 Hello, everyone. I'm Mark Hart. I'll be introducing Maria, but we're just going to wait a few moments while everyone joins us in the, in the virtual zoom lecture theater as it were. Yeah, it's just again to say my name is Mark Hart. I'll be introducing Maria, but just we're just waiting a few minutes before we begin or a few moments rather than a few minutes before we begin, just to allow everyone to join us tonight. We've got a great audience, and we want to make sure everyone gets in and signs in before we start. One last intervention from me. My name is Mark Hallett. Just as I said, we just we're still seeing our numbers growing up quite dramatically so we'll just wait until everyone's with us before we formally start. For those of you already joined us. Can I just ask for your patience while we while we wait. Great to see people tuning in from me from California from Maine from from France from Taiwan. It's fantastic to see so many people from all over the world but also people from Leicester from Cardiff, New York from Idaho. It's great and thanks so much for letting us know where you're calling in from Tux and Germany. Ipswich in Washington testament to the interest in the series and in Maria's work. Right, I think we'll start now this is a few minutes past the hour. And just to say again, hello everyone, my name is Mark Hallett. And I'm the director of the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art, which is based in London. I'm delighted to welcome you to the fifth of this year's Paul Mellon lectures, which are devoted to the theme of the museum and the gallery today, and which will culminate with a sixth lecture by Eve Tam in the spring. Today's lecture will be delivered by Dr Maria Bolshaw, director of Tate, before telling you a little more about this program of lectures and introducing Maria herself. I thought I'd quickly describe the format and procedures of today's event. So the event will begin with Maria's lecture which will last around 45 minutes. And then this will be followed by a Q&A session with questions from the audience, from you, watching. And you can type those questions through the Q&A function that you see at the bottom of your screen. And can I really urge you all, or as many of you as possible to submit questions, which I'll look forward to asking Maria on your behalf in the Q&A session. If you're listening to her lecture, you might want to start putting questions in. Don't feel obliged to wait until it's finished before asking your questions. It's great for us to have a body of questions with which to begin the Q&A session right from the kickoff. Just to say that the session will be recorded and made available to the public. And the closed captioning is available and if you'd like closed captioning just click the CC button on your screen to enable those captions. And then you can also keep in contact with us, as you're already doing during the talk through using the chat function, which my colleague Danny is looking after. So for those of you who don't know us well I thought I'd mentioned that the Paul Mellon lectures take their name from the philanthropist and art collector Paul Mellon, who just over five decades ago now set up the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in in order to support the most original rigorous and stimulating research into the history of British art and architecture. The lectures which are sponsored by the Center and organizing collaboration with our partner institution the Yale Center for British Art, based in New Haven. These lectures were inorganized in 1994. And since then, they've been delivered by annually by distinguished historians of British art. And typically an individual will give a whole set of lectures. But this year series takes on a rather different format in that it features six different speakers, all of whom have enjoyed distinguished careers as curators scholars and museum and gallery directors. All are bringing their vision their intelligence and imagination to bear on our central theme that the museum and a gallery today. There have been many kinds of collaboration that over the years we at the Paul Mellon Center have embarked upon with our colleagues at Tate. I'm especially delighted to welcome tonight speaker, Maria Borschel. Maria has been director of Tate since June 2017, previous to which she was director of the Whitworth University of Manchester, director of the Manchester City Art City galleries and director of culture for Manchester City Council. During her years at Manchester, Maria established herself as a pioneering and visionary and a brave museum director and civic leader. She's brought all those qualities to Tate. At a time when the cultural sector has as we all know, faced numerous challenges on multiple fronts. During these turbulent years, Maria has proved a generous and inspiring and transformative director. She has sustained and thoughtful focus on some of the most pressing political issues of our times. She's overseen a groundbreaking program of exhibitions across all four Tate sites. And finally, perhaps most importantly of all, she's encouraged the spirit of openness of discussion and of debate, both at Tate itself, but also across the wider cultural sphere. For all of these reasons, I think Maria is a perfect person to round off this first phase of our Paul Mellon lecture series. So I'd like you all to welcome her to, to give her lecture which will be entitled, Look, Looking Back to Move Forward, British Art History at Tate. Over to you Maria. Thank you very much, Mark, for such a lovely introduction and hello to everybody that's listening in this evening. I'm really pleased to be giving this lecture. And even if it does feel and still rather strange experience to be speaking on my own in my office to colleagues all over the world, I am really, really pleased to be connected. I'm going to share my screen now. And so you have some slides to look at as, as I talk. And I want you to begin today with Shaila Burmans remembering a brave new world, which I hope those of you that are based in London will remember from last winter, as one of the highlights of our lockdown experience. We weren't able to see art. We were nevertheless able to see it on the outside of the original Tate building at Tate Britain. And as I'll be exploring some new ways of thinking about British art history in my talk this evening this felt thinking about brave new worlds a very good point of beginning for my lecture. Talking about British history, even British art history seems to be something of a blood sport at the moment. This will I hope be the last metaphor about violence that I use in this talk, as at this time, a so called culture wars. It's important, I think that museums, especially ones that are tasked with holding and thinking about more than 500 years of national history, make sure that weapons are left outside the building, or at least only represented in the paintings that we find on our walls. My talk today is going to focus on Tate's British art responsibilities, which feels fitting as this is the melon series of lectures with the melon center being such a generative space to talk about British art and cultural concerns. It also feels fitting as we in the UK finding our way into a new reality in terms of our relationship with Europe and the world. As Shaila's installation on the facade said, as we think about brave new worlds. But I wanted to start first with a little bit about our history. So, as I said, this is the original Tate building isn't always pink, but we're very happy sometimes to be able to present it in such a way. Tate was established in 1897 through the determined will of private philanthropist shopkeeper and sometime sugar baron Henry Tate. It was a place of much inertia from the government, who at that stage could not see completely the point of a national museum dedicated to British art. The Milbank site for the first Tate was originally London's most infamous prison, shown here, conceived according to Bentham's principles of the panopticon. It became part of the Victorian Drive for cultural development, as the museum was created, part of an ambitious capital city, and took its place in London alongside peer institutions like the V&A and the Science Museums along exhibition road. And indeed the National Gallery, who you heard Gabrielle talk about a few weeks ago, which helped create a sense of place in Trafalgar Square. And