Alex Farquharson at Nottingham Contemporary

Alex Farquharson is a British curator and art critic who was appointed Director,

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

in Summer 2015. As Director, Tate Britain he is Chair of the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...

. Previously, he was director of Nottingham Contemporary from 2007 to 2015. Designed by

Caruso St John Caruso St John is a London-based architectural firm established in 1990 by Adam Caruso and Peter St John. Practice Caruso St John gained international recognition for its designs of public spaces. The practice came to public attention with Th ...

it launched with exhibitions devoted to David Hockney (his early London and Los Angeles years from 1960 to 1968) and Frances Stark. Group exhibitions Farquharson curated at Nottingham Contemporary include Aquatopia: The Imaginary of the Ocean Deep (which travelled to

Tate St Ives Tate St Ives is an art gallery in St Ives, Cornwall, England, exhibiting work by modern British artists with links to the St Ives area. The Tate also took over management of another museum in the town, the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture ...

, Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas (with TJ Demos), Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions (with Ligon and Francesco Manacorda) (which travelled to

Tate Liverpool Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development C ...

, Star City: the Future under Communism (with Lukas Ronduda), Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou (with Leah Gordon) and The Impossible Prison, held in former police cells at the Galleries of Justice, Nottingham. Farquharson was an independent curator from 2000 to 2007. Exhibitions he curated at that time include British Art Show 6 (with Andrea Schlieker), which opened at BALTIC, Gateshead, in 2005, and If Everybody had an Ocean, an exhibition inspired by the musician Brian Wilson, at

in 2007 and CAPC Bordeaux in 2006. In that time Farquharson taught the MA curating course at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It o ...

and wrote extensively on contemporary art and experimental curating, frequently contributing to

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

and

Art Monthly ''Art Monthly'' is a magazine of contemporary art founded in 1976 by Jack Wendler and Peter Townsend. It is based in London and has an international scope, although its main focus is on British art. The magazine is published ten times a year (wi ...

. He was Curator and Exhibitions Director at SpaceX, Exeter, from 1994 to 1999, and was Exhibitions Director at the short-lived Centre for Visual Arts, Cardiff, from 1999 to 2000. He is a trustee of Raven Row, has served on the acquisitions committees of

Arts Council Collection The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

and

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...

and on the juries of the

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize Deutsch or Deutsche may refer to: *''Deutsch'' or ''(das) Deutsche'': the German language, in Germany and other places *''Deutsche'': Germans, as a weak masculine, feminine or plural demonym *Deutsch (word), originally referring to the Germanic ve ...

at The Photographers Gallery in 2011, London and the British Pavilion at

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

in 2009. Farquharson holds honorary doctorates from

The University of Nottingham , mottoeng = A city is built on wisdom , established = 1798 – teacher training college1881 – University College Nottingham1948 – university status , type = Public , chancellor ...

and

Exeter University , mottoeng = "We Follow the Light" , established = 1838 - St Luke's College1855 - Exeter School of Art1863 - Exeter School of Science 1955 - University of Exeter (received royal charter) , type = Public , ...

. He holds a Combined Honours BA in English and Fine Art from

(1991), and has an MA with Distinction in Arts Criticism from City University, 1993. Tate Britain appoints Alex Farquharson as new director.
BBC News, 29 July 2015. Retrieved 3 August 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Farquharson, Alex British art curators Living people Year of birth missing (living people) People associated with the Tate galleries