from Guardian Unlimited
Taking the Tate into the future
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An article highlighting the Tate's Director, Nicholas Serotas's vision and plans for the museum.

The vision include the idea that the museum in society should be "not a cathedral, but a meeting place, where you see and recognise other people in society; a place of debate and dialogue and exchange, not a place of worship".

To do that, he plans to "unseat" painting and sculpture from their traditional position as "king and queen" of art and to showcase visual art forms in its entirety of richness and complexities. "The big idea," he said, "is that the old hierarchies between painting and sculpture and other forms of expression have evaporated."

In addition, it is important to note that the focus of his vision goes beyond the forms of visual art. By saying that the museum is not a "cathedral" but a place where you "see and recognise other people in society", he meant to create a Tate that "does not appear monocultural" but reflects a "broader British society, in all its richness". It is his ambition to represent the full depth of contemporary life, such as club culture.

I especially like the way he coolly took into account the Tate's deficiencies as compared to other world class museums and devised the Tate's unique identity from there.