When the Millais exhibition opened at Tate Britain in September 2007, one critic described it as a shock. 'I've discovered that I like the Pre-Raphaelites,' wrote Jonathan Jones in the Guardian.
Tate Britain has built a reputation for finding contemporary perspectives on great moments and figures in the history of British art, and reinterpreting them for a new generation. The John Everett Millais exhibition, for example, was the first since 1898 to examine his whole career, including the less fashionable landscapes alongside his admired Pre-Raphaelite works. It was a revelation.
Earlier in the year, an exhibition on William Hogarth brought together the full range of the artist's work to explore his eighteenth-century themes – the city, sexuality, manners, social integration, crime, corruption, charity and patriotism – from a twenty-first-century standpoint. 1807: Blake, Slavery and the Radical Mind marked the bicentenary of the 1807 Parliamentary Act abolishing the British slave trade, and this display was used as a springboard for other events. And in 2008, Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group was the first exhibition for 20 years to look at the influence of Walter Sickert, Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman and their circle just before and during the First World War.
The first major photographic exhibition at Tate Britain in summer 2007 charted national and photographic history together from the nineteenth century to the present day. The huge variety and scope of How We Are: Photographing Britain teased out remarkable stories about life in Britain and what it means to be British.
During the first half of 2008, the Duveen Galleries have been occupied by The Return of the Gods, the first exhibition to foreground British neoclassical sculpture. Works on show, including Antonio Canova's celebrated The Three Graces c1817–19, were displayed in a dramatic installation designed by architects Caruso St John.
The presentation of the Turner Prize in Liverpool provided an opportunity for Tate Britain to look back at the whole history of the Prize. Turner Prize: A Retrospective was a spectacular survey of perhaps the most important art prize in Britain, revisiting some significant moments in British art over the past 23 years including Damien Hirst's Mother and Child Divided 2007, which was one of four recent gifts by Hirst to Tate.
Turner Prize: A Retrospective also travelled to Tokyo – just one of the many shows to tour from Tate Britain this year. Millais went to Amsterdam and later in 2008 goes to Japan, and Hogarth Barcelona. In spring 2008, the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut showed The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting; and the exhibition heads to Istanbul and Sharjah after opening at Tate Britain in June 2008.
In the autumn of 2007, 89 works by JMW Turner travelled to the USA, first to Washington, DC and then to Dallas. In the absence of these works, Tate Britain rehung the gallery to focus on Turner's watercolours. David Hockney worked with curators on the selection of these works, which included Turner's recently acquired masterpiece, The Blue Rigi, Sunrise 1842. BP Summer Exhibition: Hockney on Turner Watercolours included Hockney's own selection of Turner's colour studies, or 'beginnings', with a commentary.
The relocation of the Art Now gallery to a new space at the heart of Tate Britain underlines our commitment to contemporary British art, and allows a much more varied programme of work by emerging artists.
After an exhibition of Peter Peri's drawings and paintings (April–June 2007), the first artist to exhibit in the new gallery last summer was Goshka Macuga. This was followed by Christina Mackie, and in February 2008 five artists were brought together for Strange Solution.
In the spring of 2008 the gallery organised a major retrospective of Peter Doig, spanning the past two decades of his career. This exhibition, the most comprehensive ever of his work, brought together more than 50 paintings and works on paper – some of them never previously seen in the UK – and opened up his art to a broader audience for the first time.
Contemporary sculpture at Tate Britain was given a particular boost early in 2008 when Sotheby's committed to supporting the Duveens Commission for the next three years, making it an annual event.
Following its launch in April 2007, the three-year research project, Tate Encounters: Britishness and Visual Culture, has to date engaged with over 300 students from London South Bank University.
The aim of the project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is to establish how narratives of 'Britishness' are contained in the Collection displays and curatorial practices at Tate Britain, and how migrant and diasporic families receive and value those notions.
Students are currently engaged in closer analysis of their encounters with Tate Britain in the context of their daily lives. Information about the research findings and data gathering is published on Tate Online.
Tate Britain has also continued with a varied programme of events and activities aimed at families and young people, including Art Trolley, Tate Forum, BP Saturdays and Late at Tate Britain.
