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PHOTO: MARION VOGEL INTERVIEW Chris Dercon Director, Tate Modern Chris Dercon, the director of Tate Modern since 2011, compares his job with running a public broadcasting company. <strong>The</strong> day before we met, he had held a brainstorming session with the Tate’s curators about its programme. “You start with set ideas and you come up with a completely different idea thanks to serendipity,” he says. “Everything is interconnected.” It all sounds democratic—Nick Serota, Dercon’s boss, came too—collegiate and unbureaucratic for a big museum. “It’s not ‘<strong>The</strong> Sopranos’ or ‘Mad Men’,” he says, referring to TV series with a named creative producer in charge. “It’s ‘<strong>The</strong> Wire’ or ‘Homeland’, with each episode directed by someone else.” Dercon was born in Belgium and studied art history, theatre and film theory in Amsterdam. An arts journalist before he became a curator, he was the founding director of the Witte de With contemporary art centre in Rotterdam. He then became the director of the city’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, overseeing its expansion and renovation. Before Tate Modern, THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE ART FAIR Wednesday 10 October 2012 7 ‘An old work will be incredibly angry…’ …if you marry it with a contemporary work in a superficial way. By Javier Pes he ran Munich’s Haus der Kunst. We met a fortnight before Frieze, when Dercon had just returned from the opening of “<strong>The</strong> Ancients Stole All Our Great Ideas”, Ed Ruscha’s exhibition at the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna (until 2 December), the first in the historic art museum’s new series of contemporary installations. <strong>The</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Newspaper</strong>: Frieze London has added Frieze Masters this year. What do you think of the trend to link historic and contemporary art? Chris Dercon: I hope people will be aware that these things that were produced a very long time ago have a complex life in terms of reception and transmission, and these complexities are very important to deal with. It will be very sad if people do it in a superficial way. An old work will be incredibly angry with you if you do that. When you start getting into what Ed Ruscha has done, it’s fantastic. I think it’s important that we start to question the contemporaneity of contemporary art. Maybe we need to stop talking about the newest new art, and start talking about new techniques PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN COLLECTION PABLO PICASSO FEMME À LA FENÊTRE (MARIE-THÉRÈSE), 1936. ESTIMATE $15,000,000-20,000,000 IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE AUCTION IN NEW YORK 5 NOVEMBER 2012 | ENQUIRIES +1 212 606 7360 REGISTER NOW AT SOTHEBYS.COM and definitely new audiences. What was the attraction of working in London? <strong>The</strong>re was the personal contact with Nick Serota. I got to know him when I was at the Witte. We were the first to do retrospectives of artists such as Hélio Oiticica and Paul <strong>The</strong>k. And in Munich, I was the first to do a retrospective of Amrita Sher-Gil. Nick Serota was more aware than most “<strong>The</strong> only thing Nick Serota and I disagree about is that I did so many fashion shows” people of the importance of these artists. I decided I have to go to places I was envious of. I was envious of what the Tate has been doing since 2003 with Latin American art, since 2008 with Middle Eastern art, more recently with African art, and soon with South Asian art. Every move you make as Tate Modern’s director is scrutinised. How do you cope with that? I got scrutinised at the Boijmans © SOTHEBY’S, INC. 2012 TOBIAS MEYER, PRINCIPAL AUCTIONEER, #9588677 © 2012 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK <strong>The</strong> director has moved around Europe “like a soccer player” because of the situation in the city of Rotterdam—the city of Pim Fortuyn [a critic of multiculturalism]—and in Munich because I became the director of the “private kunsthalle of Mr Hitler”. It was about elitism and wanting to become a multicultural society in Rotterdam, and history and the way you deal with history in Munich. So to be scrutinised is normal. I imagine Nick Serota is a tough boss. We have a long-standing dialogue about the future of museums because of what I did with architects and what he did. We have a long-standing discussion about the multicultural society. He knew I was interested in other media, and he knew the shows I did. So the dialogue was not new. <strong>The</strong> only thing we didn’t agree about was that I did so many fashion shows in Rotterdam and Munich. That’s still a joke—a long-standing joke. Were you concerned that most of your time would be spent raising the funds to build Tate Modern’s extension? I’ve been addicted to [fundraising] since [working at] PS1. Alanna Heiss [the founder] and I had to lay off <strong>The</strong> hole at Cullinan Diamond Mine, Gauteng, South Africa, where in 1905 F. Wells unearthed what is known as the Cullinan Diamond, or the Star of Africa. Photo credit: Petra Diamonds Ltd. people during the summer because we couldn’t pay them. Once the shows were in place, it was much easier to get people enthusiastic. That’s how I worked in PS1; that’s how I work here. Because I’ve been working almost like a soccer player, going from Brussels to New York to F.C. Rotterdam to Bayern Munich, you get to meet so many enthusiastic and generous people. <strong>The</strong>re’s always a fear that public institutions will become a plutocrat’s vanity project. I like to concentrate on those collectors who share our beliefs. <strong>The</strong>re are many who want to work with new forms of public-private partnership: the Falckenbergs, the Goetzs, Dimitris Daskalopoulos, Bernardo Paz and Anthony d’Offay, to name a few. <strong>The</strong>re are many examples of mega-rich private collectors who see the benefits of working with public museums. And where do art fairs fit into your schedule these days? I can’t go to them all. It’s very important to be in Basel, and in Miami, given my Latin American connections. I’m not hopping in and out of airports. I did that. Now the curators have to do it.
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