Enfilade

From the Tate press release (8 September 2016). . .

Tate’s Board of Trustees today announced that Nicholas Serota will step down as Director of Tate next year. The process of finding a new director will begin immediately and is being guided by a specially appointed committee of trustees and external advisers including senior artists.

Nicholas Serota, © Hugo Glendinning, 2016

Tate’s Chairman, Lord Browne said: “We have been privileged to have in Nicholas Serota one of the world’s greatest museum directors and a leader for the visual arts on a global stage. Under his leadership Tate has become a preeminent cultural organisation nationally and internationally and one of the most visited in the world. He has championed British art and artists throughout the world while at the same time ensuring that Tate has become a much loved, open and accessible institution for the public. He leaves Tate in a strong position on which to build for the future. We wish him well as he takes on new responsibilities which will be for the benefit of all the arts.”

Nicholas Serota said: “It has been an exciting challenge to work with successive Chairmen, trustees and groups of extremely talented colleagues to develop the role of Tate in the study, presentation and promotion of British, modern and international art. Over the past thirty years there has been a sea-change in public appreciation of the visual arts in this country. Tate is proud to have played a part in this transformation alongside other national and regional museums and the new galleries that have opened across the country in places like Walsall, Margate, Wakefield, Gateshead and Nottingham. Tate has always been fortunate to have enjoyed the support of artists and to have benefitted from the international acclaim for the work of British artists in recent years. I leave an institution that has the potential to reach broad audiences across the UK and abroad, through its own programmes, partnerships and online.”

Nicholas Serota is a champion of visual arts throughout the UK and abroad. During his 28 years at Tate, he has helped to make Tate an organisation respected throughout the world. It was his vision that led to the creation of Tate Modern and the redefinition of the original gallery at Millbank as Tate Britain. He led the creation of Tate St Ives and has also sought to strengthen the role of Tate as a national institution through the further development of Tate Liverpool in taking a leading part in the celebration of the city as European City of Culture in 2008 and by establishing partnerships with galleries across the country through the Plus Tate programme.

During his term the range of Tate’s collection has broadened to include photography and the geographical reach has been extended across the world, taking a more global view. The collection has also been strengthened by major acquisitions of historic British art, including Wright of Derby’s An Iron Forge 1772, Reynolds’s The Archers 1769, Turner’s Blue Rigi 1842 and Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831. Additions to the modern collection have included major works by Bacon, Beuys, Bourgeois, Brancusi, Duchamp, Horn, Mondrian, Richter and Twombly, amongst many others. The contemporary collection has been developed into one of the strongest in the world. He was instrumental in helping to secure the ARTIST ROOMS collection given to Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland by Anthony d’Offay as a collection to be shown across the UK. In the past ten years, he has curated some of Tate’s most acclaimed and popular exhibitions including Donald Judd, Howard Hodgkin, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter and Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs.

He will take up the part-time role of Chairman of the Arts Council on 1 February 2017 and will continue at Tate until later in the year.

From the V&A press release(5 September 2016). . .

Martin Roth, Director of the V&A since September 2011, has announced to staff today he will leave his role in the Autumn after five years in post. Martin has presided over a succession of critically acclaimed exhibitions, most notably David Bowie is and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, achieving record visitor numbers, which last year reached the highest level in the Museum’s 150 year history—as well as the ambitious refurbishment of multiple galleries showcasing the V&A’s world-leading collections, including most recently the new Europe 1600–1815 galleries. He has also overseen major developments including construction of the new Exhibition Road entrance, courtyard and gallery, due to open in 2017, as well as developing significant strategic partnerships in Shenzhen, Dundee and with V&A East in the Queen Elizabeth Park, East London.

Martin Roth, © Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Under his directorship, Martin has established the new Design, Architecture and Digital Department and spearheaded new and socially responsive programming, from the Disobedient Objects exhibition to the current Engineering Season. He has also forged many innovative new partnerships, not least with the Venice Biennale, World Economic Forum and International Olympic Committee. The Museum was recently awarded Art Fund Museum of the Year 2016, the biggest museum prize in the world, and praised for its “exceptional imagination, innovation and achievement across the previous 12 months.”

Martin Roth said: “It’s been an enormous privilege and tremendously exciting to lead this great museum, with its outstanding staff and collections, and I’m proud to have steered it to new successes and a period of growth and expansion, including new partnerships around the UK and internationally. Our recent accolade as Art Fund Museum of the Year feels like the perfect moment to draw to a close my mission in London and hand over to a new director to take the V&A forward to an exciting future.”

Nicholas Coleridge, Chairman of the Trustees of the V&A said: “Martin’s tenure as Director has been marked by a highly successful period of creativity, expansion and reorganisation of the V&A. He has made a significant contribution to the success of this museum, and the Trustees are immensely grateful for all that he has achieved here. We are now starting the process of looking
for someone to take on the role and are fortunate to have an exceptional team in place to lead its activities and help build its future with the new Director.”

Martin intends to devote more time to various international cultural consultancies and plans to spend more time with his wife Harriet and their children, in Berlin and Vancouver. The V&A’s Board of Trustees will now begin the search to find a new Director.