Tate Research
Tate
Tate Research
 

Research Posts

Researchers in Tate's Research Department

Fellowships

Tate Research Fellowships are available for scholars who seek to pursue their research at Tate for a period ranging from three months to three years. The Fellowships are non-stipendiary but offer hot desk facilities within Tate’s Research Department, based at Millbank, London.

If you are interested in applying for a Fellowship, please email Professor Nigel Llewellyn, Head of Research, Tate at research@tate.org.uk, explaining why you would like to be based at Tate and the relevance of your research to Tate.

Research posts

Tate is able from time to time to offer research posts relating to various aspects of its research programme. Often these posts are funded by external grant-giving bodies or are created in partnership with other institutions. Details of the application procedures to be followed are given with the information provided about each post.

Research placements

If you are a scholar or a post-graduate student seeking a research placement at Tate, you will need to complete the form below and send it, with your CV, to the Research Department Administrator (allie.biswas@tate.org.uk). Your application will be considered by the Head of Research and others, and you should receive a decision within six weeks.

Applications for a research placement due to start in less than six weeks, or requiring Tate’s support in an application process with less than six weeks before the deadline, will not be considered.

If you wish simply to undertake research in Tate’s Library or Archive, please contact the Reading Rooms directly (reading.rooms@tate.org.uk).

For information about internship vacancies, go to Working at Tate.

Download the research placement application form (RTF format, 39KB).

Studentships

Tate is delighted to host a growing number of doctoral students engaged in research at Tate. As part of the collaborative element of their doctorates, the students work at Tate in a variety of ways, gaining professional experience and contributing their ideas and knowledge to Tate's programmes and projects. Below is a list of current award holders.

Current studentships
Past studentships

Details of new awards, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, are advertised on Tate's website and elsewhere in the spring of each year.

Wendy Asquith
Haiti in Art: Creating and Curating in the Black Atlantic
University of Liverpool
Supervised by Dr. Dmitri van den Bersselaar, Professor Charles Forsdick, and Lindsey Fryer, Head of Learning, Tate Liverpool
September 2010 –
This AHRC funded Collaborative Doctoral Award will explore how artists have engaged with Haiti as a key site in the 'Black Atlantic', taking Paul Gilroy's concept as a starting-point for interpretation. Haiti has become a key site partly because of the historical significance of the Haitian Revolution and the subsequent history of Haiti as an independent state, and particularly because of the ways in which artists have both celebrated the Haitian Revolution and struggled with its legacies. The project will adopt a historical approach, taking as its point of departure the art of the Harlem Renaissance, but it will also trace Haiti in art to the present (both as a site imagined by artists elsewhere and as a site where contemporary artists produce art). In addition to the PhD, a web-based resource on the concept 'the Black Atlantic' will be developed as a legacy of the Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic exhibition at: www.liv.ac.uk/csis/blackatlantic with an interactive debating space at blackatlanticresource.wordpress.com/.

Bryony Bery
Replicas and Reconstructions: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Art
University College London
Supervised by Professor Briony Fer and Dr Matthew Gale, Head of Displays, Tate Modern
September 2007 –

There are various reasons for replicating works, historic and current, including making replicas where works were lost or have been destroyed, to artists' versions and editions, to works that need to be ‘remade' each time they are installed. Where possible I shall use as case studies works in Tate's Collection or works that are relevant to Tate's programme of displays and exhibitions to think through the ethical issues: the why, when and who makes replicas and their status in institutions and on the market.

Concentrating on art produced in America and Europe in the 1960s and exhibited at group shows such Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials, 9 and Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, I shall problematise finish in the context of fragile and ephemeral materials. This will allow me to consider the precariousness and ephemateriality of works and unravel the issues at stake when they are replicated. I shall also consider the continual materiality of works and their repeatability, and the problematic of ‘finishedness' and surface finish. The research will be technical and critical, arguing for the logic of a work, the logic of disintegration and the logic of replication.

'Inherent Vice: The Replica and its Implications in Modern Sculpture', a workshop held at Tate Modern in October 2007, demonstrated the apparent desire and anxiety of replicating works, especially twentieth-century sculpture. I attended this workshop as part of the collaborative aspect of my doctoral project and co-edited the papers from this event that were published on Tate's online journal, Tate Papers, in the Autumn 2007 issue. The collaboration allows me to use resources at Tate whilst also investigating works where issues surrounding replication may need resolving, be it acknowledged in signage or agreed with Trustees, artists or estates. A conference on replication is envisaged for 2010 and, as part of the collaboration, I shall be assisting Tate with this event and possible publication.

