Catherine Wood
Function
Conceive and execute the curatorial programme of collection displays, exhibitions, commissions, live and film at Tate Modern, and represent the gallery externally and internally.
Biography
Catherine joined Tate in 2002, having previously held curatorial roles at the Barbican Art Gallery and the British Museum. She is a curator, writer and art historian specialising in performance and cross-disciplinary practices within modern and contemporary art.
She oversees Tate Modern’s artistic programme, including exhibitions, displays, commissions, performances, film screenings and community projects. In this role she leads the development of Tate Modern as a “living museum”, with an innovative programme that reflects both the historical trajectories and the latest developments in art as they relate to society, technology and sustainability.
Catherine has curated numerous exhibitions and projects, including Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Cecilia Vicuña: Hyundai Commission: Brainforest Quipu, Robert Rauschenberg (2018), and A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance (2015). She is the author of Performance in Contemporary Art (Tate Publishing, 2018) and Yvonne Rainer: The Mind is a Muscle (MIT Press, 2007), and writes regularly for exhibition catalogues and journals.
In recent years she initiated the Uniqlo Tate Play programme, inaugurated by Ei Arakawa’s Mega Please Draw Freely, and the annual Infinities Commission, inaugurated by Christelle Oyiri, which supports experimental new work by international artists working at the forefront of contemporary practice. She is Director Sponsor for Tate’s REACH Network and a Trustee of Towner Gallery, Eastbourne.
Tate Modern Division
The Tate Modern Division is responsible for the programme of exhibitions and collection displays of international modern and contemporary art from around 1900 to the present day, and for researching and building, through purchase or gift, Tate’s collection of international art.