About Research

Research publishing shares knowledge generated through research at Tate and beyond. Our publications include the Collection Texts that accompany artworks in our collection online, large-scale digital collection resources, such as the Turner Catalogue, and Tate Papers, a peer-reviewed online journal and research platform.

Projects at Tate bring together specialists through interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships with organisations such as museums, universities, other independent research organisations (IROs) and industrial partners.

Tate’s network of doctoral candidates is mostly engaged in collaborative doctoral research projects. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Tate Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) scheme offers fully funded studentships for study towards a doctoral degree.

Successful candidates are jointly supervised by subject specialists at both Tate and their Higher Education Institute (HEI). Tate has up to three AHRC CDP studentships to allocate during each year.

Fellowships are mutually beneficial cultural and professional exchanges whereby individuals bring their expertise of working in other fields to Tate and are enabled to progress their research through funding and other relevant support.

The Fellowship Programme at Tate is principally delivered through the Brooks International Fellowship, which supports two international research Fellows each year to work with a Tate host team. Fellows respond to an open call on themes defined by Tate.

Tate’s Code of Good Research Practice brings together policies, standards and guidance to support people undertaking research at Tate. It applies to all those undertaking research on Tate’s premises, using its facilities or working on behalf of Tate. This includes staff, students, visiting or emeritus staff, associates, visiting scholars or honorary fellows, contractors and consultants. It sits alongside and is complemented by all other Tate policies with which research and researchers must comply where applicable.

Download Tate’s Code of Good Research Practice [PDF, 241Kb]

The Research Advisory Group provides advice and support across all areas of research at Tate. They support and advocate for research across our museums, ensuring a climate is created that allows good research practice. Members proactively support equality, inclusion and diversity in the design and delivery of research. Members of the group provide advice on:

• Implementation of the Tate Research Strategy
• The shape of the ongoing programme of research at Tate
• Policies related to research
• Funding applications
• Ethical review and approval of research proposals
• The merit and feasibility of proposed research
• Research partnerships and connections
• Resource allocation
• Strategic recommendations to ensure the strategy is implemented in a practicable and workable way
• Matters relating to research misconduct and resolution
• Create links between Tate and the research communities within the arts and heritage sector for whom our work has relevance

Membership is by nomination by the Director of Research and Interpretation based on the following requirements:

• Experience in leading or delivering externally funded research projects
• Expertise in areas related to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (E,D & I)
• Data compliance, management and risk
• Research methodologies
• Understanding of the research funding landscape
• Awareness of current scholarship in arts and humanities research

Members include Tate colleagues working across disciplines and sites, and two external members who represent the wider research community. Membership is renewed every three years.

This 2022 revised Research Strategy is informed by Tate’s overarching mission, purpose and vision¹ and the three current institutional priorities:

• Achieving change in who engages with Tate
• Achieving change in who works for Tate and how they are looked after when they do
• Using the collection more to meet the needs of our public and business model²

Vision for Research at Tate

To create a vibrant research culture across Tate that generates high quality³ ethical and sustainable research about art, ideas and practices of institutional, national and international significance, shared openly and accessibly.

Aims

• To enrich Tate, developing new knowledge and partnerships, whilst enhancing the quality and originality of our ideas and the thoughtfulness and effectiveness of our practice, always mindful of the capacity of staff and collaborators
• To contribute to scholarly and practice communities, supporting and providing leadership across the sector and generating new insights that build and embed equitable, transparent, anti-racist research practices at Tate and more widely
• To enhance people’s knowledge and experience, developing and exchanging knowledge equitably and ethically in ways that engage people within and beyond the academic sector and Tate’s existing core audiences

Objectives

• To deepen and widen knowledge and understanding of Tate’s collection and its history, increasing access to information, and supporting informed criticality towards its interpretation
• To support and facilitate research by curators and other Tate staff that contributes to and extends from a diverse and innovative public programme, including displays, exhibitions, events and publications
• To collaborate with colleagues across Tate to nurture and showcase the range of research activity taking place across the organisation, embedding ethical, care-full scholarly and practice-based research
• To work in collaboration with colleagues at Tate and externally to support major externally funded research initiatives – notably the British Art Network and Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational
• To work with academic and non-academic collaborators, generating insights and knowledge to inform relevant disciplinary fields and provide solutions to challenges encountered in Tate’s practice and more widely
• To raise the profile of research internally and externally, communicating its value and relevance

Priority themes

Recognising Tate’s institutional priorities, the following interconnected, inter-departmental and cross-disciplinary themes provide a framework through which research activity across Tate can operate. Research on and around the collection underpins each theme, while digital is a feature of all four. Research across Tate will not be confined to these themes, however particular attention and resources will be devoted to furthering enquiry and activity in these areas.