Elena Crippa
From Making to Presentation: London Art Schools 1960 - present
The London Consortium
Supervised by Professor Nigel Llewellyn, Head of Research, Tate
November 2009 –

This PhD is part of a Leverhulme Trust-funded project at Tate entitled 'Art School Educated: Curriculum Development and Institutional Change in UK Art Schools, 1960-2010'. The intent of my PhD is to research and compile a chronological, lively and original account of the history of institutional and curriculum changes in post-war London art schools, looking at selected case studies. Particular focus will be placed upon the salient moments when distinctive schools, for short or longer periods of time, reached a position of prominence because of particular curriculum innovations, presence of inspiring tutors, coalesce of interesting groups of students and range of internal debates and contrasts that made those schools particularly exciting places of production and debate. At the same time, through this chronological account, my research aims to demonstrate the influential role of London art schools on at least two levels. Firstly, playing a central role in the developments of British Art by acting as the first and most important filter in the selection of students, is the hypothesis that most British and UK based artists whose work is acquired by the Tate Collection have attended art schools in London. Secondly, acting as one of the most important sites of 'aesthetic jurisprudence' being art schools in the need of formulating and reviewing explicit criteria of selection and marking and, in this respect, explicit criteria on what defines an interesting and critically engaging artistic practice.

Katie Croll-Knight
The Early Photography of Man Ray
University of Essex
Supervised by Professor Dawn Ades and Dr Jennifer Mundy, Head of Collections Research, Tate 2006 –

My thesis examines Man Ray's early photography, beginning with his first signed photographs, 'Man and Woman' of 1918, and focusing on the rayographs, which Man Ray himself saw as the culmination of his previous work (in both photographic and other media).

Man Ray's photography is often discussed in isolation from his other work, but I shall contextualise it within his work across different media, showing how the rayograph represented the logical development of his painting, and examining how his assemblage and object work evolved in tandem with his photography, and is inseparable from it. I shall also examine the extension of the rayograph technique into film with Retour à la raison (1923). The contemporary photographic and artistic context will also be examined, looking in particular at the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who provided a model for Man Ray, demonstrating the potential of photography as an expressive medium, and was also a figure to rebel against. Throughout his writings Man Ray returns to the idea of his photography as the 'residue', 'ashes' or remains of the creative act and photography as performance or event will be an overarching theme. Play and chance, the verbal dimension of Man Ray's work, and the international reception of the rayographs will also be explored.

My collaboration with Tate centred on the 2008 exhibition Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia that opened at Tate Modern and toured to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. My main contribution was a 30,000 word chronology, which was published in the exhibition catalogue. This interwove the individual histories of the three artists, drawing out the connections between them, and encompassed both their professional and personal lives. Through my research I was also able to contribute to the content of the show itself by suggesting possible works and connections that could be highlighted in the exhibition. I also acted as a more general researcher, dealing with ongoing questions that arose, and providing an initial draft of the wall captions for the exhibition. In February I attended the installation of the exhibition at Tate Modern where I was able to examine the works up-close, many of them for the first time, and to discuss them with conservators from both Tate and lending institutions. Having worked on the project since the early stages of its development it was particularly rewarding to follow the process through to its completion. Working closely with the show's curator and attending and participating in curatorial meetings and discussions gave me valuable insight into curatorial processes and the evolution of a major exhibition.

Corinna Dean
Establishing Tate Modern Cultural Quarter
London School of Economics
Supervised by Professor Robert Tavernor and Donald Hyslop, Head of Regeneration and Community Partnerships, Tate
January 2007 –

My research seeks to explore the impact of the Tate Modern Cultural Quarter on regenerating the area around Bankside in Southwark. I look at the currency of the term 'cultural quarter' and examine its role in relation to the promotion of London as a world-class cultural city. When culture is competing on the same level as the economic prowess of a city, how does this impact on the cultural narrative?

Much debate has centred round the role of the museum as cultural and urban regenerator, leading often to an over simplification of events. In order to examine this late twentieth-century model of regeneration and to assess the extent of social and cultural regeneration I shall examine past precedents. Culture is playing a key role in the promotion of cities, but without strong programming and curatorial leadership the success of a building can be undermined.

I shall explore Tate's role and its relationship to hegemonic practice in the context of concepts of display and public mandate. Between 1975 when the National Theatre was completed and 1997 when the British Library was opened, no major cultural buildings were built in London (in contrast to the 'Grand Projects' of François Mitterand, which were all financed and directed by the French government). Here I shall examine the significance of Tate's autonomy vis-à-vis government and its relationship to sponsors. Central to my research are the questions of whether and how Tate has introduced a new paradigm of contemporary culture, unique to the institution.

As part of the collaborative element of my doctorate, Tate has made available records relating to the creation of Tate Modern and has allowed me to discuss my work with key figures within Tate.

