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| Why it's great news that Frances Morris will run Tate Modern | Why it's great news that Frances Morris will run Tate Modern |
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| The first time I met Frances Morris she was trying unsuccessfully to get a model aeroplane factory working. Now she is to run a power station that has become one of the world’s leading galleries of modern art. | The first time I met Frances Morris she was trying unsuccessfully to get a model aeroplane factory working. Now she is to run a power station that has become one of the world’s leading galleries of modern art. |
| Morris’s appointment as the new director of Tate Modern has thrilled the art world. Tate supremo Sir Nicholas Serota describes her as “a brilliant and imaginative curator”, while the praise from those outside the gallery is, if anything, warmer. She is “just a lovely person”, “very decent”, “fiercely intelligent and very generous with it”, the experts enthuse. | Morris’s appointment as the new director of Tate Modern has thrilled the art world. Tate supremo Sir Nicholas Serota describes her as “a brilliant and imaginative curator”, while the praise from those outside the gallery is, if anything, warmer. She is “just a lovely person”, “very decent”, “fiercely intelligent and very generous with it”, the experts enthuse. |
| Related: Frances Morris to become new Tate Modern chief | Related: Frances Morris to become new Tate Modern chief |
| Can anyone be this good? I keep casting my mind back to that balsa wood aeroplane fiasco. In fact, this quixotic enterprise revealed exactly what is so special and brave about Morris as a curator of adventurous art. Back in 1999 when the former Bankside power station was still a building site, its last galleries being painted and prepared for the opening displays, cappuccino machines put in the cafes and the Turbine Hall painted grey, Morris curated an exhibition at the old Tate on Millbank (now Tate Britain) by legendary American artist Chris Burden. | Can anyone be this good? I keep casting my mind back to that balsa wood aeroplane fiasco. In fact, this quixotic enterprise revealed exactly what is so special and brave about Morris as a curator of adventurous art. Back in 1999 when the former Bankside power station was still a building site, its last galleries being painted and prepared for the opening displays, cappuccino machines put in the cafes and the Turbine Hall painted grey, Morris curated an exhibition at the old Tate on Millbank (now Tate Britain) by legendary American artist Chris Burden. |
| This intense and visionary Californian maverick, who died last year, made his name in the 1970s with disturbing, even antisocial acts that put his life and sometimes apparently the lives of others at risk. He stood still while a friend shot him in the arm. He had himself crucified on a Volkswagen. He fired a pistol at a passing airliner. Burden’s proposal for the Tate (it was still “the” Tate in those days) was more gentle yet equally bonkers. He wanted to build an automated production line producing toy planes that people could fly around the lofty Duveen Gallery. | This intense and visionary Californian maverick, who died last year, made his name in the 1970s with disturbing, even antisocial acts that put his life and sometimes apparently the lives of others at risk. He stood still while a friend shot him in the arm. He had himself crucified on a Volkswagen. He fired a pistol at a passing airliner. Burden’s proposal for the Tate (it was still “the” Tate in those days) was more gentle yet equally bonkers. He wanted to build an automated production line producing toy planes that people could fly around the lofty Duveen Gallery. |
| Here was one of the most dangerous artists of modern times working with what had been, until the 1990s, a somewhat staid institution. Morris, already the museum’s boldest curator with the firmest grasp on what was happening and how the art of the next century (this one) would look, ended up with the job of explaining why Burden’s Heath Robinson-ish production line never worked. Instead it just spluttered and died: no planes were ever launched. | Here was one of the most dangerous artists of modern times working with what had been, until the 1990s, a somewhat staid institution. Morris, already the museum’s boldest curator with the firmest grasp on what was happening and how the art of the next century (this one) would look, ended up with the job of explaining why Burden’s Heath Robinson-ish production line never worked. Instead it just spluttered and died: no planes were ever launched. |
| This was still, however, a great moment in the history of the Tate. A moment when pure experiment and vision took over a national institution. Who is Frances Morris? She’s the woman who lets artists’ ideas fly. | This was still, however, a great moment in the history of the Tate. A moment when pure experiment and vision took over a national institution. Who is Frances Morris? She’s the woman who lets artists’ ideas fly. |
