Training | 2009.09.17
Tate unveils Gauguin show for next year
Tate reveals an exciting lineup of blockbuster exhibitions for the coming year although funding is yet to be fully secured for its ambitious redevelopment plans
Lord Browne, the chairman of the Tate, is "highly confident" that the ambitious redevelopment of Tate Modern, designed by architects Herzog and de Meuron to increase the museum\'s floor space by 60%, will be completed by July 2012. This is despite the fact that only a third of the funds have been raised and a question mark hangs over the £50m promised to the scheme by the government.
No concrete fundraising progress has been announced since this time last year. However, Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota said that "a lot of soil has been turned over" and that despite a difficult year for fundraising, there was a "growing confidence" that the project would be completed in time for the London Olympics.
In July, the Guardian revealed that the £50m promised by the former culture secretary James Purnell was imperilled because of a £100m budget overcommitment for capital projects at the department for culture, media and sport. All capital commitments made by the department have been put under review and no decisions have been announced about which projects – including redevelopments at the British Museum and the British Film Institute as well as Tate Modern – will be hit.
But according to Browne, the former chairman of BP who took over the chairmanship of the Tate when Lord Myners became a government minister in October, the Tate is "highly confident that the promised money will be delivered." He added that the Tate was actively fundraising: "My sense is that confidence has come back to potential benefactors. Investors feel better about making donations. We intend to start building next year and, subject to the amount of funding we have in place, we are intending to have a building ready by 2012."
Unveiling Tate\'s annual report, Browne pointed to a year of record acquisitions for the organisation; 2008-9 was the year in which it received, jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland, an unprecedented gift of more than 700 artworks from the former art dealer Anthony D\'Offay, by artists from Damien Hirst to Andy Warhol. Works from the collection have already been shown in venues from Stromness to St Ives.
Tate also announced its lineup of exhibitions for the next year. Tate Modern will host the first major Gauguin exhibition in London for half a century, assembling over 100 works next autumn, from Tahiti paintings to ceramics, illustrated letters and sketchbooks. According to Vicente Todolí, director of Tate Modern, the exhibition will "challenge assumptions about his practice and reveal his complexity and richness", looking at Gauguin\'s role as a narrative painter and a "maker of fables". It will establish him as "one of the pillars of 20th-century art" and reveal his influence on contemporary painters such as Peter Doig. "It is work that\'s still fresh," said Todolí. "It raises issues such as colonialism and primitivism."
Tate Liverpool will stage a large-scale Picasso show in May, focusing on his role as a peace campaigner and activist in the post-war period. It will show 150 paintings and drawings from 1944-1973, including iterations of the "peace dove" motif that the artist used for numerous posters and that became a symbol of hope during the cold war. It will also include Charnel House, Picasso\'s most political painting after Guernica (1937), painted in 1944 as news broke of the Nazi concentration camps. The work was last seen in the UK more than 50 years ago.
Tate Britain will put together the first mid-career survey of work by artist Chris Ofili, who first sprang to widespread fame with his paintings embellished with elephant dung in Sensation, the 1997 exhibition of Young British Artists. The retrospective, opening in January, will also feature his masterpiece, the Upper Room, a series of 13 paintings that were controversially purchased while Ofili was a trustee of the Tate. New and previously unseen work made in Trinidad, where Ofili now lives, will also be shown.
At the same time, the gallery will host a Henry Moore exhibition, "going beyond the received wisdom and considering him afresh, looking at his sometimes dark, erotically charged side", according to Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain.
Talking about the impact of the economic climate on the exhibition programme, Serota said that there were "fewer big international touring shows", largely as a result of American museums – including the Metropolitan Museum of Art – having to cut back on exhibition programmes, because of strains on their income due to low-yielding endowments. "It means that smaller exhibitions are travelling internationally and it means exhibitions will have to be more focused."
2010 highlights
Afro-Modernism How black artists and intellectuals have influenced modernism, including works by African-American Glenn Ligon (one of whose paintings hangs in Michelle Obama\'s White House office). Tate Liverpool, January.
Chris Ofili A mid-career retrospective for the prominent British artist, featuring his masterpiece The Upper Room. Tate Britain, January.
Picasso Peace and Freedom: Tate Liverpool\'s look at the artist as postwar peace campaigner. The exhibition will include Charnel House, not seen here for 50 years. May.
Exposure A history of surreptitiously made photos, from work by Nan Goldin and Robert Frank to contemporary images from CCTV. Tate Modern, May.
Eadweard Muybridge The photography pioneer. Tate Britain, September.
Gauguin The first major London show for the artist in half a century, featuring more than 100 works. Tate Modern, September.
Peter Lanyon Survey of the Cornish abstract expressionist, who died in a gliding accident in 1964. Tate St Ives, October.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2[...]/17/tate-gauguin-ofili-picasso