Caroline Donnellan
Establishing Tate Modern: Vision and Patronage
London School of Economics
Supervised by Professor Robert Tavernor and Dr Victoria Walsh, Head of Adult Programmes, Tate
September 2006 –

Spectacular architecture has come to play a major role in museum design in the global arena. The converted Bankside Power Station building is a key feature in the success of Tate Modern. It is today the most visited museum of modern art in the world. The focus of my research is to provide an in-depth study of the cultural, economic and political aspects on how the gallery of modern art was established. Therefore, an analysis will be undertaken on the governance, the art works and the building which make up Tate Modern. My aims are to promote a better understanding of Tate Modern's building and collection; to raise awareness of the relationship between landmark architecture, culture and art in a world capital; and to estimate the importance of Tate Modern locally and nationally.

My work at the Tate includes using Tate's extensive archives, drawing on TG 12: Tate Modern Project, 1986-2000 and TG 1/ 3: Minutes of Trustee's Meetings. Additionally, I have looked at the architectural competition submissions. Tate's Library is a useful facility, and I have received guidance from members of staff.

Susannah Gilbert
Latin American Art in an International Context
University of Essex
Supervised by Dawn Ades and Tanya Barson, Curator, Tate
October 2008 –

In some Latin American countries conceptual art grew out of artists' responses to authoritarianism. I am particularly interested in Mail Art since the 1960s, the use of systems of circulation and exchange and the written word in art, and aim to look at the relationship between Mail artists from Latin America and those from the US and the links with Fluxus. The artists who will feature in this analysis include Eugenio Dittborn, Paulo Bruscky, Luis Camnitzer and Mira Schendel. I shall try to establish how this anti-art framework has been carried into the art of the 1990s and the present day. The preoccupation with non-art spaces and with mass media and circulation continues, with some artists attempting to challenge transnational capitalism.

Latin American Art collected in the UK in recent years has tended to reflect a social and political agenda, whereas cultural institutions had previously approached the field in an apolitical way. I aim to explore the sudden growth in collecting Latin American Art in Britain in the 1990s and, in particular, this focus on politically engaged art.

For the collaborative element of the doctorate I shall contribute to research into Tate's Latin American collection through writing texts about individual works and, where possible, interviewing artists.

Sabina Gill
Fotografia Polska: Adventures in Polish Photography since the 1960s
University of Essex
Supervised by Professor Margaret Iversen and Dr Simon Baker, Curator (Photography and International Art), Tate
October 2010 –

The Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko stated in 1986, ‘Poland is marginalised less by lack of information about art in the West than by the lack of information about art in Poland in the West’. A glaring lack of information on Polish art still exists in literature and teaching, with developments in Eastern European photography largely sidelined by North American and European histories. Attempting to redress this imbalance, I aim to explore the photographic practice of key artists and groups working in Poland since the 1960s, and interrogate ways in which Polish photography may challenge the histories and critical frameworks that govern Western European and Anglo-American discourses.

The post-1960s period marked a tumultuous phase in Polish history, years in which Poland was rebuilt in the wake of war and transformed both materially and culturally under Communism. State-sponsored ‘official’ photography prospered, but some artists channelled energy into underground art movements and regional amateur photography clubs. Art historian Piotr Piotrowski has suggested that ‘post-war art history in Central-Eastern Europe should include more of a national or state perspective, rather than a universal one’, as the difficulty of artistic exchange between European states caused art to develop independently within each country. Is it possible or desirable to define a Polish photographic style? Can art produced in Poland be understood as orientated toward the distribution of coded information, as critics have suggested, rather than the creation of a unique art object? Has this function changed in the work of contemporary Polish photographers? With the collapse of Communism in Poland in 1989 and the transition to a more democratic state, artists were afforded greater freedom and enjoyed opportunities to travel and study internationally. Can a photograph signify in the same way to artists working under Communism as it does to later generations of Polish artists? Does the photograph possess a different significance to a Western scholar returning to the work in 2010?

Cora Gilroy-Ware
The Classical Nude in Victorian Britain
University of Bristol
Supervised by Professor Elizabeth Prettejohn, University of Bristol, and Dr Martin Myrone, Curator, Tate Britain
October 2010 –
My PhD is object-based, focusing on the fortunes of the nude figure in the so-called Romantic period in British art. At the heart of the period 1800–40 was the controversy surrounding the Elgin Marbles, which was responsible for a vital and (for many scholars and connoisseurs) disturbing departure from the Neoclassical ideals of Winckelmann. This tradition has been reworked by British artists such as Joshua Reynolds and John Flaxman toward the end of the eighteenth century, and was then developed in ambiguous ways by William Etty, by far the most prolific painter of the nude in this period. Other factors, however, were also important. The classical nude in Romantic Britain needs to be seen in the context of the flourishing continental discourse around German Romanticism, while the contemporary response to the classical nude illuminates the confrontations between classicism and Christianity, in particular the ‘Gods in Exile’ problematic laid out by writers such as Heinrich Heine and, later, Matthew Arnold.
I aim to interrogate how representations of the nude figure in the period c.1800–40 negotiate contemporary Romantic Hellenism with concepts of a British national character. Does the overthrowing of conventional values associated with the classical ideal articulate elements of a distinctly Romantic shift in subjectivity and identity? How are modesty, desire and drapery employed in this process, particularly around the complex positioning of the female model? How does the Romantic nude articulate Britain’s relationship to the classical inheritance, and to the emergent discourses of national anthropology and of racial science?