| Morris is also one of the true architects of Tate Modern. She has already had a far greater influence on its identity than any of the three men who have served as director since it opened in 2000. The first, Lars Nittve, had an unhappy experience – even appearing on the brink of tears in one encounter I had with him. He left the year after the museum opened, eventually succeededby Vicente Todolí until 2010, and then Chris Dercon who resigned last spring. | Morris is also one of the true architects of Tate Modern. She has already had a far greater influence on its identity than any of the three men who have served as director since it opened in 2000. The first, Lars Nittve, had an unhappy experience – even appearing on the brink of tears in one encounter I had with him. He left the year after the museum opened, eventually succeededby Vicente Todolí until 2010, and then Chris Dercon who resigned last spring. |
| “The role of director of Tate Modern has always been an odd one”, observes Sacha Craddock, chair of the New Contemporaries exhibitions that map the ever-changing changing art scene. “It’s always been a tokenistic role for people coming in from abroad. The role is slightly spurious. Vicente came and he thought Britons were completely insane.” | “The role of director of Tate Modern has always been an odd one”, observes Sacha Craddock, chair of the New Contemporaries exhibitions that map the ever-changing changing art scene. “It’s always been a tokenistic role for people coming in from abroad. The role is slightly spurious. Vicente came and he thought Britons were completely insane.” |
| It’s not hard to see why directors of Tate Modern have problems establishing themselves – as, incidentally, do directors of Tate Britain. The Tate is strongly identified with its overall director, Serota, who is recognised as the architect of its success. | It’s not hard to see why directors of Tate Modern have problems establishing themselves – as, incidentally, do directors of Tate Britain. The Tate is strongly identified with its overall director, Serota, who is recognised as the architect of its success. |
| Some may conclude that Morris has taken up a poisoned chalice. It has taken since last spring to announce a replacement for Dercon. Is she fated to fade away as previous incumbents have or even, God forbid, to depart in the same way as the last director of Tate Britain, who left amid a storm of savage criticism? | Some may conclude that Morris has taken up a poisoned chalice. It has taken since last spring to announce a replacement for Dercon. Is she fated to fade away as previous incumbents have or even, God forbid, to depart in the same way as the last director of Tate Britain, who left amid a storm of savage criticism? |
| That seems unlikely. Morris is almost certainly in it for the long haul and is well set to be the first Tate Modern director to really stamp her own ideas and passions on this mighty museum. In fact she has already done so. Tate Modern is a museum in Morris’s mould. It bears her intellectual signature. She is one of the small team of people who have made it what it is, and still more impressively, she has made the museum express her own sensibility and enthusiasms. | That seems unlikely. Morris is almost certainly in it for the long haul and is well set to be the first Tate Modern director to really stamp her own ideas and passions on this mighty museum. In fact she has already done so. Tate Modern is a museum in Morris’s mould. It bears her intellectual signature. She is one of the small team of people who have made it what it is, and still more impressively, she has made the museum express her own sensibility and enthusiasms. |
| Nothing defines Tate Modern quite so much as the giant metal spider the great modern artist Louise Bourgeois created for its opening in 2000. It was recently announced that Bourgeois – and her spider, Maman – will be at the heart of the opening displays in the new enlarged museum when it opens in June. Bourgeois is interwoven with Tate Modern. This artist who only started to win recognition for her eerie phantasms of sexuality and memory late in her life, and who went on working up until her death in 2010 at the age of 98, is to Tate Modern what Jackson Pollock is to the Museum of Modern Art in New York – its hero, paragon and symbol. | Nothing defines Tate Modern quite so much as the giant metal spider the great modern artist Louise Bourgeois created for its opening in 2000. It was recently announced that Bourgeois – and her spider, Maman – will be at the heart of the opening displays in the new enlarged museum when it opens in June. Bourgeois is interwoven with Tate Modern. This artist who only started to win recognition for her eerie phantasms of sexuality and memory late in her life, and who went on working up until her death in 2010 at the age of 98, is to Tate Modern what Jackson Pollock is to the Museum of Modern Art in New York – its hero, paragon and symbol. |
