Neon Rice Field by the bank of the Thames
Stephen Deuchar – 12 years heading Tate Britain
MúzeumCafé 15.
In the summer of 2003 a gentleman with a moustache and spotless elegance was browsing through the treasures in the stuffy cellar of Teheran’s Contemporary Art Museum, having been allowed to enter as the director of London’s Tate Britain. He managed to convince his Iranian colleagues to loan something from the dusty storeroom – Francis Bacon’s triptych, which had been held as a ‘political prisoner’ for thirty years. Art historian Stephen Deuchar, now leaving the director’s chair of Britain’s art citadel, talked to MúzeumCafé about the expedition to Teheran, the expanded museum in London, its Turner collection visiting China, and a Rubens watercolour rescued at the last minute. He also has a positive mention for Budapest. As the director of Tate Britain and hence the ‘host’ of the Turner Prize, Stephen Deuchar has never been annoyed by opposition, believing the tensions caused by contemporary art are inspiring.During its twenty-five years the Turner Prize has been called a part of show business or a media circus. It has happened that Madonna once compered the awards presentation and Phil Collins has played music, but it was really the art works that were criticised, not the trappings of entertainment. It is the responsibility of the jury – art experts, museum directors and curators – to commend four artists from among the nominations. Tate director Nicholas Serota once said he could only hope that if the competition had been held in 1750 Canaletto would have been nominated. J.M.W. Turner has proved the most tireless cultural diplomat, his exhibition travelling the world. With some help from British premier Gordon Brown, a Turner exhibition was held in the National Art Museum of China, and Budapest had not witnessed such a large-scale presentation of the painter’s works as was held at the Museum of Fine Arts last year. America has also seen a selection of Turner’s works, and there were 100,000 visitors at Moscow’s Pushkin Museum. In addition, the Tate has taken The Lure of the East to Istanbul and to the United Arab Emirates. In 2002 Deuchar set off to discover the Middle East, specifically Iran. In Teheran’s Contemporary Art Museum he called on Alireza Sami Azar since he had information that a painting by Francis Bacon was hidden in the cellars. Suddenly he came across Bacon’s Triptych. The central panel depicts two naked men, Bacon and his partner George Dyer, and they can also be seen on the two side panels, one clothed the other naked. It is a key work of the 1960s. The shah’s wife bought it in Düsseldorf in 1972 and the couple donated it with many other works to the contemporary art museum. Later the fundamentalists drove them out of the country and removed their ‘subversive’ pictures from the galleries. As part of an exchange deal, Deuchar and the Tate promised a selection of the best 20th-century British sculpture and in the end Bacon’s work arrived in London in the summer of 2004. During its half year there it became one of the museum’s special attractions. Then, a day after the painting was back in Teheran and on a wall in the museum, the secret police turned up and removed the central panel depicting the two naked men embracing. Among his three favourite museums Deuchar includes an ‘old player’ and two new comers. First there is the Louvre, which you cannot but adore. It is perfect inside out. Pei’s pyramid and underground cultural labyrinth are still fascinating 20 years on and the collection gives every reason to keep returning. His second favourite is also, architecturally, connected to Pei – the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, which opened in December 2008. The museum of sand colour blocks and rising on its own island is simply brilliant. It is a truly contemporary building based on the traditions of Islamic architecture. The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest is his other favourite. Without any flatter, he thinks what has happened there in the past five years is extraordinary. Due to László Baán’s spirituality and new, daring perception, the museum has become a lively and remarkable focus on an international level. A real point of reference. When appointed director a dozen years ago, Stephen Deuchar found himself in the thick of London’s museum life. During his time the only thing that shook his solid institution was the separation of Tate Britain’s modern and international collections. Besides its exciting exhibitions, Tate Modern has become a serious competitor thanks to the design of architects Herzog and de Meuron. The spectacular and witty exhibition space, transformed from a power station, has become Britain’s second most popular visitor attraction after its most favoured seaside resort, even leaving behind New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The number of visitors has increased by 60 per cent in the last eight years due to large-scale, crowd-drawing exhibitions such as the Lucien Freud and Bacon retrospectives, and programmes attracting hundreds of thousands. The museum has regained its strength. For four years it has been possible to access via the internet the entire collection encompassing 500 years, and thanks to the Turner Prize the museum teems with contemporary art.