interest in all aspects of visual culture, including design and architecture, the challenge posed by contemporary art Has not evaporated. We have only to recall the headlines for last year's Turner Prize. "Eminence without merit" ( The Sunday Telegraph). " Tate trendies blow a raspberry " ( Eastern Daily Press), and my favorite, "For 1,000 years art Has been one of our great civil ising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled bed threaten to make barbarians of us all" ( The Daily Mail ). Are these papers speaking the minds of Their readers? I have no delusions. People 'may be Attracted by the spectacle of new buildings, june They enjoy the social experience of visiting a museum, taking in the view, to espresso or glass of wine, purchasing a book or an artist designed t -shirt. Many are delighted to praise the museum, but REMAIN deeply suspicious of the contents. "
1998 Serota thought about the art theft from the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt from the so-called Operation Cobalt. By this operation succeeded, two paintings by Turner, which belonged to the Tate, recover, who had been four years earlier stolen at an exhibition in Frankfurt. Since the insurance company had previously paid the sum insured, Tate could make £ 20 million profit. 2001 invited the English painter Stuart Pearson Wright, winner of the senior award BP Portrait Award that year, Serota had to be dismissed because of his partisanship for concept art and his neglect of figurative art. 2012 criticized the Irish journalist Ruth Dudley Edwards that Serota abusing his power as head of the Tate to promote talentless self-promoters and the proliferation of ugly and meaningless.
Since its founding in 1999, the group of the Stuckists, who is committed to the return to painting, a campaign against Nicholas Setora. One of the most famous works of the group is the satirical image co-founder Charles Thomson, Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision from the year 2000. 2004 he was appointed as " wenigst probable visitors to the exhibition The Stucksts Punk Victorian in the " Walker Art Gallery titled, in the works been shown that mocked him. In fact Serota visited the exhibition, spoke with the artists and described the exhibited art as "alive".
2005 offered the Stuckists 160 paintings from the exhibition at the Tate Gallery as a gift to. Serota refused, and inscribed the Stuckists that their art is not the " necessary quality in design, innovation and originality of the ideas have to ensure their preservation in the long run in the national collection ." Then he was accused of " the leading collection of Britain contemptuously to have treated ". Because of this rejection, the Stuckists initiated a media campaign against the purchase of the Tate Chris Ofili's works, a member of the Supervisory Board of the gallery.
Controversies
2005 Nicholas Serota admitted that he had made in an application to the National Art Collections Fund ( NACF ) to a grant of £ 75,000 for the purchase of a work of art by Ofili false information. He stated that the Tate had not yet decided this artwork to buy, although the Fund had months earlier paid 250,000 pounds. He led his false information back to a " mistake ". The NACF agreed that Serota should keep the money.
The following year, the Charity Commission decided that the Tate in the purchase of works of art which originated from curators of the gallery, have broken the law for charity (but not criminal law ), including purchases that were made prior Serotas tenure. The Daily Telegraph called this ruling "one of the most serious charges against the operation of one of the most important cultural institutions in the country as long as anyone can remember ." In April 2008, Charles Thomson launched a petition against the dictatorship of Serotas Tate on the website of the Prime Minister.
Personal
The first wife of Nicholas Serota was the ballet dancer Angela Beveridge, later Alexander Bernstein, Baron Bernstein of Craig Weil married. The couple married in 1973 and has two daughters. 1997 Serota married his second wife, Teresa.
Publications (selection )
- With Jürgen Blasius: Donald Judd: The work. Dumont Verlag 2004
- Unfolding Gift: The Pier Arts Centre Collection. Thames & Hudson 2010
- Deyan Sudjic with: From the House to the City: Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners. Goodman Books 2013
- Gabriella Belli / Anthony Caro Anthony Caro. Skira 2013