Over 190 works on paper, 60 sculptures and installations and 35 paintings entered the Tate Collection in 2006-7. The Collection lies at the heart of all our activities and making it accessible to the public now and in the future begins with ensuring that the works are managed, hung, recorded, maintained and conserved to the highest standards.
Last year we installed over 1,300 Tate works in displays and exhibitions in our galleries, as well as assessing, installing and caring for thousands of works from public and private collections around the world. The Gilbert & George exhibition alone required conservators to assess over 4,000 works on paper, and projects such as the new BP British Art Displays at Tate Britain, with a wide variety of different works including contemporary installations, were particularly challenging to install.
As well as condition checking all displays, loans and acquisitions, conservators undertook many specific treatments. A major project was the cleaning, preparation, transport and installation of The Kiss 1901-4 for the Rodin exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. The work was carried out in the sculpture conservation studio at Tate Britain, where the floor and lifting equipment were specially reinforced to cope with the 3,500kg solid block of marble. We also carried out an important treatment on Jeff Wall's A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) 1993 making it possible for this large lightbox to be loaned to an exhibition in the United States. Working with the National Physical Laboratory we used Finite Element Analysis to model the stresses in the structure in order to reconstruct the lightbox. The work was successfully completed in December 2006, and is attracting great interest from museums internationally.
Tate continues to acquire works ranging from paintings and sculptures to singleroom installations, photographs, prints and multimedia pieces. With materials becoming increasingly unusual and installations more elaborate, the task of conservation and art handling becomes more complex. This year we interviewed artists Pae White, Francis Alÿs, Ceal Floyer and Oscar Muñoz about the installation and conservation of their works, providing invaluable documentation for future generations.
We began the Tate AXA Art Modern Paints Project on 1 April 2006 and in September appointed two doctoral researchers and a research manager. The project focuses on the conservation of acrylics, which account for approximately 50% of paint sales over the last 30 years and we estimate are present in 30% of our collection of modern and contemporary paintings. In addition The Andrew W Mellon Foundation has awarded Tate a grant of £130,000 for research into the creation of replicas as a means of conservation, taking Tate's unrivalled collection of sculptures by Naum Gabo as its central focus.
The ability to access our Collection worldwide at Tate Online is only possible as a result of our Photography department's work in photographing and digitising our Collection, and this year some 1,269 works have been photographed.
Nearly 3,500 people, including scholars, museum and gallery colleagues and school groups, visited the Prints and Drawings Rooms and the Hyman Kreitman Research Centre, both at Tate Britain, where it is possible to handle individual works and examine rich archive holdings. We showcased our outstanding collection of over 4,000 artists' books in a series of talks, and we were involved in a symposium on the subject of documenting the creative process in collaboration with Chelsea College of Art and Design.
