Tate Britain has appointed Alex Farquharson as its new director to replace the Lisbon-bound Penelope Curtis.
Farquharson is the founding director of Nottingham Contemporary, one of a number of UK regional contemporary art galleries to have been created in the last 10 years.
Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, said Farquharson had established Nottingham Contemporary “as one of the leading galleries in the UK. He has created a programme that serves local and national audiences, working closely with artists and reflecting history as well as the present.”
Farquharson, 45, replaces Curtis whose five-year tenure at Tate Britain was often railed at by critics. She was widely praised for the gallery’s rehang and for overseeing a £45m renovation, but the exhibition programme was often seen as wanting. One critic, the Sunday Times writer Waldemar Januszczak went as far as calling for her to be sacked: “Curtis has to go. She really does.”
Her departure and Farquarson’s arrival means all the national art galleries in the UK are run by men.
Farquharson said he was delighted to be joining Tate. “As the home of 500 years of British art, Tate Britain has a unique and fascinating position in the cultural life of the nation. I look forward to working with a highly skilled and experienced team of curators to share these histories with audiences of all kinds.”
Before Nottingham, Farquharson was a visiting tutor and research fellow at the Royal College of Art, London. He sits on the Arts Council collection’s acquisitions committee. In 2009 he was on the selection committee which chose Steve McQueen for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. His time at Nottingham has been widely praised with the gallery in the first five years attracting more than a million visitors.
One of his expected jobs at Tate Britain will be to chair the panel deciding who should win the Turner Prize. Tate said Farquharson would take up his new job as director in the late autumn of this year.
