Charles Thomson<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery, has used the platform of the BBC in a blatant attempt to deceive the nation. Either that or he is genuinely deluded himself. Both options render him unfit for major public office.<\/strong> He was confronted on Radio 4 programme The Reunion: Tate Modern on September 23rd by Sue MacGregor, regarding the Tate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s purchase in 2005 of its trustee Chris Ofili\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work The Upper Room. She observed with wry understatement, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Charity Commission said you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite follow the rules here.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In 2006, as the BBC then reported, Charity Commission chief executive Andrew Hind said there were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153serious shortcomings … In any charity we would be concerned that such basic matters were neglected, but in a charity of the size and stature of the Tate we are very disappointed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The Guardian expounded, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Tate has broken the law … By law, trustees cannot receive monetary benefit from their charity without express permission, usually from the commission. The Tate failed to seek permission … The Charity Commission\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s full recommendations and criticisms, laid out in a lengthy document, also said the Tate failed to manage conflicts of interest … Failed to seek independent valuation of works by artist-trustees … Had no defined policy relating to purchases from artist-trustees … Had insufficiently clear acquisition policies … Kept insufficient records of trustee meetings.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The Daily Telegraph called this verdict \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of the most serious indictments of the running of one of the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s major cultural institutions in living memory\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153After an in-depth review lasting ten months by the Commission\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, stated The Times, Serota \u00e2\u20ac\u0153accepted the criticisms\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153was genuinely contrite\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The Evening Standard confirmed, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sir Nicholas said today he accepted all the Charity Commission\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s findings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. In stark contrast, his response to Sue Macgregor ten years later was an astonishing and shameless attempt to hoodwink the nation and evade blame with a trivialising revisionism that implied gross misconduct by the Charity Commission. To the supportive laughter of his entourage on the programme, Serota declared smoothly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as if it were established fact \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the evasive nonsense, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The rules of course were invented after we had flouted them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Serota has a history of obfuscation, whether lies, half-truths, delusions, evasions or omissions. In 2004, he applied for a grant from the Art Fund towards the purchase of The Upper Room. He signed a form saying that there had been no prior commitment to the purchase of the work (a condition of funding). Thanks to journalist Chris Hastings and the Freedom of Information Act, it was revealed that, eight months prior to the application, the Tate had paid a \u00c2\u00a3250,000 deposit. Serota blamed it on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a failing in my head\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2005, I was quoted in The Observer: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Serota, as the director, chooses the trustees, and the trustees are then responsible for reappointing the director. The director then buys the trustees\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In 2008, this was brought up in Varsity (the Cambridge Student Newspaper), where Serota defended himself with another flagrant falsehood: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any part to play in their appointment.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The September 2005 Tate board minutes state: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Director [Serota] reported that two strong candidates were to be interviewed for the position of Artist Trustee by a panel comprising himself, Paul Myners and the Independent Assessor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In the May 2007 minutes, another trustee interview is on record with a panel of three trustees, the independent assessor and Serota. The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery Annual Accounts 2005-2006, 2006-2007, 2007-2008, and 2008-2009 all say in the section on trustees: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The key stages of the appointment are overseen by a panel, which will normally include the Director.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Also in Varsity, Serota said about the trustees, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why would I want to win their support?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The simple answer to that is that he is their employee, as he explained in 1993 in the Independent on Sunday, when he hoped to be appointed for a second seven-year term as Tate Director: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tate trustees fall in and out of love with their director and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll only discover whether they have fallen out of love with me in 1995 when they discuss my contract … The jury\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d On the Radio 4 programme, MacGregor confronted Serota about an event in October 2003 that became public the following year, namely \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that Charles Saatchi offered you his entire collection … it was worth 200 million \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for nothing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Serota denied this: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wish he had … he did have a great collection. Sadly he never did offer it to us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This response is consistent with Serota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s version to the press in 2004, when he said that Saatchi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offer was not for a gift but for a loan of work, which he (Serota) immediately rejected (none of which was mentioned to MacGregor).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surprisingly, Serota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reply was immediately contradicted on the programme by former Tate trustee, Michael Craig-Martin, who admitted there had in fact been an offer of work: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unfortunately what was offered to the Tate was not the great collection with the great things in it, most of which were already gone by that time. They had been sold by that time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As it happens, that is incorrect. At the time of the offer in 2003, Saatchi still had in his collection iconic Brit art works, including Damien Hirst\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shark, Tracey Emin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bed, Rachel Whiteread\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plaster cast of a room, Mark Quinn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head made from frozen blood, Sarah Lucas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s table with two fried eggs and a kebab, Marcus Harvey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Myra Hindley painting with children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hand prints, Ron Mueck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sculpture of his dead father, the Chapman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s penis-nosed mannequins and Chris Ofili\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Virgin Mary painting with elephant dung. Serota continued about Saatchi: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Michael [Craig-Martin] and I with Janet De Botton spent a great deal of time in the late nineties trying to persuade him to give, not his collection, but maybe ten works from his collection as a founding collection for Tate Modern. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m afraid he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel for one reason or another able to do that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This is obviously another failing in Serota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head. In 2004, the Evening Standard reported that in 1998, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Saatchi offered 86 works by 57 British artists \u00e2\u20ac\u201c including Langlands & Bell, Turner Prize winner Martin Creed and Glenn Brown\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (as well as Richard Billingham, Richard Wilson and Chantal Joff\u00c3\u00a9). A Tate spokeswoman confirmed the offer of 86 works, which were rejected as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The trustees felt on this occasion the works would be better suited in a collection elsewhere.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Regarding The Upper Room scandal, Christopher McCall QC wrote to the press in 2005 condemning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153expediency … which has an appeal to an overbearing executive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The Times said of the Tate: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it had been a company, the verdict would have sent shareholders into a panic.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d No doubt if it had been a government, resignations or sackings would have followed the public outcry. Surely we have the right to expect the same standards across the board in public life, including the arts. Serota has not displayed a level of behaviour and integrity to remain a figurehead and step into another prime position as Chairman of the Arts Council. His record is tarnished and far from admitting to his mistakes, he has the blinkered arrogance to pretend they never happened. We need leaders who do not have recurrent failings in their head. Charles Thomson Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery, has used the platform of the BBC in a blatant attempt to deceive the nation. Either that or he is genuinely deluded himself. Both options render him unfit for major public office. He was confronted on Radio 4 programme The Reunion: Tate Modern on September […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[748],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","tag-charles-thomson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2111,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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