Caroline Good
The Making of a National Art History: British Writers on Art and the Narratives of Nation 1660–1735
Supervised by Professor Mark Hallett and Professor Nigel Llewellyn, Head of Research, Tate
October 2009 –

This PhD is part of an AHRC-funded research project at Tate entitled 'Court, Country, City: British Art 1660-1735'. My thesis focuses on the four decades after the 'Glorious Revolution' when the political, religious, and bureaucratic transformations that established the modern British state were effected. I will concentrate on the written accounts of British art that were produced in these years and aim to provide an intensively researched and historically specific perspective on the theory and early historiography of British art between 1660 and 1735.

The emergence of an idea of a 'British School' of art has been one of the more fruitful lines of inquiry within recent British art history. Encompassing vital issues of cultural hegemony, artistic identity, and the interpellation of art and politics, the genesis and historiography of the 'British School' have been placed at the centre of debates about British culture in the long eighteenth century. To date, though, the discussion has focussed on the era between the emergence of Hogarth as a 'patriotic' painter and the early nineteenth century, with the ascent of Turner and Constable, and a powerful new idea of British national identity. As a result, accounts of British art which focus on this period have primarily looked to political milestones for their ordering principles. This traditional narrative, however truthful, corresponds to a Whiggish account of English political history. In re-examining the relationships between art, science, education, and politics in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the possibility of an alternative narrative framework for written accounts of British art during this period can begin to be developed.

Rikke Hansen
The Sublime Animal: Contemporary Art and the Animal Aesthetic
The London Consortium
Supervised by Dr John Sellars
July 2007 –

This PhD is part of a larger AHRC-funded research project at Tate entitled 'The Sublime Object: Nature, Art and Language'. My thesis feeds into the general research project by focusing on a neglected element in current debates relating to the status of the sublime: that of the non-human animal. In Kant's definition, the notion of the sublime is dependent on a nature-culture distinction which sees animals reduced to landscape furniture. Furthermore, according to Kant, the sublime is that for which we fail to find a concept. It follows that, that which escapes the very definition of the 'sublime', is itself without 'concept'. My thesis examines how artistic sublimity obeys a taboo on art, exercised through the expulsion of animal form. In recent years, art has taken an animal turn, with an increasing number of artists turning to the non-human animal as motif and material in their work. This PhD takes as its starting point the idea that animals present a specific problem to and for aesthetics rather than simply constituting a 'theme' within individual works. I will examine the interface between animal studies, contemporary art, and, importantly, twentieth-century aesthetics, most notably the philosophies of Theodor Adorno and Jacques Derrida who both wrote about animals, animality and the sublime. The focus on twentieth-century aesthetics does not constitute an attempt to find a theoretical framework to 'match' contemporary art practices; instead, the PhD aims to show how the present turn to animals in art comes out of an already existing concern within philosophical aesthetics.

Alex Hodby
Tate Modern and the Expansion of ‘New Institutionalism': New Developments in Art and Public Programming Practices
Goldsmiths, University of London
Supervised by Bernadette Buckley and Dr Marko Daniel, Curator (Public Programmes), Tate
September 2007 –

My research explores the implications of so-called 'new institutional' practices in art organisations and their programmes. Various approaches to art and its institutions will be addressed using debates in areas such as institutional critique, radical art history and critical curatorial practices. Social, political and economic influences on art institutions will be studied, as well as the reciprocal implications of 'new' programming strategies on these cultural forces. The roles of curator, artist and audience will be examined to help uncover the mechanisms of programming strategies. The implications of these strategies for the ongoing creation, negotiation, presentation and viewing of art will be considered.

Tate Modern is the main case study by which to test the ideas outlined above. I shall focus on specific projects and analyse data gathered from archives, events and interviews with staff to track the developments in their programming strategies. My link with Tate Modern will enable me to look closely at past and current developments, as well as future aspirations, in this particular institution's practices, and reflect on contextual circumstances over the course of my research. Particular attention will be paid to the practice and strategies of the public programmes team, and consideration will be given to the bringing of exhibitions and public programmes into a common frame. Tate Modern's influence on programming practice will be addressed, enabling an examination of the potential for 'new institutional' practices to create new platforms for the exploration of ideas.