• Curating⁴ and the collection in relation to the global, national and local
  • Interrogating the transnational
  • Resituating British art; its history, generation, acquisition, cataloguing and display
• Innovations in collection management, development, conservation and access
  • Addressing the evolving needs of Tate’s diverse collection alongside developments in library and archival practice
  • Progressing museum practices and histories
• Contemporary concerns including decoloniality,⁵ representation, diversity and identity politics; their impact on art museum collections, practices, structures and audiences
  • Ecology, sustainability and the climate emergency
• Creative learning and new models of public and participatory practice
  • Interrogating and evidencing the nature and value of learning and engagement with and through art/Tate’s collection and innovations in museum participation

Notes

^{1 Tate’s mission is to promote the public understanding and enjoyment of British, modern and contemporary international art. Tate’s purpose is to champion the right to art for everyone. Tate’s vision is to serve as an artistically adventurous and culturally inclusive art museum for the UK and the world, and to be open, bold, rigorous and kind in all that we do.}

^{2 The institutional priorities are also framed by two principles that underpin all that Tate does ‘in order to protect our future survival’:
(1) Action to address the climate emergency and social equity
(2) Evolving a business model that supports our vision and mission.}

^{3 We understand ‘high quality’ research to have a clear focus and a creative, critically engaged and care-full (in the sense of being full of care) process that evidences appropriate methods of enquiry, engages a broad range of perspectives and contributes significant new insights that are communicated to our target audiences.}

^{4 We understand ‘curating’ in the expanded sense, ‘as a multidimensional role that includes critique, editing, education and fundraising… as a way of thinking in terms of interconnections: linking objects, images, processes, people, locations, histories, and discourses in physical space’ (Maria Lind, Performing the Curatorial: Within and Beyond Art, 2012).}

^{5 The terms ‘decolonisation’ and ‘decolonial’ are increasingly under scrutiny and are not clearly defined or consistently used within the cultural sector. We have adopted the term ‘decoloniality’ here to acknowledge the work the museum and Research are doing to attempt to undo ‘the legacies and ongoing relations and patterns of power established by external and internal colonialism’ (Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analysis, Praxis, 2018, p.16).}

Published August 2022

By appointment, view drawings, prints and more from Tate’s collection not currently on display in the galleries. Find out more or email our team at studyroom@tate.org.uk to book a visit.

Our Library is a centre of excellence for art historical research, its holdings include half a million publications on British art since 1500, and international art since 1900:

• Books, journals, ephemera, and electronic resources about art and artists
• Exhibition catalogues from the late 19th century to recent contemporary shows
• Artists’ books, photobooks, and zines from the 1960s to the present day
• Search our Library catalogue

Our Archive collections contain over a million items related to artists, art world figures and art organisations in Britain:

• Artists’ personal papers, letters, writings, sketchbooks, and maquettes
• Recordings and photographs of artists, their studios, and installation shots
• Artist-designed posters

Public Records document the full range of Tate's activities, with thousands of records from 1897 onwards, including:

• Records of exhibitions from 1911 and Board of Trustees’ minutes
• Key events from Tate’s history including the 1928 flood and the impact of World War II
• Tate’s expansion to Liverpool, St Ives, and Bankside – Tate Modern
• Search our Archive and Public Records catalogue

Book an appointment to visit our Library and Archive Reading Rooms at Tate Britain, or browse the catalogues below.

The Shared Research Repository for cultural and heritage organisations, hosted by the British Library. This digital repository brings together research from institutions including the British Museum, National Trust and Science Museum through a single point of access and discovery.

The repository aims to increase the visibility and impact of research, making the knowledge generated by cultural institutions easier to find and explore.