Press Release

Picasso, Hirst and Munch - highlights of Tate exhibition programme 2012

Tate today announced an ambitious and varied exhibition programme for 2012 across all four Tate galleries. It will feature some of the most important artists of the twentieth century as well as outstanding contemporary artists including Picasso, Monet, Munch, Damien Hirst, Yayoi Kusama, Cy Twombly and Alex Katz, alongside a range of pioneering historic exhibitions including Pre-Raphaelites.

Tino Sehgal has been commissioned to create a work for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall as part of London 2012 Festival, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad. The artist’s new work is one of two projects which are part of the Cultural Olympiad, the other being the Tate Movie Project, supported by the Legacy Trust UK, BP and CBBC, the nationwide film animation project for children which will culminate in the production of a fully animated film.

The Tino Sehgal 2012 (17 July - 28 October 2012) commission is part of The Unilever Series.

Highlights of the 2012 programme include:

At Tate Modern

  • The first substantial survey of the work of Damien Hirst (5 April - 9 September 2012) in the UK, spanning over two decades of his output including many of his most iconic works, such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991 (the shark). The exhibition is sponsored by the Qatar Museums Authority.
  • Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye(28 June - 14 October 2012), devoted to a radical assessment of the works of the Norwegian artist, revealing his obsession with the rise of photography, film and stage production.

At Tate Britain

  • Picasso and Britain (15 February - 15 July 2012), the first exhibition to explore Pablo Picasso’s lifelong connections with Britain, exploring his rise in Britain as a figure both of controversy and celebrity and revealing the enormous impact he had on British modernism through the work of key British artists.
  • Pre-Raphaelites (12 September 2012 - 13 January 2013), showing how the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood shook the art world of mid-nineteenth-century Britain.
  • A substantial rehang of the Clore galleries with a new installation focusing on JMW Turner and a new series of In Focusgallery displays as part of BP British Art Displays.

At Tate Liverpool

  • Turner Monet Twombly(22 June - 28 October 2012), in which the important later works by these three artists, among their most stunning and experimental, will be brought together for a groundbreaking exhibition.

At Tate St Ives

  • To coincide with the 85th birthday of Alex Katz(19 May - 23 September 2012) one of America’s most important and respected living artists.

Tate received over 7.5 million visitors to its four galleries in 2010. It is the third most visited museum organisation in the world. Tate Modern had one of its highest visitor attendances in 2010 making it the second most visited free visitor attraction in Britain last year.

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