In late 2005 Tate was one of eight institutions within the United Kingdom to be awarded academic analogue status by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This status, which took effect from April 2006, allows Tate to apply for government research funding alongside universities, and we hope this will offer new opportunities for the further development and strengthening of our research programme.
Tate's research programme involved continued work in areas of established strength, notably in the fields of exhibition-making, care of the Collection and cataloguing, as well as the launch of several major projects, some with national and international partners. We are very grateful to the funding bodies that supported these projects, notably the AHRC Research Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacies, the Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, the European Commission, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Getty Grant Program.
The study of British art was boosted by the allocation of £1 million from insurance monies received by Tate, to support the cataloguing of our extensive holdings of works on paper by JMW Turner (approximately 37,000 works). Tranches of entries will be published on Tate's website as they are completed, with specially designed electronic search aids. Work continued on other cataloguing projects focusing on sections of Tate's art collection: Tudor and Stuart period works, the Camden Town Group, Dada and Surrealist works. Archive cataloguing during this period focused on the major archives of John Piper, Ithell Colquhoun and Barbara Reise, as well as numerous small collections, and Tate's own historic acquisition and exhibition files.
Within Conservation, the first phase of the project The Conservation of Modern Paints was concluded with an international symposium organised in collaboration with project partners the Getty Conservation Institute and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Notable new collaborations were launched including MultiEncode, a project to develop laser technology to examine the condition of works of art, and a project exploring the preservation and presentation of installation art. Meanwhile, a ground-breaking partnership with the Universities of Southampton and Nottingham Trent to develop sealed frames that exclude oxygen and protect art works from light damage was awarded £400,000 by the Department of Trade and Industry.
Partnerships and interdisciplinarity research continued to prove fruitful avenues for innovative work. In 2004 Tate joined a consortium with the New Art Trust, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to establish best practice guidelines for the care of time-based media works. Tate also began to explore the ethical, museological and practical issues involved in the replication of sculptures made with disintegrating materials, seeking to work with conservators, curators and art historians from around the world.
Exhibitions are central to Tate's research programme and over the last biennium Tate produced no less than 47 catalogues to accompany its exhibitions at its four sites. Several of the catalogues were short-listed for prizes for their contents and design. Tate Publishing has also published the outcomes of primary research in the fields of performance art and installation art, and has made available through republication or co-production key texts and sources that will facilitate future research.
More generally, progress was made on a wide range of other research projects and research-led activities, including the writing of short interpretative texts on new acquisitions and the programme of artist interviews. The teaching of academic courses by Tate staff and the staging of conferences and research seminars helped strengthen the research culture within Tate and links with individual scholars and partner institutions. Over the last biennium Tate was awarded five AHRC Collaborative Doctoral awards, and is participating in an AHRC funded project to create a flexible interface and retrieval system for online materials. The AHRC Research Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacies organised a number of seminars and study days at Tate, and contributed to the conceptualisation of part of the redisplay of the Collection at Tate Modern. Launched in spring 2004, the peer-reviewed online journal Tate Papers reflects the many facets of research undertaken at, or in association with, Tate, and publishes papers written by both Tate staff and external authors on subjects related to Tate's programme.