Marion Martin
J.M.W. Turner and German Romanticism
University of Leicester
Supervised by Dr Matthew Potter (University of Leicester) and Dr David Blayney Brown, Curator (18th & 19th century British Art), Tate
September 2009 –

The idea of 'landscape' and its transformativity through changing light and weather conditions during a day or longer periods of time are fundamentally bound to ideas of the Romantic self. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries nature became an aesthetic prism for expressing subjective moods and desires. It also constituted a vocabulary for negotiations of idealised concepts such as beauty, truth and nationality. For German writers and scholars such as Schlegel, Novalis and Tieck the distinctive features of landscapes were important in the evolution of their theories, while philosophical assumptions became the premises of their records of nature.

My research explores the influences of imaginary German landscapes on the works and reception of J.M.W. Turner, who studied their geographic counterparts extensively as he travelled through the German states. Tate's Turner collection constitutes the key resource for this research, and I am hoping to have the opportunity to contribute to the cataloguing programme. In addition to Turner's sketches and paintings, the artist's manuscript material will also be of particular relevance to the project.

Alex Massouras
The Emergence of the Emerging Artist in London, 1960 - 2010
The London Consortium
Supervised by Professor Nigel Llewellyn, Head of Research, Tate
November 2009 –

This PhD is part of a Leverhulme Trust-funded project at Tate entitled 'Art School Educated: Curriculum Development and Institutional Change in UK Art Schools, 1960-2010'. My thesis investigates how pedagogical reforms in London's art schools have responded to and shaped changes in the identity of the artist since the first Coldstream Report. The research will focus on the metamorphosis of art schools into academic institutions, through the assimilation of art history and theory; their varying approaches to divisions among media disciplines; and their engagement with notions of professionalism and vocation. The conflict between institution and autonomy, or insider and outsider, will be explored in order to track shifts in the reception of young artists, and to contextualise the emerging artist phenomenon.

Antoinette McKane
Tate Liverpool as a Force for Social Renewal? A Critical Study of Tate Liverpool's Interpretation and Education Policies and Practices (1988–2008)
University of Liverpool's Centre for Architecture and Visual Arts (CAVA)
Supervised by Jonathan Harris and Lindsey Fryer, Head of Learning, Tate
September 2007 –

Tate Liverpool was founded in 1988 on the premise that the new gallery would 'in no way be a poor relation of its London counterpart but would have the distinct identity of being a gallery dedicated to showing modern art and encouraging a new younger audience through an active education programme.' The aim of this project is to assess this claim historically in the context of the enlarging of the Tate family of galleries and the changing nature of the city of Liverpool.

My thesis charts the history of interpretation and education policy and practice at Tate Liverpool in relation to the mission of the institution as a whole, museum practice in general and the changing face of education, interpretation and artistic practice. This involves analysing and evaluating the work of the Learning Department in relation to selected exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, examining the close links that have been made over the years with other cultural organisations, academic institutions and community organisations in Liverpool, and how the department has grown within the structure of the gallery over the past twenty years. The project treats Tate Liverpool as a case study in order to provide an original analysis of the changing mission of the museum in the city and to give insight into the changing nature of the interpretation of modern and contemporary art, highlighting the centrality of discourse and mediation in relation to this area of practice and exploring the interface between education and exhibitions.

The nature of the work undertaken at Tate can be divided into three categories: archival; documentary and observational. As an essentially historical study, this research makes use of the archival resources available at the Hyman Kreitman Research Centre, situated at Tate Britain, where the development of Tate Liverpool, and its educational provisions, can be traced through the analysis of original gallery records. At Tate Liverpool, analysis of working documents is employed to chart the development, from initial concept to final evaluation, of the key exhibitions and events. Observational research includes attending planning and project meetings at Tate Liverpool and participating in outreach activities undertaken in collaboration with Tate Liverpool's external partners, such as HMP Altcourse. The advice and experience of Tate Liverpool's staff also helps to direct and inform the research through regular supervision and more formal interviews.

Peter Moore
British Graphic Art and the Atlantic Empire: 1660–1735
University of York
Supervised by Professor Mark Hallett and Professor Nigel Llewellyn, Head of Research, Tate
October 2009 –

This PhD is part of an AHRC-funded research project at Tate entitled 'Court, Country, City: British Art 1660–1735'. Focusing on the wide-ranging body of graphic art produced between 1660 and 1735, my research explores the material, imaginative and personal links that helped tie Britain into an Atlantic economy during the period. As historians have come increasingly to recognise, the North and South American colonies and the West Indian plantations were a major focus of British overseas investment in these years, and colonisation in these regions had profound implications for the shaping of British cultural identity. The possibility of considering British art in an Atlantic context is especially provocative, given the assumptions which have traditionally been made about the development of a parochial or 'native' artistic tradition through these decades. One of the central ambitions of 'Court, Country, City' is to develop an expanded sense of the geographical reach and cultural character of British art in the period, and by setting British art and artists in their transatlantic contexts, my thesis aims to review and extend scholarly and more general assumptions about British art history.

