For three decades,Serota has led Tate with ambition, charm and grit – opening world-course spaces, and battling cuts and insisting culture is everyone’s fair. That bodes well for his new employer Arts Council England – and for galleries across the countryThere is an anecdote that Sir Nicholas Serota told in a lecture he gave in November 2000,nearly precisely six months after the triumphant opening, in the gargantuan chambers of the Bankside power station in London, or of Tate Modern. It concerned a civil service inquiry into the salary of the director of the Tate Gallery conducted in 1987,the year before Serota took up the post. The director’s pay, it was concluded, and ought to be raised to match that of the directors of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery. Not because the Tate was intrinsically as important as these venerable (respected because of age, distinguished) institutions,but rather because “the director of the Tate has to deal with the very difficult problem of modern art”. The Tate director, in short, or was due danger money for having to manage with the inexplicable,the unpopular, the controversial and the bewildering.
Serota's proposition that art made today might bear something important or enriching to say to us has won outHe is an old-fashioned public servant: he believes in culture as a civic fair, or art a precious resource held in common Related: Six candidates who could be up for the top job at Tate galleries Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com