| Morris is the architect of that brilliant marriage between this still-young British museum and the French-American artist who met Pierre Bonnard as a child and was taught by Fernand Léger. Her championing of Bourgeois goes back to a superb 1995 exhibition of contemporary art that she curated in collaboration with the late critic Stuart Morgan. This show, remembers Craddock, marked the Tate’s “rather late in the day coming to the contemporary”. It captured the visceral mood that made modern art so gripping in the 90s – blood and chemistry, flesh and death. Works such as Mona Hatoum’s endoscopy video of the body’s interior and Bill Viola’s ghostly installation Tiny Deaths were joined by two recreations of rooms from Bourgeois’ childhood in early 20th-century France. | Morris is the architect of that brilliant marriage between this still-young British museum and the French-American artist who met Pierre Bonnard as a child and was taught by Fernand Léger. Her championing of Bourgeois goes back to a superb 1995 exhibition of contemporary art that she curated in collaboration with the late critic Stuart Morgan. This show, remembers Craddock, marked the Tate’s “rather late in the day coming to the contemporary”. It captured the visceral mood that made modern art so gripping in the 90s – blood and chemistry, flesh and death. Works such as Mona Hatoum’s endoscopy video of the body’s interior and Bill Viola’s ghostly installation Tiny Deaths were joined by two recreations of rooms from Bourgeois’ childhood in early 20th-century France. |
| At the time Bourgeois was barely known in Britain – “her work has been inexplicably neglected by our galleries”, observed critic Tom Lubbock in his review – and it was Morris who helped transform the artist into a global art hero. Instrumental in getting Bourgeois for Tate Modern’s first Turbine Hall commission, in 2007 Morris curated the museum’s definitive retrospective that reflected her intimate feel for (and friendship with) this artist, and put her at the heart of modern art history. | At the time Bourgeois was barely known in Britain – “her work has been inexplicably neglected by our galleries”, observed critic Tom Lubbock in his review – and it was Morris who helped transform the artist into a global art hero. Instrumental in getting Bourgeois for Tate Modern’s first Turbine Hall commission, in 2007 Morris curated the museum’s definitive retrospective that reflected her intimate feel for (and friendship with) this artist, and put her at the heart of modern art history. |
| “Speaking for myself, it was only when I saw that big show of Louise Bourgeois that I really understood her work and realised how important she was,” says the art dealer and philanthropist Anthony d’Offay, whose huge gift of contemporary masterpieces to Britain is the basis of the Artist Rooms collection, run by Tate for the nation. “At a time when most people are dead she was producing these cells and colossal spiders!” | “Speaking for myself, it was only when I saw that big show of Louise Bourgeois that I really understood her work and realised how important she was,” says the art dealer and philanthropist Anthony d’Offay, whose huge gift of contemporary masterpieces to Britain is the basis of the Artist Rooms collection, run by Tate for the nation. “At a time when most people are dead she was producing these cells and colossal spiders!” |
| It is D’Offay’s Artist Rooms collection of Bourgeois that will open her new show at the Tate together with its other holdings of her work. Morris, he believes is “a terrific art historian”. Indeed there cannot be a bigger definition of success for an art historian than to reshape the canon of art. While an entire generation of feminist critics and artists have championed Bourgeois since the 1980s it is Morris who was able to give her reputation the massively powerful backing of Tate Modern. | It is D’Offay’s Artist Rooms collection of Bourgeois that will open her new show at the Tate together with its other holdings of her work. Morris, he believes is “a terrific art historian”. Indeed there cannot be a bigger definition of success for an art historian than to reshape the canon of art. While an entire generation of feminist critics and artists have championed Bourgeois since the 1980s it is Morris who was able to give her reputation the massively powerful backing of Tate Modern. |
| “It’s no coincidence that all her recent exhibitions have been of women”, says her friend Fiona Bradley, director of the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. “She’s championed female artists.” As well as Bourgeois, Morris has recently curated big Tate Modern shows of Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin. Her sensibility goes beyond feminism – she also wants Tate to have much more art from outside Europe. As director of the museum’s international collection since 2006, making that happen has been her main job. “She has moved the collection around the world,” says Bradley, who notes that in meetings at the Fruitmarket, where Morris is on the board, “She will always say: ‘Are we thinking about diversity?’” | |