its particular role was to help forge and then secure a British history of art with the transformative Turner bequest shown here today, and as the foundation of the collection. The collections and the gallery grew in the first half of the 20th century, but slowly and relatively conservatively. And just sitting on the Thames as it does Milbank was a bombing target. And we still find ourselves with some rather beautiful bomb damaged stonework here at Milbank, but the collections got out and about. I love this photograph of the paintings in the tube. Women worked on mass in the museum. Sadly, after the war this was set aside when the men returned and was only recently rectified. The latter part of the 20th century saw an acceleration of interest and influence for Tate. The generosity of the Duffield family matched the generosity of the Turner bequest and the clawing was built in the 1980s to house Turner's works. Whilst the creation of Tate modern changed the global paradigm for the contemporary art museum. Tate is not only a museum of museum, a museum of modern contemporary art. It is the home for five centuries of British art. And for anyone my age or older, it was the Tate that we grew up with 1988 saw the opening of Tate Liverpool, the Tate of the north as it was often called at the time. And then by Tates and Ives in 1993, reflecting the artists who had based themselves in that part of Cornwall. And although all the Tate galleries draw from the same shared collection, each one quickly developed a unique remit and personality of its own, driven by the relationship to its community and local artistic heritage. And by the 1990s Tates international collecting was beginning to reflect the whole world, and not just the European and North American elements of it. And so Tate modern was born as the new century began. It was a product, it was a project, and many doubted would work at the time, because who in London would want to come and see contemporary art. And as we've learned, they were very very wrong. Tate modern saw 5.25 million visitors in its first year, and Tate modern changed London, making it a global center for contemporary art. And that expansion also changed the art world and art history, making it, I would argue less elite and more conscious of its role in shaping the public sphere and public opinion. Tate also actively chose to change the art histories that had been told to become less white and Western, regendering the canon and embracing the diverse centers of art that have emerged across the globe through the 20th and now 21st century. So Tate is an active and continuing project today, as we think about the meanings of historic collections formed through imperial might in a now contemporary post colonial world. So we often think about how we want to change the world that we inhabit and help shape. And across the globe, Tate is now at the beginning of a next chapter, a post capital phase, and also a post colonial one, where the question of whose stories we tell, whose art we find on our walls are debated daily with and through audiences. The long term future has to be thought about in the context of a climate emergency that means we cannot continue to do the things as we always have. For an institution whose four galleries face rivers and seas, the issue of a rising sea level and extreme weather events is a near term threat, rather than an abstract challenge. So we live with our past at Tate in a time where the future has to be renegotiated to be more equitable and more sustainable. And I think at the moment it can often feel that we're operating in unprecedentedly tough times. As we assess the impact of the pandemic on our business model and our cultural resilience, it really does feel hard to be working in a museum at the moment. And as we begin in the UK to understand the implications of Brexit for globally connected museums like Tate. Never mind responding to the economic disparities that produce such divided views about Britain and its future. Added to that in the museum sector, the latest iterations of the cultural wars, aided by new social media tools and an ever more contested public sphere. It can make one feel like retreating sometimes. However, I will say with a deep breath and and and holding on to the threads of my habitual optimism. Another way of looking at Britain right now is to say our current cultural moment is positively changing the relationship a national institution can have with its public. At Tate Britain in particular, and this is meant taking a new approach. The excitement of the first decade of the 21st century at Tate was largely felt in the rapid expansion of the international collection that underpins the program that Tate modern. It was simplified by a movement away from a largely Euro North American canon towards transnational understandings of the interconnected evolution of 20th and 21st century art across all continents. But this of course also redefines what we think about British art. It can't sit outside it as a marooned island nation story. In the context of Alex Farcisson's leadership, there's now a deeper understanding of the need to present British art situated in its social and cultural context, and to give our visitors the tools and means to engage with this, including opening up space for agreement and disagreement with our presentation, the art of the past. This requires a more diverse and international conception of Britishness across the more than five centuries of art that we cover. As visitors will see very well next week, when the exhibition and life between islands opens, it's not open to the public at the moment so I'm only showing you the rather handsome cover of the catalogue. An exhibition like this means understanding art and society as interrelated, and it introduces new and very different conversations, in this case about art in Caribbean and Britain since the 1950s. More broadly, we are at a point at Tate where the imperial and colonial legacies of our past are interrogated as part of shaping a richer account of the diversity of Britain past and present. Let me give just one obvious example of what this is meant. The name Tate itself carries all kinds of associations with sugar, and therefore empire, and therefore slavery. The truth of those associations is complicated. Henry Tate didn't start his business as a refiner until years after abolition, but the Caribbean sugar trade would not have existed without slavery. In the museum that bears his name, we felt we should have the confidence to tell those complicated stories. So several years ago, we worked with researchers at UCL's Center for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave Ownership to explore the historic legacies and help share them with the public. It was not a defence of Henry Tate, nor an attempt to cancel him, but it helped to give us a set of solid facts to turn to when visitors and artists wanted to ask us questions, or when we wanted to ask questions ourselves. This open-minded questioning approach is also important when making exhibitions, whether they be new artists or established historic favourites. And we want to draw on the knowledge and the engagement of our publics, including that vital internal public, our own staff. I've long been struck by Nina Simon's writing on relevance, which she imagines is a key that unlocks meaning, where for too long, too many were not given the key that unlocked the potential of the museum for them. She talks about it not being enough to open the doors of the museum wider. Instead, she says museums need new doors, even if they are imaginative, creative or metaphorical ones. New doors to new people working toward new meanings that work for them. And she reminds us that this can be uncomfortable and may initially start all those who are used to coming. But the exploring this discomfort can be a positive driver for change for everyone in and outside the museum. So I want to turn now to a current exhibition at Tate, Britain, Hogarth and Europe. It's just one approach, one I hope that we will build on, that is trying to offer some new doors to meaning to an artist whose position in British art history is unquestioned. Hogarth is a familiar subject for exhibitions at Tate and much welcomed by our visitors. And it would have been easy enough to give people the Hogarth they know, like this, without significantly deepening understanding of the rich complexity of his work