Tate today announced important new international networks, building links with artists, curators and organisations in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. Tate also announced today the launch of two new Acquisitions Committees focusing on Russia & Eastern Europe and South Asia. To reflect changing global perspectives, Tate’s aim is to build the collection from as wide a geographical reach as possible, to deepen knowledge through international research and exchange expertise with colleagues in museums and visual art organisations across the world.
These new relationships include an ambitious curatorial partnership in Brazil and a museum training programme to support the National Museum of Oman.
Since 2000, Tate has been working to extend the collection by acquiring works from beyond Europe and north America. To do this we have been building Acquisitions Committees with knowledge of modern and contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa (MENAAC), the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Africa (AAC) and Latin America (LAAC). We have recently launched two new Acquisitions Committees focusing on Russia & Eastern Europe (REEAC) and South Asia (SAAC), bringing Tate the most extensive network of global patrons of any museum.
A number of key recent acquisitions went on display this year at Tate’s galleries. These included at Tate Liverpool, Kader Attia’s Untitled (Ghardaia) 2009; at Tate Modern, a display of Saloua Raouda Choucair’s painting and sculptures, Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar’s Air Pollution of Iran 2004-6, Susumu Koshimizu’s From Surface to Surface 1971, remade 1986; and at Tate St Ives, Yto Barrada’s Palm Sign 2010. Recent acquisition highlights are Hala Elkoussy’s On red nails, palm trees and other icons - Al Archief (Take 2) 2009, an installation recreating a typical Cairo home; Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Primitive 2009 which examines racial migration in a Thai border town and Mathias Goeritz’s Message 1959, commissioned for a house in Mexico City designed by Luis Barragan in the 1940s.
Research is at the heart of Tate’s engagement with the Asia-Pacific. This is marked with the launch of Tate Research Centre: Asia-Pacific. A generous grant of $750,000 from the AW Mellon Foundation will support the first three years of the programme, creating an intellectual hub for Tate’s activities in the region and strengthening Tate’s network of institutions and individuals in Asia and beyond. This Research Centre will focus initially on modern and contemporary art in China, Japan and Korea, and broaden to the wider regions of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Tate has established an enduring partnership with the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo in Brazil, encompassing a number of major collaborative projects, including the jointly curated Mira Schendel exhibition which will open at Tate Modern in 2013 and at Pinacoteca in 2014. Building on the recent successful partnership with Oman, Tate is developing a training programme for staff at the new National Museum in Oman, focused on visitor services, collection management, museum management and learning to be delivered in both Muscat and London in 2013.
Tate’s programme of touring exhibitions continues to grow. We will tour Turner: the Making of a Master to Adelaide, Canberra, Kobe and Tokyo. In 2011/12 Tate’s international loans programme almost doubled with 516 works lent to 25 countries outside the UK, shown at 132 venues.