| It is no small thing to make your mark on an institution as mighty and popular as Tate Modern – not just in terms of holding high office but actually shaping the character of the place. Yet Morris is also behind the museum’s most controversial idea. When it opened she created – with Iwona Blazwick who later left to run the Whitechapel Gallery – the startling opening displays in which chronology was abandoned and contemporary art mixed up with Picasso and Matisse. “I remember saying at the time, you mean it’s not going to be chronological?” says Bradley. She thinks it does work, and this radical overturning of how modern art is shown has been imitated all over the world. It is still how Tate Modern displays its collection. | It is no small thing to make your mark on an institution as mighty and popular as Tate Modern – not just in terms of holding high office but actually shaping the character of the place. Yet Morris is also behind the museum’s most controversial idea. When it opened she created – with Iwona Blazwick who later left to run the Whitechapel Gallery – the startling opening displays in which chronology was abandoned and contemporary art mixed up with Picasso and Matisse. “I remember saying at the time, you mean it’s not going to be chronological?” says Bradley. She thinks it does work, and this radical overturning of how modern art is shown has been imitated all over the world. It is still how Tate Modern displays its collection. |
| It gives me a headache. How does it help to understand or enjoy art to brutally strip it of historical context? I’ve questioned Morris about it in the past. Yet her appointment as director is likely to mean that anti-historical displays are here to stay. In its defence, Bradley says Morris brings “the sensibility of the exhibition maker to the collection”. | It gives me a headache. How does it help to understand or enjoy art to brutally strip it of historical context? I’ve questioned Morris about it in the past. Yet her appointment as director is likely to mean that anti-historical displays are here to stay. In its defence, Bradley says Morris brings “the sensibility of the exhibition maker to the collection”. |
| There is of course more to art history than knowing the dates and naming the movements. Morris is an art historian with a feel for living art. But in one sense – a good sense – she may be a conservative. The way she has worked to write Bourgeois into the canon of great artists (with Tate Modern as its pluralist Parnassus) does not suggest this is someone with an “anything goes” attitude to art. Just like the curators of MoMA whose American vision she has done so much to decentre, she believes in great art, and plainly hero worships the artists she sees as great. | There is of course more to art history than knowing the dates and naming the movements. Morris is an art historian with a feel for living art. But in one sense – a good sense – she may be a conservative. The way she has worked to write Bourgeois into the canon of great artists (with Tate Modern as its pluralist Parnassus) does not suggest this is someone with an “anything goes” attitude to art. Just like the curators of MoMA whose American vision she has done so much to decentre, she believes in great art, and plainly hero worships the artists she sees as great. |
| And she likes art as a physical thing. “Frances is very good at engaging with the object,” as Bradley puts it. In recent years the art scene has become ever more obsessed with performance, interaction and social actions. It even looked as if the new extended Tate Modern might be entirely given over to immaterial art. But the appointment of Morris, who has done so much to expand and define the museum’s physical collection, coincides with the announcement that D’Offay’s Artist Rooms will help to fill it and that Louise Bourgeois will launch the second Tate Modern as she launched the first. | And she likes art as a physical thing. “Frances is very good at engaging with the object,” as Bradley puts it. In recent years the art scene has become ever more obsessed with performance, interaction and social actions. It even looked as if the new extended Tate Modern might be entirely given over to immaterial art. But the appointment of Morris, who has done so much to expand and define the museum’s physical collection, coincides with the announcement that D’Offay’s Artist Rooms will help to fill it and that Louise Bourgeois will launch the second Tate Modern as she launched the first. |
| This is great news – it means that under Morris this will become an even more authoritative home of the new and the once-new. She has already put her signature on Tate Modern. Now Morris has the hard power to go with her soft power. She will surely use it effectively. | This is great news – it means that under Morris this will become an even more authoritative home of the new and the once-new. She has already put her signature on Tate Modern. Now Morris has the hard power to go with her soft power. She will surely use it effectively. |