Following the opening of Tate Modern and Tate Britain in 2000, Trustees resolved that the next priority for Tate should be a concerted campaign to build the Collection. The Board is delighted, therefore, to have made progress on various fronts during the last two years. In particular, we are extremely proud to have acquired two masterpieces in Joshua Reynolds’s The Archers and Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room, whilst having addressed the ambition to represent Arte Povera more forcefully and in terms appropriate to its singular international resonance. We are also thrilled to have made headway in navigating new geographies. Tate’s holdings in Latin American art have been improved through the addition of 34 new works, many with the support of the Latin American Acquisitions Committee.
Two major disappointments fuelled our desire to improve Tate’s long-term ability to collect. Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Omai, the centrepiece of the major Tate Britain survey of the artist’s work, looked as though it might be in reach when Tate secured a donor willing to contribute the £12.5 million necessary to acquire the masterpiece for the nation, but the owner refused to accept a matching offer made under the terms of export ‘stop’ and the DCMS subsequently agreed a temporary export licence for six years so that the work could be exported to Ireland where it is on view at the National Gallery of Ireland. Worse, since there is no possibility of redress, was the break up of a portfolio of nineteen watercolours by William Blake illustrating Robert Blair’s poem The Grave. An agreement to sell to Tate in 2003 at a price of £4.2 million broke down and the works were subsequently given an export licence at a value of £8.8 million, a figure which Tate was unable to match. In 2006 they were offered for sale individually in New York and many failed to reach their high reserve prices.
To guard against disappointments of this kind, a new initiative to sustain and develop the Collection was launched in 2004 with a pledge of significant gifts by leading artists including Louise Bourgeois, Antony Caro, Anthony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Paula Rego. This campaign, entitled Building the Tate Collection, aims to bring major works into the Collection through loan, gift and bequest, while creating a significant cash endowment to support future acquisitions, research and conservation. A start was made by committing £10 million from the proceeds freed by the return of the two stolen Turners in 2002, a sum which was augmented by a special pledge of £1 million from Tate Members. We remain hopeful of the campaign’s success and of our continuing difficulty to persuade the Chancellor to introduce tax incentives to encourage lifetime giving to museums. Meanwhile, we continue to use what opportunities we have to build the Collection and are particularly satisfied to have seen an emerging trend during the last two years of using the major exhibitions as a catalyst for improving artists’ representation (Jeff Wall and Bruce Nauman being worthy of special mention).
