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Following the Turner Prize award, the director of the Tate, Nicholas Serota, joined us here to chat about the Gallery and the future...
Nick Serota : Hello everyone!
C4 Chat Ed : Welcome Nick!
sweetthing : How did you get to work in the Tate?
Nick Serota : Well, I studied Art History at Cambridge, and then in London, and I did special research on Turner... but later I became very interested in contemporary art..For about 20 years I made exhibitions with living artists, and some historical shows too, at Oxford and at the Whitechapel Art Gallery before coming here in 1988.
Smitho : Whatever happened to the Rothko room?
Nick Serota : Heh, well it's usually on view, but we have so little space here at the Tate that we sometimes have to take it down and this year we've taken it down to make room for the Turner Prize. It's going to be one of the centre pieces of the new Tate Gallery of Modern Art at Bankside, where I hope it'll be on almost permanent view. It is a great treasure and I miss it :)
maracas : What's next for the Tate then? Any plans for the millenium?
Nick Serota : Next year we have a big Jackson Pollock exhibition, and then of course in May 2000 we open the new Tate Gallery of Modern Art, at Bankside, which will show 20th and 21st century art.
sweetthing : How far do you think art can go before its considered to cross the line?
Nick Serota : Well, in the 20th century, artists have pushed that line a long way... and have enriched our whole idea of what art can be, so it's no longer simply painting, sculpture, drawing, but includes work in other media such as photography, video, film. But if by line you mean the subject of art, rather than how it's made, then I think art has often been outrageous and difficult since the beginning of time. Even in the Renaissance period artist often courted controversy by the way they treated certain subjects or depicted certain individuals.
toop : Do you get fed up with the sensationalist approach of the papers to the Turner Prize - or is all publicity good publicity?
Nick Serota : Publicity doesencourage people to come and see the exhibition, and when they come they're often surprised by what they find, not necessarily the most controversial work, but in some of the work which is quieter or more reflective. So for instance this year I think people have been really drawn in to the work by Tacita Dean whose large blackboards, on which she's drawn a kind of storyboard for an epic film at sea, are very impressive, or her film based on the disappearance of the sailor Donald Crowhurst..(..and, what's interesting about seeing people in the gallery is that they get drawn into converstation with each other - even when they don't know each other!)
maracas : what are the Tate's closest competitors? And do you think that the Tate is the best in its field?
Nick Serota : Large-scale competitors internationally are the MOMA in New York, and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.Both have stronger early-20th C collections than we do, but I think we probably give them a good run for their money in terms of the way in which we use our collection and the excitement of our exhibitions. But then there are a lot of smaller competitors, or even colleagues, really, like the Serpentine, or the ICA or the Whitechapel, or the Ikon gallery in Birmingham, which can sometimes be much more energetic and quicker off the mark than us in responding to new developments in contemporary art. So I don't think the Tate is best overall, but we do have a very interesting mix of old and new.
abs : What is your favourite museum in the world -- not including the Tate ;)
Nick Serota chuckles
Nick Serota : Probably a museum in Basle, Switzerland, called the Art Museum. It has extraordinary collections of 20thC and contemporary art, but also the most remarkable collection of Holbein. And what's good about that museum is that it's not too large, and the work is very well shown. It's not an encyclopaedic museum, but has collections of artists in depth, so you have a very strong sense of particular imaginations and visions.Well worth a visit.
I also like the Soane museum in London, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which is in a house designed by the architect John Soane, and houses his collection of paintings, including a great series of work by Hogarth and sculpture and antiquities, in a very memorable setting.
Phill : When do you think we'll se a digital artist shortlisted for the TP. & What are Banksides plans for digital art & digital resources ?
Nick Serota : I'm sure we'll see a digital artist shortlisted within five years, and we're planning to have a media centre at Bankside, where visitors to the museum will be able to access material and information about works in the Tate collection and also in other equivalent museums across the world...
We're also going to wire all the galleries so that digital artcan be seen anywhere in the museum.
maracas : do you have an annual budget you have to stick to for purchases? or is it kinda on the hoof?
Nick Serota : We spend just under two million pounds a year on purchases, and that figure is the same as the amount we had in 1980...so effectively it's much less.. It hasn't changed because that money comes from Government, and the Government does not regard adding to the collection as being a priority. But unlike other museums, the Tate has a responsibilty to add new art soon after it is made so that we can show the culture of our own time, as well as the historic past. And of course it's that area of our acquisitions that is both difficult and controversial.
moonbeam : What do you think makes a masterpiece ?
Nick Serota : I think I would answer differently on different days according to my mood :) I think a masterpiece is something which speaks to you, in different ways throughout your life..and is something that you want to refer back to again and again because it opens up a new way of seeing the world, or understanding something about human relationships, or the way in which other people see the world.
saffron: was art your favourite subject at school?
Nick Serota : No, actually it wasn't my favourite....but it probably should have been.
Nick Serota chuckles
In the sense that I think I didn't recognise at school how important visual things were to me, and it was only later that I began to develop a really serious interest, I think about from age 17 or 18 onwards.
I remember coming to see an exhibition at the Tate which was a big survey of international modern art, and I'd never seen anything like it. It included pop art and abstract expressionists - about 1954 -1964... Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein...
And it suddenly made me realise that art could be about many different things, and about life today.
wanda_starr : what do you think of art education? In particular that there is no history of art PGCE.?
Nick Serota : When the National Curriculum was introduced in the 1980s it brought art into the core subjects for the first time, but only up to the age of fourteen.
I was very disappointed by that, and continue to argue that art ought to be regarded as one of the core subjects up to GCSE level - because especially in the modern world, how we picture the world and visualise the world, and how we use images, is just as important as how we use words.
(We shall continue to campaign at the Tate to have the N.C. broadened.)
C4 Chat Ed : This is our final question everyone...
limbo : how do you see the turner prize changing over the next 5 years?
Nick Serota : Well...that's very difficult to predict, as it depends what artists produce, but I think we will try and find ways of taking the Turner Prize out beyond the Tate... Broadcasting is one way - as we do with Channel 4... and we've been organising discussions around the country about contemporary art, focussed on the Turner Prize. But the Turner Prize should serve as the starting point for much wider discussions about contemporary art, and its role in society. Ideally it should give people an opportunity to see for themselves what a group of people with a special interest think is the best art in Britain today.
C4 Chat Ed : Thanks Nick, thanks for coming in everyone!
abs : bye nick
Susie : smile
chrissy : Thanks nick
Nick Serota : I've enjoyed the conversation a lot, and now that that Tate has a website, we hope to find ways of developing conversations with our visitors through the web.
Nick Serota smiles
C4 Chat Ed : What a Plug!
Nick Serota : Any ideas would be welcome.
C4 Chat Ed : www..tate.org.uk
Smitho : Thanks Nick
Nick Serota waves.
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