and his time. Setting aside for a moment the fact that I think this would fail in our mission to deepen knowledge, as well as promote enjoyment of British art. It's also become clear over recent years that just sticking with the paintings doesn't really cut it any longer in terms of meeting the needs of a more diverse and curious British public. Despite the best efforts of some cultural commentators to present our past as fixed and unchangeable. When people today are confronted with the uncomfortable aspects of the past five centuries of British history, like the regular presence of enslaved people in paintings from the 18th century, for example. They do want explanation, engagement, and even, when appropriate, humility and contrition about the exploitation that fueled the growth of empire. Hogarth and Europe sets forward two related propositions. The first is that Hogarth was not so much peculiarly British, but instead an artist shaped by an engaged with his European contemporaries on the exhibition shows many of those alongside Hogarth's work. This is the dynamic trading center of London connected to Britain's interests overseas across Europe, but also across the globe that gives his work its edge, its social critique and its dynamism. The second premise to the exhibition is that we can and should expand the voices, the expertise and the orders of knowledge brought into the exhibition to meet the diversity of subject and people in his expansive of. This is done being done by the two curators of the exhibition, Alice Inslee and Martin Miro, who I thank very much for their work. It has been done by them by recruiting a wider group of advisors whose very different views on the painting can be found sitting alongside the works, and at greater length in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition. Other works include practicing artists, creative writers historians of several disciplines and other curators who bring a different range of lived experience and points of view to bear on the works gathered in the exhibition. In addition to these, the critical engagement of these advisors, three external art historians, Esther Chadwick, David DeBosa and Rami Gadamosi have helped expand the critical framework within which the exhibition evolved. The interpretation panels and the short essays in the catalog offers a set of voices speaking from subject positions that are at the moment still largely absent from the museum workforce. And from the art historical framework within which the museum personnel are typically trained, although this is significantly shifting. The voices constitute not an other voice, but a polyphony of voices and ideas that the curator's hope will expand both knowledge and points of connection to Hogarth and his contemporaries work and world. In that sense, they let the visitor see that art history is an ongoing conversation, not a story set in stone. The multiple points of view are not marshaled to be a single narrative, but they do talk about other things and in different tones and modes of address. They are, if we if we pursue Nina Simon's way of thinking, offering different doors to meaning for the visitors who come to the exhibition. And in a relatively straightforward way they assemble a group of different people who reflect on the diversity of subjects contained within Hogarth's representations of his England. And those voices mirror the diversity of the London we live in now. So they offer more than one key to engaging with an unlocking understanding of Hogarth's world and work. One of the most arresting moments of engagement in the exhibition is offered by contemporary artist Levena him it and Levena has a show on a tape modern moment, which is also really lovely to see happening at the same time as the Hogarth show. As many of you will know, Hogarth has long been an inspiration and a critical jumping off point for him it's work. It's a fashionable marriage, shown here at tape modern and opened this morning, made in 1984 to 86. It is perhaps a best known work, and it's one of the many projects that helped her win the Turner Prize in 2017. It presents a represents a scene from Hogarth's marriage element and the toilet to be to be specific, and it presents a scene made from cut out figures. The cutouts restage the drama in a way that asked us the visitor to take a role as spect actors to use Lisa Merrill's rather wonderful term. We are invited to be active participants in a restaging of Hogarth, that is, as Levena has described, a furious caricature of the racial and gender politics of the art world and the wider society that she saw in the 1980s. So she made this work and we're representing it at tape modern, but in the Hogarth exhibition, Levena returns to Hogarth's original, the toilet. This scene. And this time, rather than introducing two black figures of her own. She does in a fashionable marriage. She speaks the, the two black figures in the work. She speaks first as a male, the Marley and Butler come manservant in the middle background of the scene. And then as adaban, the black child in the in right foreground of the image. When we encounter this in the exhibition and the catalog, the first disruption as a viewer is to be confronted with the first person. The eye and voice of Omar. She says my name is Omar and I am Butler come manservant from Marley. The incongruity and surprise of encountering the character speaking to us implicates us immediately as the visitor viewer of this scene. Something Levena intends and underlines when Omar voice makes us a visitor to this gathering. She says the invitees to our breakfast gathering, including you pale into insignificance next to the guest of honor. So Omar's dialogue is with us, giving us his perspective on the scene that we have chosen to look at. But also is delivered in the spirit of Hogarth's dissecting eye. Omar's Frank assessment of the scene presented by Levena helps us, I think read it better. For me, certainly it's one of the more complex and engaging ways I've seen of delivering the details of who is who in this contemporary scene in this in this complex scene to a contemporary viewer, to the work, potentially with neither the history, nor perhaps the habits to hand to read this satirical scene closely. So having grasped Omar's view on this drama. In the catalogue and essay we are wrong footed again by the voice of Addaban, who then speaks again. The butler Omar can be bitter, I know, but you must forgive him. Addaban, the cleverest person in the room, according to Omar, reminds us that a singular perspective is unreliable. And it's drawn from the particular perspective of one actor only in a scene that is constituted of many. Speaking to this instability, I think Levena's label achieves several things. The distinctive voices speaking out from the painting, obviously brings the background to the foreground. It reshapes the Eurocentric framing of Hogarth's time and makes us think about our own time. But it does so whilst also making active the sense that today's visitors might also bring other histories in. Finally, her speaking, Omar, straight to the visitor, is funny and scathing and scurrilous again in the spirit of Hogarth. So it feels like a wake-up call to the visitor who might be expected to be given a neutral or objective account of what takes place in the scene. Certainly, for me reading it for the first time, it felt a bit like being given a good poke in the ribs and reminded to look harder at what I think I'm seeing as I make my way around the exhibition. Levena's interpretation, her label, is only one of many in the exhibition. Other interventions ask us to consider the furniture, the ceramics, the way that different bodies are racialized and sexualized. We're asked to think about the mechanics of the global trade and the transatlantic slave trade as they're manifested in and through the work. And in doing so, they don't seek to produce or disrespect Hogarth, nor do they presume to tell us what to think. They offer up different ways of thinking about artworks that have sometimes almost become mired in fixed meaning because of their familiarity. To my mind, this enriches and deepens our understanding of this complex artist, because it gives us knowledge and ideas that we can use to draw new and different conclusions. Of course, some people think the opposite. There are those who feel we've dragged Hogarth inappropriately into the 21st century by