Effectively tracing the circulation of capital, print and people and finding ways of rethinking British cultural history within this expanded geographical framework, my thesis shall offer a fresh interpretation of the artistic output of printmakers working in Britain at this time. The central focus of my research shall develop a number of case studies drawn from some or all of the following areas: cartographic and geographic imagery; the passage of individual artistic producers between homeland and colonies; racial subjectivities in representations of Atlantic communities; engraved ephemera and advertising relating to the establishment of British trade routes; 'curiosities', the natural world and botanical engraving; and the representation of the Atlantic economy in graphic satire.

Hayley Morris
Landscape in Blake: Visionary Topographies
University of Nottingham
Supervised by Professor Nicholas Alfrey, University of Nottingham, and Dr David Blayney Brown, Curator, Tate Britain
October 2010 – 
My research is concerned with the use and relevance of landscape in Blake’s work. Although Blake’s legacy in British landscape painting is widely acknowledged, existing scholarship tends to cite Blake as an artist predominantly concerned with the figure. My research will seek to counter this idea, and situate Blake within the development of the British landscape tradition. This will involve a close investigation of the settings of some of his most important works (held at Tate), focusing on Blake’s imaginative processes, his position as a ‘landscapist’ in relation to contemporary practitioners, and the use – and potential misunderstanding – of his imagery by his artistic followers and other interpreters.
More broadly, I intend to investigate – and to some extent deconstruct – the development of certain art historical traditions (the ‘visionary’ landscape) and relayed assertions (Blake as a Romantic, Blake as a figurative artist) within the historiography of British art. 

 

Stephanie Straine
Drawing Strategies in the 1960s and 1970s
University College London
Supervised by Professor Briony Fer and Dr Mark Godfrey, Curator (Contemporary Art), Tate
September 2009 –

My thesis addresses and attempts to account for the survival of figurative, illusionistic and gestural forms of drawing in the 1960s and 1970s – an era dominated by the diagrammatic and anti-aesthetic concerns of conceptualism and the radical deconstruction of the traditional art object. This research project will complicate the well-established theorisation of drawing as process or prototype, opening up the field to works, such as those in the ARTIST ROOMS collection, which fail to fit this model.

While the diagrammatic and working drawings of the 1960s and 1970s have received much critical attention, the idea of the finished drawing has been routinely overlooked. In this conception of drawing, the flux of process or the preliminary nature of working something out is substituted for a considered study of the activity, materials and techniques of drawing. In the work of Vija Celmins, Ed Ruscha and Joseph Beuys, and perhaps even Ellen Gallagher, Agnes Martin and Sol LeWitt (all featured in ARTIST ROOMS), drawing approaches a sensual, haptic quality that undercuts the received non-aestheticism of conceptual art. My thesis will reconfigure this relatively unexamined strand of drawing practice in terms of the oddity of perfection, extremity of finish, and a sustained, almost pressurised, model of looking.

During my collaboration with Tate I shall be based at the Research Department at Tate, studying and researching works of art in order to write short texts on the ARTIST ROOMS drawings for online publication. These texts will contribute to the interpretation and public awareness of these little-known drawings, the majority of which have been rarely studied or exhibited. By combining an academic thesis with the writing of accessible interpretative texts for the drawings, my collaborative PhD envisions a pluralistic approach to working with a permanent collection, the ultimate outcome being a significant scholarly reassessment of drawing's myriad strategies at this crucial juncture in the history of modern art.


Robert Sutton
Henry Moore: Sculpture and Media in Twentieth-Century Britain
University of York
Supervised by Dr Michael White and Professor Anne M. Wagner, The Henry Moore Foundation Research Curator, Tate
October 2010 –

This doctorate is part of an AHRC-funded research and curatorial project aimed at redisplaying and cataloguing Tate’s extensive holdings of Henry Moore’s work, with the intention of exploring the interface between twentieth-century visual cultures and Moore’s material practice. My approach to this project places translation at its centre, positing the artist’s creativity as a translation of his experiences and his ideas and see the artist’s role as that of interpreter or mediator.

