Director, Tate
Sir Nicholas Serota
Function
Chief Executive and Accounting Officer
Biography
- Director, Tate since 1988
- 1976–88: Director, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
- 1973–6: Director, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
- 1970–3: Regional Art Officer and exhibition organiser, Arts Council of Great Britain
- Member of the Visual Arts Advisory Committee of the British Council (1976–98); Chairman (1992–8)
Trustee of the Architecture Foundation (1991–9)
Commissioner on the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (1999–2006)
Board member of the Olympic Delivery Authority (currently).
Nicholas Serota trained at Cambridge and Courtauld Institute of Art, where he worked on Turner’s visits to Switzerland. But most of his practice as a curator has been in the field of twentieth century and contemporary art. Among recent projects, he curated the Donald Judd, Cy Twombly and Gerhard Richter exhibitions at Tate Modern, and the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at Tate Britain in 2006. His Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture Interpretation and Experience: The Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art was published in 1997.
Director’s Office
The Director’s Office provides ongoing support to the Director, Deputy Director, Chairman and Board of Trustees.The Office:
- leads Tate through the effective development, coordination and delivery of its strategy, co-ordinating the process of governance
- takes the lead on internal policy development and Tate’s contribution to external policy
- and manages a Tate-wide programme of external relations.
The Director’s Office, led by Samuel Jones, comprises Strategy and Policy, Corporate Governance, External Relations, and Administration.