applying the concerns of society today to historic artists. Or it's been suggested that we're saying it's not okay to like Hogarth in this age of political correctness. Given that we've gone to considerable trouble to assemble a really remarkable group of paintings, prints, drawings, and to solicit deep thinking and research from a much larger body of thinkers than we would typically use in making a historic British art show. I can say this is definitely not what the curators nor take Britain intended, but clearly we've touched a cultural nerve, one which has produced its own reaction that accuses us not of expanding the range of views and voices on a foundational figure in British art history, but of telling people what to think about Hogarth and telling them that he likes so many people from our conflicted past is a bad one. Whilst we should always be mindful that new approaches are meant to test things and we might not have yet got everything right in the way that these different views and voices are incorporated. Reading the very different texts that accompany the exhibition, I find it hard myself to find a stable or singular point of view, and this is actually what I find very stimulating about the exhibition. I don't agree with all the readings, and I think it's reasonable. I think I think that is reasonable, given that I bring my own resistances and biases into the exhibition with me, just like anybody else does. But if we hold on to that sense from Nina Simon of trying to unlock different doors to meaning. I feel this is what's being made available in this exhibition. And I am even more certain that we're sharing new forms of scholarly thinking and allowing Hogarth to do what he's always done, which is to change with the times he's seen and read in. This is a depressing refrain in our current moment, which says history cannot be rewritten. Of course, we should all just calmly remember that was the events of the past cannot be changed. History is rewritten and then rewritten by each generation from the perspective of that time. What's most important about this new approach to our past is that it doesn't try to replace one history with another singular story. Rather, it's trying to expand the space for polyphony for dissent and agreement, acceptance and rejection as part of the exhibition itself. I would say, as is always the case in museums, there's no obligation to agree with the labels or even read them at all. If that's the visitors preference. It's a bit too early to really understand how this approach to a great British historic show is going down with the public, as it's only been open a couple of weeks. Particularly, I've really loved hearing what my friends and colleagues and artists and visitors have said to me so far. Our willingness to turn the gallery walls into an open ended conversation between different voices seems in turn to be making visitors feel like they have permission to join that conversation too. And I know from Mark that the exhibition will be the subject of discussion within the Mellon Center again, bringing a wider group of people together in the spring and I really look forward to hearing the debates that come out of that. The exhibition doesn't sit well with everyone, and perhaps it's not meant to, but I want to trust that the public is actually quite curious to learn and that this exercise in expanded relevance might actually give us new avenues to continue to expand the audience for the art of our past. And it is, of course, not the only institution trying to forge new ways of living with and thinking through difficult histories. So before I end, I want to just mention a couple of other examples that I have found particularly illuminating, especially in terms of the way in which they've attempted to create a larger space for difficult thinking. In 2017, the Rikes Museum announced it would present an exhibition about slavery for the first time in its history. As the curators Evelyn, Saint Nicholas and Valica Smulders explained, they saw this as a vital, a vital first step in the development of the show was approaching different people and bringing them together. New staff members with relevant professional as well as personal backgrounds were hired. I think tank was assembled assembled. There was an extensive exchange of ideas with national and international experts on the history of slavery. And there was engagement with contemporary artists whose work like this and remould as a may piece found a place within the work. It over a four year period, the exhibition was developed by a consultative process that sought input from descendants of enslaved peoples, as well as scholars and activists across the globe. It's a completely new way for a national historic museum to develop an exhibition, one that put the idea of many voices at the heart of the process from the very start. And I think my, my only sadness about this exhibition is taking place as it did. And whilst we have been living through the pandemic period, it's meant that some of us have only been able to see it through the catalogue and through images on the screen, or listening to director taco debits talk about it. And as he has done very powerfully on the radio, and not as many of us as would have liked to have been able to see it in person, but I think there was a huge amount of learning to be drawn from it. A courageous example. It's taken place here in the UK. Mayflower 400 legend and legacy, an exhibition which the box in Plymouth opened for the 400 anniversary of the Mayflower, and which it co curated with indigenous communities living in and around Plymouth in the US and happened really quite recently. In the months of exchanges, a partnership was established there with a with a group of local history and communication specialists called smoke signals in order to, quote, develop a foundation of a shared history between our peoples. Smoke signals transformed the curators aspirations, understanding and outlook for what the exhibition could be by learning and living the past through their artists and artisans. The 17th century moment into a meaningful 21st century experience together the two communities realized they could shape a new interpretation of a shared past, one that truly included the indigenous communities. I wanted to point just reflect back on an exhibition I saw in 2018 and in Melbourne, Australia. Colony Australia 1770 to 1861 slash frontier wars and took a challenging revisionist approach to Australia's contested national history. The moment of English arrival or colonial imposition was in this exhibition carefully expanded and critiqued. I think with great care and respect in ways I feel resonate powerfully with the challenges we face in examining British history here at home. The exhibition began simultaneously in the past and the present. And there was a continual duality of focus reflected in the dual titling of the exhibition, which you can see here, and its presence across two spaces within the museum itself. And in the fact that it examined the moment of arrival from the perspectives of those who were already there, as well as those who arrived. So the original and powerful change of museum practice through the generative engagement between those working within the museum and the indigenous communities whose lands have been colonized and represented, but who are rarely present within that heritage space. The original communities of interest played an active role, not just in interpreting objects from the past, but in what was included and was not included. And the work of contemporary artists works like this piece by Johnny scare, called Blood on the Wattle, provided alternative framings for how that past should be read. This incredibly powerful work, which speaks to, in scares words the ongoing genocide of that moment of colonial arrival. In the forward to the catalog. There is a very powerful statement by our original elder, Joey Murphy wandering, who says, seen from the heart. The exhibition should remind all people of their right to agree or disagree. Remembering respect for each other should be at the forefront of all discussions. While disputatious and contemporary cultural debate can be at the moment. I think this notion of remembering respect is an incredibly valuable one. Our vision for Tate at this point in the 21st century is to be an innovative and inclusive museum, bringing new and different communities of people to see and engage with the art that we show and hold. I want to ensure that many more people find that it and their sense of ownership and connection to the art of the past, as well as the artists of their own time. Where we are now in terms of the demographics of our visitors is reasonably good for a national museum. But as one of my younger colleagues said to me, I don't want to compare ourselves with the past. Let's compare ourselves with London, as we are today. The London's population approaches 55% B, M, B, A, M, E. We are nowhere near that percentage in our audiences, although we are making progress. I'm interested in how an institution like Tate, which has always been groundbreaking and radical. Which is also large and definitely an institution. I'm interested in how we can still be nimble and responsive enough to take up the call to action that we hear and see from younger generations of visitors and indeed from our own staff and the artists we work with. Many public institutions want to open up, share, extend and be attentive and responsive to the changing social and cultural landscape around us. As public institutions, we don't sit outside society. In fact, we are often the barometer of time and place. We have distributed national collection and a globally connected, but also locally rooted institution, Tate should be open, generous, connected and in motion. We will get things wrong. And we need to be okay with that, because we're learning and trying to do something new. This is an institutionary which is to be an art museum that reflects its city and its citizens and tries to be in motion and engagement and engaged with the world. A final example to share, which is not British art, but seems to me related, because it takes us again to thinking about how we must allow ourselves to change if we're to build relationships with new communities, particularly those that have been previously excluded. It also takes us back to some of the key points which are explored, which were explored in much greater depth in colony frontier wars in Melbourne, Australia. And I share this example with thanks to my colleague Gregor Muir and to the artist Grada Columba for their particular insights into this recent acquisition at Tate. Here, you see a work by Edgar Colell, a Mayan Katchakel artist from Guatemala. The title is The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge, and it's from 2021. This work was selected for acquisition through the freeze Tate fund, supported by Endeavour. The work was selected from the freeze art fair as works are every year through research by Tate curators working with two external advisors. They change each year and in this year they were curator Hamid Nassar and the artist Grada Columba. The presence of external advisors always pushes the Tate curators towards thinking beyond our usual parameters and it always throws up learning. So this work first. The rocks were sourced by the artist in Surrey, chosen for their organic natural appearance. They're bit mossy, he said he didn't want anything too complicated. The rocks then become altars. The artist says a sacred site for rituals. Fruits and vegetables were sourced in Brixton Market, and they were placed on the top of each rock. After a member of the Catchakel community should conduct a ritual without which the work cannot be, is not complete. This is something that under normal circumstances, Khalel could have done himself. However, in the light of pandemic travel restrictions, he found an artist through the Delphina Art Foundation in London to help someone with connections to his place. Who in a private moment before the fair opened, cut open some fruits and return them on top of the rocks. Khalel's work evokes a connection to his ancestors and pays homage to the local indigenous communities within Guatemala. What he produces is best understood as visual chance or embodied poems or as knowledge. There's no word for art in the Mayan language as spoken in the artist's hometown and now is considered often to be the closest word encompassing an idea of knowledge, wisdom and understanding. Khalel's work is a reflection of a Mayan Cosmo vision, very different to Western perceptions of the world. And it's not so much an art installation as an offering to the artist's ancestors. And it's designed to make us consider the complexities of indigenous cultures and the ongoing effects of their destruction. What Khalel is striving for here is the invisible, the untranslatable and the ungraspable. And this is where Tate was asked to approach the work differently. As part of the acquisition agreement, Tate does not own the work outright, as you might expect if you went to the Frieze Art Fair and bought a sculpture or a painting. Instead, the artist is inviting Tate to become the custodian of the work for 13 years. To quote the artist, I am thankful to our ancestors for giving us the license and allowing us to spread their knowledge and wisdom. Khalel is also thankful that quote that Tate will be the first institution to have the opportunity and permission to take on the custodianship of the piece for 13 years. And the number 13 is of great significance to the Mayan calendar. So we have a period in which we will be able to disseminate the lessons embodied within the work. After 13 years, a new agreement will be made with the artist and his community, either to renew our custodianship, to pass it to another institution, or return the elements of the work to the earth. Through the work, we've essentially entered into a knowledge sharing agreement with Amaya Katchakel people. And as part of our agreement, Tate will not only acquire the custodianship, but make a donation to that community. In there, we have a new direction of travel. And with the support of our trustees, a surprisingly easy step into an entirely new relationship with a different community in the world. Which rather mirrors the changing relationship we're we're trying to adopt in our approach to multiple polyphonic histories of art. And although it's felt like treading lightly. I want to note it is a momentous shift, which proposes a direct line between an old world ownership based organization to an indigenous community whose culture language and lands are under threat. Indeed, it is indigenous peoples who are at the forefront of the climate emergency. So this work again falls in line with our strategy to reflect these concerns in the way we collect moving forward. With this elegant move. I hope we're proposing something that resonates within our British collection to understand that the events of history are what they are. But the way we understand, hold or own them is not so. They are polyphonic, not linear, not reducible to a set of objective facts, and we need to be able to hold many voices and orders of knowledge within our spaces, and allow there to be even actively seek out multiple voices. So we are allowed to disagree, especially if this can be done, as Elder Joy Murphy Wandon reminds us, holding respect at the forefront of our discussions. And with that, and I'll, I finished my lecture. Thank you. Thank you so much Maria that was brilliant and so interesting. It's already generating a lot of questions. So I'd like to urge all those watching all those engaged in what Maria is saying to submit questions to us please, because it would be great to give Maria a chance to to hear your thoughts and your responses to a really amazing lecture so thanks so much first of all Maria for the lecture itself. Before we turn to the Q&A's I was really interested. We're really interested. If you could talk a bit more about this, about what what all the things you've talked to and about the content that the implications for the notion of the curator or curatorship. So if all the examples you chose were examples of devolved or collective curatorship, rather than exhibitions that have been made or and curated by individuals or pairs of individuals and and it's just interesting thinking about that even in relation to something like the Turner Prize this year which is of course a set of artistic collectives and I wonder whether this turn to the collective and curatorship in particular as well as art tells. I wonder whether you could tell us more about what you think are the strengths of that and also the potential problems or challenges of moving in that direction. Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's a very good question mark and it's something that needs to be looked at I think from a number of different perspectives. To me, it isn't that we dispense with the knowledge and scholarship of an individual curator and or or pairs or several of them and and and of course that expertise is vital in the multiple conversations that are being staged in exhibitions like Hogarth. And, and, and I think, maybe 10 or 15 years ago there were a number of attempts to create exhibitions through a sort of democratic, almost crowdsourcing of all the ideas one could bring to play and to make an exhibition and on occasion I've seen those work and sometimes they don't help people make their way through an exhibition or or find different narratives and stories. And I think, presuming that everyone speaks from the same place is actually quite a difficult thing to propose. The examples that I drew on today, and, and what I've seen work really successfully is where there is an honest acknowledgement of what the museum and the curator does know, and what they don't. And so I think Alice and Martin in particular write very perceptively about what they don't bring as well as what they do bring as curators and they say something about the training that they themselves have which they can't let go they can't do anything else. And, but, and they have built networks of knowledge sharing connection with other kinds of experts and that supplement and all contradicts sometimes and the views that they might take. And until such time as the museum workforce is holds a wider variety of forms of expertise and lived experience. I think that's a very valuable way of working. And because I think particularly for curators and directors of my generation. We feel we waited too long and to be exploring things which are often very commonplace with within wider cultural debates, because the whole museum workforce has been is slow to change. And, and so I am very interested in the way that we draw in collaborations that recognize the gaps in our own knowledge, and also the strength of what we do bring. And, but there's a, there's a, there's an honest negotiation going on there. Thank you. I've got so many more questions I could ask but I'd feel I'd be hogging the conversation if I did so. So I'm going to turn to some of the many questions that are already coming in. Yes, there's a question here which is from Alexandra Sheldon asking, do you feel the whole God exhibition has experienced the same kind of backlash that organizations like the National Trust has recently faced as it reorientate reorientate the collections to include traditionally excluded audiences do you feel very much part of a set of institutional changes or and the response that you've been getting as part of something that's wider. Yes. And I, I could have talked about the experiences that colleagues at the National Trust have had over the last year or so. And as part of the wider museums group we've been very involved in the conversations with people working at the National Trust and I think all of us have seen those things debated across the press. And what I think is what, as I said in my talk, and we and the National Trust and Q gardens who default Q gardens would be, you know, in being called over the calls about being too woke. And, and, and that word is part of the problem as well. And that we have touched a cultural nerve at the moment. And what I find very interesting is that when you get beyond the sort of click bait and headlines, social media kind of responses. As I said again in my talk, I think that the wider public are very, very curious and willing to go on. Interesting journeys. So the National Trust's recent experiences. There's a very big, there's a gap between what the people who were going to National Trust houses and and experiencing the way that the trust is approaching. And it's history and it's buildings. There's a difference between what those people are saying and what some of the, the very noisy sort of your spoiling everything kind of messages that we get. And so perhaps what we are feeling is that we have to live through that noise. And actually I think there is, there's a much quieter set of voices the same, but this is really what we welcome when we talk to schools about what children want what they need to support deeper learning about history in all its forms as well as art history. And of course wanting a history which situates Britain in the context of the whole world, and they want a history that reflects the children that are in their schools. And when families go to the National Trust, you know, families take so many forms in our times. So I also said earlier I think if if there's a deep dive into an area of knowledge that people aren't interested in. It's like, we're not kind of press ganging people into engaging with everything. And so I think there's more space than the kind of backlash that we get would suggest. And that sort of gives me courage as well as positivity. Thank you. There was a question that I think it was, let me just try and find. Yeah, it's an interesting question from Barbara Hull who asked about enjoyment and element of enjoyment must remain in galleries Barbara suggests, not everyone who visits is a social historian or an art historian. The seriousness of exhibitions need to be couched in such a way that they do not preclude but attract with a new inclusiveness. Your thoughts on that. I've really, I once wrote an essay about and desertry pleasure on a Sunday afternoon. For me it was about kind of just wandering through a museum and and looking at some beautiful things and maybe some things I didn't like. That's part of the pleasure for me. And enjoyment I think is really critical. And I also think that offering different approaches depended but fitted to the art and the ideas that you're showing is also really important. So, again, just looking across the two London tapes at the moment. Hogarth and Europe has has offers some different written interpretations, which the visitors can engage with or not engage with, and depending on their preference and what they enjoy. And Labena Himmits exhibition at Tate Modern has no interpretation text, beyond the, the name of the work, and some wall captions that are hers that her part of her artwork. So there, and the choice that the artist and the curators have made is to empty the rooms of extra narrative so that the paintings and the sculpture and sound do their work. And, and both are about trying to get or allowing visitors to see and think differently. But also we hope and sort of experience the pleasure of the works themselves. And next week, Life Between Islands at Tate Britain and again gives a very multi sensory immersion in a period of art and a set of artists who we don't know well enough. But the visitors will be presented with all sorts of scenes, especially from London that may well be familiar to them. And, and the sense of a visual and sensorial pleasure is absolutely part of the experience of the exhibition. And for me, I think the sense of deepening scholarship. I mean that it's vital for us and an offering points of learning can take all sorts of forms. Sometimes it will be written. And sometimes it will be a sound piece, and enjoying ourselves while we're doing that is vital. And also, I think it's also quite important to be sometimes a bit wound up by things. And we're not supposed to like everything when we come into a music any museum and you'd have to have you'd have to aim for quite a sort of beige middle ground and to try to please everyone. There's not much to be avoided. No doubt. We've got a really interesting question here from Emma Barker, who asks clearly it's crucial or says clearly it's crucial for Tate Britain to engage with histories of empire and slavery that have shaped contemporary Britain. Isn't the real challenge to try and shape exhibitions displays with reference to intersectional ways of thinking that is bringing race and class and gender together. I guess, is that, is that almost, I mean, as, as, as great a challenge or as the great challenge that museums and galleries face today. It is. And, and I would argue that that Hogarth in Europe does that in that many of the responses to the works and speak to the intersection of class and and race and and sexual dimensions. And, and that that's important because I say Alice and Martin bring a lot into this exhibition and Martin and Alice's sensitivity to the complex class