Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota (born 27 April 1946) is a British art historian and curator. He has been chairman of Arts Council England since February 2017.
Serota was director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, then director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and then director of the Tate from 1988 to 2017. He was also chairman of the Turner Prize jury until 2007.
Early life
thumb|upright|left |130px|Modern Art Oxford
Born and raised in a Jewish household in Hampstead, North London, the only son of Stanley Serota, a civil engineer, and Beatrice Katz Serota, a civil servant, later a life peer and Labour Minister for Health in Harold Wilson's government and local government ombudsman. His younger sister, Judith Serota, who also works in the arts, is married to Francis Pugh. Serota was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School (where he became school captain) and then studied economics at Christ's College, Cambridge, before switching to history of art. He completed a master's degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, under the supervision of Michael Kitson and Anita Brookner; his thesis was on the work of J. M. W. Turner.
In 1970, Serota joined the Arts Council of Great Britain's Visual Arts Department as a regional exhibitions officer. In 1973 he was made director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (now Modern Art Oxford), where he organised an early exhibition of work by Joseph Beuys and formed a working relationship with Alexander "Sandy" Nairne, with whom he worked at various points in the following years.
Whitechapel directorship
thumb|[[Whitechapel Gallery, London E1]]
In 1976, Serota was appointed director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London's East End. The Whitechapel was well regarded but had suffered from lack of resources. Serota assembled at the Whitechapel a staff including Jenni Lomax (later director of the Camden Arts Centre), Mark Francis (later of Gagosian Gallery) and Sheena Wagstaff (later chief curator of Tate Modern), and organised exhibitions of Carl Andre, Eva Hesse and Gerhard Richter as well as early exhibitions of then emerging artists such as Antony Gormley.
In 1976 he was a judge for an art competition run by the brewers Trumans. In 1980, assisted by Sandy Nairne, he organised a two-part exhibition of 20th century British sculpture. In 1981, he curated The New Spirit in Painting, with Norman Rosenthal and Christos Joachimides for the Royal Academy.
The shows, where Serota was helped by his administrator Loveday Shewell, often received adverse reviews in the press, which reacted with an uncharacteristic dislike for contemporary avant-garde art. Thus Serota remained somewhat distanced from the English establishment, although developing a growing reputation internationally in the art world.
In 1984–1985, Serota shut down the Whitechapel for over 12 months' extensive refurbishment. A strip of land had been acquired, which allowed a design by architects Colquhoun & Miller for a first-floor gallery, restaurant, lecture theatre and other rooms. Although receiving wide approbation, the scheme was in deficit by £250,000. In 1987, Serota raised £1.4 million in an auction of work, which he had asked artists to donate, paying off the debt, and creating an endowment fund to allow future exhibitions of more unconventional work, unlikely to attract a commercial sponsor.
Tate directorship
thumb|240px|[[Tate Britain, previously the Tate Gallery]]
The short-listed candidates for the Tate directorship, who included Norman Rosenthal and Julian Spalding, were asked to prepare a seven-year scheme for the Tate. Serota's submission, on two sides of A4 paper, was titled "Grasping the Nettle". It analysed the various areas of Tate work and proposed future strategies to deal with the imminent crisis caused by restricted government financial support, changing public sector management expectations and increasing art market prices. He saw many areas of the Tate's operations in need of overhaul, and concluded that the gallery was loved, but not respected enough. Tate chairman, Sir Richard Rogers considered this by far the best proposal submitted.
In 1995, Tate received £52 million towards the conversion of the former Bankside Power Station to create Tate Modern. The final cost was £135 million; Serota managed to secure the funds to make up the shortfall from a range of private sources. Tate Modern opened in May 2000 and quickly became a major tourist fixture of London. As well as housing acclaimed new works by Louise Bourgeois and Anish Kapoor, the Gallery has also provided the base for successful exhibitions of Donald Judd, Picasso, Matisse and Edward Hopper.
On 21 November 2000, Serota gave the Dimbleby Lecture in London starting by telling of a 1987 Civil Service enquiry which ranked the pay of the Tate Gallery director with that of larger museums such as the National Gallery, because the former "has to deal with the very difficult problem of modern art." He explained it thus: