Funds shortage threatens Tate

The Tate Modern's director Nicholas Serota has big plans for the art gallery

11 April 2012

In the five years since Tate Modern opened it has become such an accepted part of the landscape that it scarcely seems possible that before 2000, alone of all major capital cities, London was without a proper museum of modern art.

Only 10 years ago Giles Gilbert Scott's great power station lay across the river from St Paul's, dark, unknown, unloved and threatened with demolition. Now Herzog & de Meuron's remodelled building has come to be a symbol of regeneration of life in the capital. It has appeared in feature films, advertisements and even several novels.

London itself has become the European destination for anyone interested in contemporary art. Tate certainly hasn't done this alone. We have been helped enormously by the success of the Frieze Art Fair, galleries such as the Serpentine, Saat ch i , Whitechapel and Hayward, the commercial galleries and most of all, the artists themselves.

Whatever the achievements of Tate Modern, it is also more widely symbolic of London's significance as a centre for contemporary art.

Surprisingly, much of the potential at Tate Modern still remains to be developed. Some of this promise will be realised by our project, Completing Tate Modern.

Over the next 10 years, we plan to develop the derelict areas to the south of the Turbine Hall, currently occupied by an electricity substation, and create a new building, again designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

This will provide new space for media such as photography, film, video and digital art, improved facilities for visitors, for learning and for our younger visitors.

We will further cultivate the development of a cultural quarter of international significance at Bankside and achieve stronger links with our surrounding community - improving access and spreading the regenerative effect of Tate Modern further southwards.

And yet, as we lay our plans, the success of Tate is threatened.

At the heart of all great museums lie their collections. A collection is the spring from which everything else flows - exhibitions and displays; research and scholarship to underpin education programmes and publications; above all, the transforming personal enrichment for visitors.

But a collection that does not grow in strength, range or depth, is a collection which slowly loses its ability to delight, excite and instruct. This is particularly true for Tate, which has a responsibility to collect the art of our own time.

Since the opening of Tate Modern and Tate Britain, Tate has increased the number of works from the collection on display by 50 per cent and our loan programme to other museums and galleries has never been busier. But these increased displays have also highlighted serious gaps in the collection.

Loans have sometimes compensated for these omissions, but they also serve to mask our longterm needs. We need major works of iconic significance in the classic modern area, and as a major international museum of contemporary art, we also need to establish a representative international collection of contemporary art.

On top of these ambitions, we must to rise to the challenge of extending our collection into new geographical fields such as Latin America, Asia and a more comprehensive view of the enlarged Europe, and into new media such as photography, film, video and digital media.

Over the past 20 years, cash available from government for acquisitions has been effectively frozen. At the same time market prices have risen - in some cases by as much as 400 per cent. For a period, the proceeds from the Lottery helped fill the gap on acquisitions of historic British art, but as the scope of good causes broadens, traditional sources of support for acquisitions are diminishing.

In the historical field, Tate has lost the opportunity to buy major works by Warhol, Bacon, Braque and Hopper in recent years because prices have been beyond our reach. With living artists, we have simply been unable to take advantage of the opportunities created by exhibitions to purchase their work at low prices. The net effect of this is that pictures leave the country and are not available to be shared with the national and regional collections.

We have been trying to do something about this. Last October we launched Building the Tate Collection, a long-term plan to enhance the collection we hold on behalf of the nation.

The campaign was spearheaded by extraordinarily generous pledges of works by more than 20 leading artists including Anthony Caro, Lucian Freud, Gilbert and George, Douglas Gordon, Antony Gormley, Richard Hamilton, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Anish Kapoor, and Rachel Whiteread. Tate Members committed £1 million of additional funds to the campaign and a number of significant individual donations were also received.

As a contribution to establishing momentum, a number of private collectors also offered to bequeath important works to Tate (including, from Lord Attenborough, a Sickert and a Freud). Furthermore, we have sought to introduce innovative forms of collecting, including sharing major works in video with foreign partners.

These are positive solutions to a problem that will not disappear. It involves Tate taking a lead to ensure that our public collections continue to grow. Our ambition over the next 10 years is to secure at least 100 gifts of works of art from collectors and artists and to build an acquisitions fund of up to £100 million.

We are also, with the Art Fund and other museums, campaigning for improved tax incentives to encourage people to donate works of art to museums and galleries. Lifetime gifts would transform our nation's collections across the country.

No museum can survive by standing still. We have a public duty to acquire works by living artists, to build the premier collection of British Art in the world and an outstanding collection of international modern and contemporary art. The Tate collection has inspired many people since 1897; with the support of artists, collectors, donors and the government, we can ensure a rich legacy for the future.

To celebrate its fifth anniversary on 12 May, Tate Modern offers Evening Standard readers free entry on that day to its August Strindberg: Painter, Photographer, Writer exhibition; quote "ES offer" in person at the box office. In addition, Tate Modern Handbook (RRP £16.99) can be purchased before the end of May at the discounted rate of £14.99 plus p&p free (UK only). To order, call 020 7887 8869 or email tgpl@

tate.org.uk quoting ref: ESTM.

Funds shortage threatens Tate

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