Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern, pictured with Phyllida Barlow’s untitled: upturnedhouse; supplied
Frances Morris knows all about risk and thinking outside the box. As Director of Britain’s Tate Modern, she is arguably one of the most powerful museum directors in the world.
She is in Sydney this week to deliver the Keynote address at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s (MCA) conference, The Forever Now.
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Morris is always looking ahead. She told ArtsHub: ‘You can’t force anybody to take on the world of visual art. It is absolutely important that museums remove what I like to call “trip hazards” so that the journey in is as smooth as possible.’
She was appointed to the directorship in January this year, and in June opened Switch House, a new 10-storey wing that expanded Tate Modern’s exhibition space by 60%.
At a cost of £260 million (A$450 million), it is a level of expansion unprecedented for a museum that is only 16 years old.
Switch House photos © Iwan Baan
It has been described as a ‘game changer’; Morris herself has been called a ‘maverick’ and ‘a person who lets artists fly’.
She told ArtsHub that a philosophy of inclusivity was central to her management style.
‘I am firmly committed to sitting round the table with a group of people rather than leading one-to-one. I want people to hear what other people have to say,’ said Morris.
‘My relationships with the gallery assistants are as important as with those of senior managers.’
She says it come from starting in a small organisation where everyone did everything. ‘I would frank the letters, paint the walls and help hang the pictures, so I understand that the people who do those activities are just like me, but just in different roles.’
Morris joined Tate in 1987 as a curator and has followed the traditional path of moving up the ladder – with one exception: as a woman she now holds the top chair.
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Risk is more than just funky architecture
The Switch House looks like a twisted grater; its pyramid-shaped tower perforated to allow the light to filter in, and at night to emanate a glow.
It sits behind the original power station and now infamous Turbine Hall which opened in 2000 – both buildings created by the practice Herzog & de Meuron.
Starchitecture and art museums have increasingly become partners over recent decades. Risk, however, is more than just building design or embedded technology that alters the viewer’s experience.
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Tate have described Switch House as ‘a new kind of museum’.
A visitor way-finding app designed by consultancies Fabrique and Q42 guides visitors and links up with iBeacons scattered around the building, which tell visitors where they are, where they can find particular artworks and help them create personalised, curated journeys through the museum.
‘We need to encourage people gently to become engaged and then, once engaged, the journey needs to be as straight forward as possible. It is a really important balance between inviting and tempting, and pushing from behind,’ Morris told ArtsHub.
‘It is a really important balance between inviting and tempting, and pushing from behind.’
However she also recognises the attendant problem with that increased participatory relationship between audience, artist and museum: that we are left asking, ‘who controls that debate that takes place in the public space of the museum?’
Switch House photos © Iwan Baan
Navigating gender bias from the top
Women artists have been given far greater prominence in the new hanging.
‘I recently told a senior member of staff that I was hoping very much to construct a program around a 50-50 balance and they said. “You must be joking”. Why would I be joking?
‘I think there is a long way to go – a huge way to go – still,’ said Morris. ‘That word “bias” resonates very strongly with me. I think everybody still sees through gendered eyes and I am aware, continuously, of my own behaviour and my own actions being perceived in different ways by different people, according to the gender bias.
‘The other thing I have been experiencing a little lately – my daughter told me about it – is impostor syndrome, which is my own gender bias that it still seems inconceivable that I am in this position,’ said Morris.
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Finding sustainability and the funding crisis
Morris recognises that sustainability is the big challenge for all of us. As in Australia, government funding of arts organisations in the UK has diminished in recent decades, and the pressure is on to generate alternative revenue streams.
‘I don’t know what the answer to that is, but certainly it is creating a situation where we have to think very carefully about our exhibition program to ensure that we have sufficient popular content and wide appeal, that we can carry content of less wide appeal.’
‘I find asking very difficult, but what I find more challenging – no, challenging is the wrong word – what is incredibly important is the thank you and the nurturing of the hundreds of people who offer their support,’ said Morris.
‘You just don’t say thank you once, you say thank you every three months, and nurturing those relationships is a full time occupation and I am very aware of that in my new world.’
There has been a shift in philanthropy. We now talk about hundreds who give rather than a handful who might have given 20 years ago. And the model where people gave and did not receive anything in return has now shifted to a position where people expect something in return.
Thirty percent of Tate Modern’s funding comes from the public purse. The other 70% comes from footfall, ticketing, catering enterprises, and commercial corporate sponsorship and philanthropy.
Morris explained in terms of acquisitions: ‘We raise 300 individuals who gift us around $US15,000 each per year which helps build the collection.’
Morris will be talking about the complexity of fund raising at this moment in time and how you enhance philanthropy – the risks attached to that and the conflicts of interest – at the MCA Conference.
Partnerships offer new pathways
Morris believes that the partnership model has huge potential in the way organisations can support each other. Earlier this year the MCA announced its collecting partnership with Tate and Qantas. Two of those recently acquired works are on show in a new hang unveiled this week while Morris is in town.
Gordon Bennett’s Number Nine (2008), purchased jointly by Tate and MCA with funds provided by the Qantas Foundation 2016, image courtesy MCA and Milani Gallery, Brisbane © The Estate of Gordon Bennett
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‘At a very simple level, it puts us in direct communication, conversation and reciprocity with one of the great institutions in this region, and it allows us to finally introduce into the collection a narrative around Australian art,’ Morris told ArtsHub.
She was pragmatic in her agenda and choice of partners.
‘It is not just about where the great art is, but where we can network, where we could find funds, where we had connections and relationships.’
On creating a signature institution
‘A signature institution needs a strong vision,’ said Morris. She added that Tate Modern was lucky to have had that opportunity to make a big statement when it opened in 2000 at the dawn of a new century – a clear slate to create. You only get that once… Well, twice in the case of Tate Modern, twice, with the recent opening of its new wing.
Morris has been at the helm of both of those events. She believes the secret to success is: ‘We turned a few fundamental things upside down … That really set the tone for Tate Modern as a place to ask questions – you don’t tell. You inform and ask questions of your audience; questions of yourself, and you really challenge artists,’ she said.
And when asked about self preservation in the sea of these demands, Morris laughed: ‘I have one of those 100-day coaches at the moment. He described, “Frances you are in a marathon and yours began with a sprint, and that is a difficult one.” I have to take stock every now and again, and try and get out and get a breath of fresh air.
‘I am so excited by the challenge of the job – its an absolute ball,’ she concluded.