dynamics that absolutely characterise Hogarth's work are there as well. And one doesn't and shouldn't to replace the other. And in fact, I think some of the most interesting moments or the most interesting works in the exhibitions are where within the form of the, the painting, you can see those intersectional issues playing out. And, and so sexual politics combined, compounded by racial dimensions and that perhaps in the past, and we were not well enough equipped to understand or unpack all of those dimensions. But again, the sense of bringing multiple points of view to bear is absolutely about trying to do that. You know, we can't think about capitalism without thinking about the systems of transatlantic slavery and vice versa and the treatment of women in the UK and across the globe in intersects with all of that and so you can't, there is a necessity to hold a kind of sensitivity or nimbleness in relation to all of those dimensions. Thank you. I have a question from Paul Spencer Longhurst, who asked the biggest issue of the day is without the clock is without doubt the climate emergency. How, in summary is Tate responding to this, a big question somewhere at the end of the day, but it is a really interesting one and maybe underpinning this is how you, how might you respond to that emergency even in the kind of the kind of displays or the, or the character of the exhibitions you put on and even the subject matter of those exhibitions I guess. Well, it is a, it's a huge question and one which thankfully has been much debated at Tate over the last few years and and no much longer cause for colleagues here in many areas of what we do. And so the, as I said in my talk we can't, we can't pretend it is our issue, because we cannot continue as the museum we are, or have historically been and and work constructive, constructively toward net zero, which is what we must do. Otherwise we are contributing to an environmental disaster that will mean that there wouldn't, there won't be 100 year future for our collection, and we want that. So there is a whole host of practical things that are always an ongoing, and we were talking about this as a group of directors across the whole of Tate's organization just this morning. In that in everything that we do in every bit of our operations we need to be challenging ourselves to rethink how we do it and and lower our consumption of carbon and take actions to make sure that we are less destructive to the environment. And then there is a use of our cultural clout if you like, and Francis Morris has been particularly galvanized around this area to use Tate modern and the Turbine Hall which is this great amplifying space to promote the thinking and work that artists are doing to raise public awareness about the need to take action in terms of the emergency so there's if you like content related things that we can and should do. But then there's if you like a wider policy and advocacy role I think Tate has to play, which we do through the National Museum Directors Group, and through debates at the Bezo group or through Francis's role on the ICOM and CMAN groups, because we do have to change how we operate as global museums. We can't keep growing in the same way that we did. We can't keep flying works around the world in the way that we did at our peak, without having really very negative implications on the climate. And that doesn't mean that we have to withdraw into ourselves, never lend anything again, and just sort of observe our own little boundaries, and because the broadening of cultural understanding what we have learned from a work like the Edgar Kalau piece I talked about is just profound. We're resourceful, problem solving individuals and organisations, and so I think we can conceive of different ways of sharing collections nationally and internationally. The pandemic forced us to do that. So, to go back to Turner, Turner in the modern world inadvertently became a significantly low carbon exhibition, because it was impossible to have the international loans that we might have wished to and we are in a mess with an extraordinary collection of turners of our own, and other works in our regional collections, such that it was a really superb exhibition made largely from the UK and therefore much more sustainable. Interesting question. Thanks so much, Maria. There's a really interesting question that's come in. I will find their name in a moment, but it's about, and this really ties into, I mean, really, Kevin Chamberlain's asked this. It's a question about, on the one hand it's about, you've been talking about the shows, something like Hogarth and Europe, which, and about the kinds of experience you offer your visitors at Tate Britain, at Milbank. But what about, how do you engage with that broader audience who can't get to the Tate, or who don't have the means or the ability to visit, or regularly visit, or not even necessarily in the UK. And this is really a question about online provision and about your thoughts, Maria, on Tate's online provision. I know that you have an amazing kind of digital resource already and websites and so on. But it'd be great to get, I think Kevin's point is really about how he mentions the possibility of an online Hogarth exhibition that would provide, okay, not the same thing, but a really interesting substitute for the one you've actually been made to put on. Your thoughts about kind of the gallery, the museum, and the online, I guess, and the digital, it would be really interesting, I think. Well, I think at this point in history, the online or the digital isn't separate to what we do, it has to be integrated, because in terms of how we all live in the world now, we kind of, we inhabit, we live on our phones as much as we live in the world in increasingly sort of in a interpenetrated ways. And it's not reasonable to think that museums wouldn't operate like that, you know, when you can access so much content from other parts of culture in the world. Visitors all over the world want to be able to learn and see and think about different things. And of course, during the pandemic period, we did have to sort of accelerate ways of doing that. It's always had a good digital presence and brilliant colleagues across the organisation work on that. But we'd never given the kind of virtual tours to our exhibitions that we learned to do at speed during the pandemic. And we learned what worked well and what didn't work well. Because as with many areas, digital is one where people will say, well, why don't you just put everything online? And that actually, that isn't really what people are asking for. They want a well curated thing that suits the form that they're viewing it on. And they want all the kind of guidance and knowledge and they want it to look seamless. So we did some brilliant exhibition tours and we did some other projects that really didn't work because we didn't know how to deliver them well. So I think we're in quite an exciting time where the digital realm exists for our physical exhibitions and it is an environment which we can learn to work differently in. So we have time based media works, films and performance that we've found have been better shared online. Or certainly we've been able to show things in very, very different ways along with other institutions in other parts of the world. And we really want to pursue those kinds of opportunities where the goal is not to make something digital. But it is instead to reach an audience who really want it in that way and aren't using it just as a substitute for coming to the museum because we would still like them to come, obviously. But there were some kinds of work and ways of putting together collection displays and exhibitions that are better in that form. And that offers us a deepening of reach, which I think is very exciting. Thank you. We've had a question here Maria about whether there are any plans to re-display, it says the British Gallery is at Tate, but I think we're thinking here about the collections at Tate Britain. The permanent works and it's interesting because in the conversation we've focused on exhibitions in particular, but then the issues arise around about how you present your permanent collections in ways that resonate with all the arguments you've been making. And the question is, someone mentioned the same person asking the question that says the current strictly chronological approach doesn't seem to have