As the national gallery of British art, Tate Britain's role is to promote British art and to encourage debate on Britain's visual culture both nationally and internationally. This has been achieved in a number of ways this year, from world-class exhibitions of British artists John Constable and William Hogarth and a high-profile new commission by Mark Wallinger, to pioneering education partnerships and events. Our awareness of JMW Turner internationally was particularly prominent this year, culminating in the successful campaign to save The Blue Rigi, Sunrise 1842.
One of Tate Britain's great strengths is approaching the historic from a contemporary perspective and exhibitions during this period were some of the best examples of this to date. Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination explored the work of Henry Fuseli and William Blake in the context of the 'Gothic', the taste for fantastic and supernatural themes which dominated British culture around 1770–1830 and which still fascinates many contemporary artists, writers and film producers.
Constable: The Great Landscapes brought together an unprecedented gathering of the artist's seminal six-foot exhibition canvases beside their full-scale preparatory sketches, offering a rare perspective on John Constable's working methods. Hogarth was unique in exploring the full range of the artist's work and demonstrated that he was not only a brilliant satirist, but also a remarkable painter. Holbein in England assembled the most important collection for over 50 years of the work of the first great artist in Britain and, again, included extraordinary loans from around the world. It was the second most-visited exhibition ever held at Tate Britain and contributed to an overall visitor figure of over 1.6 million during this period.
The Constable exhibition travelled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC at the end of 2006 before moving on to the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, in early 2007. Hogarth was shown at the Louvre before Tate Britain and resulted in a new appreciation of the artist by French audiences, prompting over 210,000 people to visit. A wonderful display, Stubbs: A Celebration, which marked the 200th anniversary of the artist's death, travelled to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool during the summer of 2006 and on to The Frick Collection, New York, at the beginning of 2007.
Tate Britain also plays an active role in promoting contemporary art and this year exhibitions included the most comprehensive retrospective to date of paintings by Howard Hodgkin. We also staged the Tate Triennial 2006: New British Art, curated by Swiss curator Beatrix Ruf, and the annual Turner Prize, featuring the work of short-listed artists Tomma Abts, Phil Collins, Mark Titchner and Rebecca Warren. The BP British Art Displays were refreshed in March 2007 with a focus on contemporary art, and highlights included work by Jeremy Moon and Rasheed Araeen. Our continuing commitment to emerging artists was seen in the Art Now and Art Now Lightbox series, of which there were 8 projects.
This year's Duveen Galleries Commission was Mark Wallinger's State Britain 2006, a painstakingly detailed re-creation of peace campaigner Brian Haw's protest in Parliament Square. Running the length of the Duveen Galleries, this dramatic installation sparked much media debate on the very topical issue of freedom of expression, which spread beyond the arts pages, making it a perfect project for our Interpretation and Education curators to work closely with the artist on.
Our education team has also helped deliver our ambition to examine the many aspects of British culture from a variety of perspectives. We programmed a number of exciting discussions and talks including the annual BP British Art Lecture, given this year by broadcaster and writer Armando Iannucci, and debates around censorship in the arts, and art and science. Education and exhibition curators closely collaborated on Seeing Africa, a display which examined 'Africanist' paintings and sculptures made by European artists from the Collection of Freddie Booker-Carson and Simon Carson, and East-West: Objects Between Cultures, a display organised to coincide with the Festival of Muslim Cultures which explored Christian-Muslim exchange over the past 500 years.