It is my intention to look at the multi-directional exchange between Moore’s sculptures, his drawings of sculptures, and his drawings in advance of sculptures. Investigating Moore’s changing relationship with both his own works and those of others, with special regard to the meaning intended – and to be found – in the resulting dialogues helps to contextualise his practice artistically. The materials he chose to use in both two and three dimensions become key in his translation of ideas, while the many media he responded to enable us to explore his cultural milieu and map cultural transformations across the twentieth century, notably the internationalisation of the art world and the growth of mass media. It enables us to approach Moore’s ‘big view’ of sculpture as something necessarily global rather than something to be kept within the confines of British or European modernism.

Stephen Vainker
Experiences and Engagement: An Investigation of Young Persons’ Visits to ARTIST ROOMS on Tour
University of Exeter
Supervised by Dr Adrian Bailey, University of Exeter, and Emily Pringle, Head of Learning Practice, Research and Policy, Tate.
2010 –
ARTIST ROOMS (AR) seeks to engage new, young audiences with contemporary art by touring round the UK the work of important post-war artists, including Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe and Damien Hirst. Each room is devoted to the work of one particular artist, with the aim that audiences will be able to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of that artist’s work.
My research will look at how young people (aged 13–25) respond to AR. It will investigate whether, through being faced with a room of art reflecting a worldview that is not their own, young people’s identities may be transformed. Semi-structured interviews will be used with young people in order to gain insights into the outcomes of the AR experience for self-reflection and personal transformation.
My research will also examine the different types of young participants at AR exhibitions and events, and in their varied experiences. I shall work with Tate, National Gallery of Scotland and partner galleries to identify the different categories of young people who visit, the different methods of engagement used by these young people, and the impact of the frequency and duration of young peoples' visits on their experience.

Lynn Wray
Art, Process and Propaganda on the Political Left
Liverpool John Moores University
Supervised by Dr. Alison Rowley, Professor Juan Cruz and Dr. Christoph Grunenberg, Director, Tate Liverpool
September 2009 –

Propaganda art has generally been conceptualized both in art exhibitions and academic literature as something utilised by totalitarian regimes during wartime. My thesis aims to re-situate propaganda art as something that also takes place within a democratic context in peacetime by examining how artists have interpreted political ideology through their artistic practice in various emerging and established democratic nation states.

Within this broad theme I have chosen to examine the fundamental historic relationship between the visual arts and the global political left. This research project will demonstrate that the artistic visualisation of left-wing ideology cannot be reduced solely to the socialist realist model and is, in fact, characterised by aesthetic heterogeneity. My research will elucidate this aesthetic dimension in a comparative analysis of materials, production processes and modes of display above and beyond any direct reference to historical and political events at the level of the narrative content or subject matter of the work. In charting this history my thesis aims to identify how the global decline in leftist politics has affected the production of propagandistic or politically engaged artworks in the recent past and in the present, and to provide a platform for debate about the future potential of artistic processes within politics.

Victoria Young
Art Museum Attendance and the Public Realm: The Agency of Visitor Information in Tate’s Organisational Practices of Making the Art Museum’s Audience
London South Bank University
Supervised by Professor Andrew Dewdney and Dr Victoria Walsh, Head of Adult Programmes, Tate Britain
October 2010 –
In recent years the policy emphasis upon a socio-political instrumentality of audience development and its role in engaging audiences of broad social and cultural diversity has given way to a demand-led model, in which existing consumer or visitor needs are identified and met via strategic marketing. This adjustment towards a narrowed model of cultural consumption challenges the notion of the representational nature of existing audiences compared with the wider public realm.
My research aims to generate new knowledge and understandings of how art museums construct notions of audience and visitor experience. In particular, the research is interested in how practical notions of the cultural value of museum attendance and visitor interaction circulate within Tate through curatorial and gallery education practices, as mediated and framed by marketing. The research objective is to support new thinking about audience development based upon qualitative measures of visitor experience, with the core part of the research taking the form of an embedded organisational study.

Past students

Rob Knifton
Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-Garde
University of Liverpool
Supervised by Professor Jim Aulich and Dr Christoph Grunenberg, Tate
October 2005 – March 2010

My thesis discusses the nature of the urban environment as evidenced in the practice of art galleries. Beginning with an extended analysis of the 2007 exhibition at Tate Liverpool, Centre of the Creative Universe, I develop a theoretical framework situated around three key topics related to the city and museum: the application of narrative forms, equivalence of space, and archives of anamnesis and amnesia.

At Tate Liverpool I have researched and co-curated the exhibition Centre of the Creative Universe alongside Tate Liverpool Director Christoph Grunenberg and Assistant Curator Darren Pih. I contributed to, and co-edited, the catalogue, published by Liverpool University Press. The exhibition examined perceptions of Liverpool from the perspective of a number of artists, including: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Yoko Ono, the Boyle Family, and Rineke Dijkstra. It also included a specially-commissioned work on Brian Epstein by Jeremy Deller and Paul Ryan. I also helped to establish and manage the Tate Liverpool Postgraduate Resarch Forum, which offers postgraduate students a platform for presenting their work.

Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-Garde

Ali MacGilp
The London Art Market and the Formation of a National Collection at Tate 1926-1950
University of Reading
Supervised by Dr Anna Gruetzner Robins and Robert Upstone, Curator (Modern British Art), Tate
September 2006 – March 2011

My thesis looks at the way the London art world functioned in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and Tate's position within that system. It examines what works entered Tate's collection and the circumstances surrounding their acquisition. It also explores the important works that did not enter the collection, through lack of enterprise or the over-cautious attitude and conservative taste of Tate staff and Trustees.

It considers the structure of Tate as an institution, including its budget and function, and the relationships of its staff and Trustees with dealers, artists and collectors, mostly based in London. It was these social and professional networks, together with critics' judgements in the national press, which influenced purchases. The thesis examines the backgrounds and perspectives on art of the Tate Trustees and senior staff in order to ascertain the factors that contributed to the conservative nature of Tate's acquisition policy during this period.

The thesis uses Tate Trustee Board Minutes and correspondence alongside dealers' sales records, press cuttings and correspondence with artists. It locates works from Tate's collection by British artists Matthew Smith, Paul Nash and the British surrealists, and the European surrealists and modernist masters back into the London art market of the time of their acquisition. The galleries focused on are Alex Reid & Lefevre, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Zwemmer Gallery, Mayor Gallery, Guggenheim Jeune and the London Gallery.

Seph Rodney
Two Rooms: Locating the Meeting Place of the Visitor and the Museum
Birkbeck College
Supervised by Dr Gordon Fyfe and Dr Marko Daniel, Curator ( Public Programmes), Tate Modern
September 2006 – December 2010

The subject of my research is what is known about the visitor outside the majority of standard institutional logics. Certainly, a great deal is known about visitors to museums of modern and contemporary art. Demographic information is readily available, as is knowledge of habitual behaviour in the museum, motivations, ways of learning, who will not come and in general terms why. Given the competing interests of stakeholders within and without museums, the visitor is understood and treated, not according to the individual's needs, but according to the agendas that appear to coalesce in the room, at the moment and point of contact with art. Can an individual's contextualised experience — read through the prism of the space of the room, the history of a particular institution, the models of consumerism, standards of tourism, stated interests of curators, visitor services staff, and other museum professionals — shed light on what is at stake and for whom in the seemingly unadorned, simple act of viewing a work of art? This project seeks to test what certain museums and their staff say about their interest in the viewer against the actual experience of one person in different museums and different times in his life.

Tate Modern acts as a case study. I look at a particular room within it and I derive information from it through a phenomenological reading. This is reviewed against the narratives told by museum staff about the nature of the museum, what its aims are, along with what kinds of visitors they say they would like to welcome to the museum, what they hope these visitors get from the experience and how they should behave while in the museum. It appears that different departments have somewhat different views of these aims and of the desired visitor types. Through unstructured interviews with staff members and close reading of the texts produced by Tate, I aim to test certain hypotheses concerning the comprehension of the visitor and the uses to which this understanding is put by this institution.

Philippa Simpson
The London Art Market, 1790-1815: The New Exhibition Culture and the Staging of the British School
Courtauld Institute of Art
Supervised by David Solkin and Martin Myrone, Curator (18th & 19th century British Art), Tate
October 2005 – June 2009

My research is focused on the flood of imports entering London during the French War period, and the exhibition culture this generated.

As the consumption of Old Master paintings became an increasingly high profile business, and as the works entering London were of a far greater range and quality than previously seen, spaces for their display began to emerge as sites for the consideration of different national schools. Important sales, such as those of the Orleans Collection, formerly owned by a branch of the French royal family, provided the opportunity for inaugural exhibitions of Old Master art, and introduced new audiences to the spectacle of the display as distinct from the business of the sale.

My doctoral research has formed part of the development of the Turner and the Masters exhibition, opening in London in 2009, then travelling to the Grand Palais, Paris, and the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Since the start of my doctorate, I have been heavily involved with the curatorial administration of this project, and have offered support in many aspects of its organisation, including: loans, logistics, design, publicity, sponsorship and conservation, as well as research activities. I have acted as a point of contact between partner venues, as well as communicating with lenders and registrars. My work on the PhD has tessellated extremely closely with the life of the project, and each has been shaped by the other in a variety of ways. I have also been involved with staging a number of displays, including Hockney on Turner, and Visionary Landscapes, and have written interpretative materials and catalogue texts for shows, including a Turner exhibition travelling to Russia. I was involved with the funding proposals for the Imagine a Nation project, and am currently developing a new display for the Clore Galleries at Tate Britain for early 2009.


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