much to say to a broad audience without any prior knowledge. I think it's a somewhat more thematic framework offer more scope for engaging new audiences. That's the question. It's a very good question and one which Alex Farkasen and his team will be very pleased to hear, because they are in the last stages of planning the execution of a rehang which will take place next year. It's been delayed because of the pandemic, but actually like, in fact it's 2023, Alex will tell me off. The longer timeframe has had some benefits, as well as some frustrations, because Alex started rethinking the presentation of the whole history of the collection from a sense that we know from our visitors that very often they don't necessarily have to hand the kind of context and history you would need to be just able to take yourself through that approach and we already supplement in all sorts of ways, but actually finding a way of displaying the collection which allows people to get really deep into the social and cultural context and is interesting for us in terms of being able to show a much greater diversity of objects, but it's definitely more interesting for visitors, and then the digital can supplement as well and offer people further avenues for exploration and Alex and the team have been experimenting with displays in the last 60 years, for the last few years. So the final rooms of the collection galleries don't stay the same, and at the moment their display is titled An Unfinished Conversation and phrase taken from John A. Comfort through Stuart Hall. And it explores ideas and artists work and that connect to the movements that come out of British cultural studies and exploration of black British cultural thinking, which connects to the life between islands show, but also reflects the work that has been done on the collection and works that have come into the collection. And so that some new ways have been tested already, but the more comprehensive rehang will absolutely situate the works within, you know, enough context that people would know what they then want to go and find out. And it will also reflect a much broader sense of the things that are relevant to know and engage with across that very wide span of history. And I suppose the final thing I would say, and this is true of all of Tate, is that there are very few bits of it that stay the same forever. The permanent displays are not really very permanent, because we are also a significant lending institution. And, and also, as you know, you know, works, and works get tired, they need retiring from light. And so, unlike some institutions where there is an absolute parade of kind of fixed things that we show that people want. And we have a much more flexible approach to what is on display, even though there are some really, really important key works and key themes that we need to show. Thank you. I realize it's very demanding. We've been very demanding upon you, Maria, with all these questions bombarding with them, but they're coming thick and fast. We're coming towards the end now. And I'm sorry that I won't be able to ask all the questions that have been asked just because of time I'm afraid. And we're getting I also want you to say, Maria, while we pause between questions just how much positive response we're getting, not only to your lecture but to what you're trying to do and what you are what you're are leading and doing at Tate from on in the chat box as well as through the questions, some, you know, getting a huge amount of support from our audience for the direction of travel you're taking Tate in which is, which is I think important for you to hear and to see and wonderful responses to the talk itself. One question here which I think people will be very interested in learning more about really is that it's a question which is from John Hink saying, what are your thoughts on charging for exhibitions and he says in an ideal world all exhibitions will be free but I think it would be helpful for our audience to just know the kind of economics that you're juggling with here in terms of the importance of things like exhibition ticket income simply for you to be able to survive and thrive to do all these things. So, yeah, your thoughts on charging for exhibitions from John Hicks. Yeah. Well, the economics of the work we do have changed beyond all recognition in the pandemic and even now in the current moment, but before that moment, Tate was earning 70% of its own income. Our grant in aid from government is is a large sum of money you know the public purse does keep the national collection free for everyone, but the finances of a foresight large collection and global institution like Tate mean that we have had to and actually have become incredibly good at earning the money that we needed to then serve the public in the way that we wanted to. And it's absolutely not sustainable in the current moment and thus we have seen more government support. And as we open exhibitions to reduce numbers of visitors that has put us and all the other national museums in a very financially precarious situation. But to, to speak to the question in a larger sense. And I, I think the balance that we have between free to access collections that span an incredibly wide and historic period and also encompass the globe and virtually every kind of form of art that you can think of. Combined with and very well researched and beautifully put together and presented and particular exhibitions and holds the right balance if you like between and what what people are willing and are able to pay for and and prioritize. And that benefit is then brought back in to making sure that the larger proportion of what we show because the free spaces are much larger than the exhibition spaces. So for me that that that balance is is good. And I think we're getting increasingly flexible and and creative in terms of how we think about expanding our reach, whilst also managing public need and earning money. So something like the Kusama display which is on a tape modern at the moment, and is essentially a collection work. And there's a bit of supplementary material but the things that people come to see belong to Tate. And they're, they're extraordinary immersive experiences they're in a relatively small space, so you can't let heaps of people in any way. So you need a ticketing system to actually make it a pleasurable experience to come and see it. But we haven't ticketed it at 25 pounds. It's ticketed at five pounds and and and of course the impact of that is that it's sold out all the time. And we've extended that because the sort of selling out that is that it is a limited physical space. And people having to stand for hours in a queue is a is a dispiriting experience. And up in Liverpool, the wonderful Lucy and Freud exhibition that's there is ticketed. And it's drawn from the collection again largely, and it's 10 pounds, which I think is really good value for an exhibition of that quality. There are other things that are more expensive, but we pay for many of our cultural experiences. And what I'm concerned with is generating enough income, such that we can have a wider public benefit, and, and sort of doing a range of things in order to achieve and what I resist absolutely would be the model you see in other countries where you have to pay just to come over the threshold. Long, long, long way that last, maybe the case in, in, in, in our, in our own galleries and museums in the UK. It's 629 British standard time Maria. That's an hour and a half. Fantastic to to hear your thoughts in the museum and gallery today, a really brilliant lecture huge thanks for all the thoughts and investment you gave it as a project and, and, and thanks so much for your responses to our many questions to all our audience, more than 300 people tuned in to watch you Maria and clearly engaged. There are so many questions I wasn't able to pass on to me to apologize for all those who have not heard their questions being answered but thanks to you all for all your engagement thanks to you all for thanks for having me tonight. And just say we have many more events in the poor melon centers program of over the next few weeks before Christmas and invite you to have a look at our program and and sign in for more. But in the meantime, can I say a huge thanks to you Maria, once again, for a wonderful poor man lecture. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me to do it.