THE COLLECTION

BUILDING THE COLLEC TION

Over the next fve years, Tate’s priority is to increase our

holdings of women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, minority artists
and artists of colour. Firmly located within Tate’s transnational
interests, the debate surrounding post-colonialism is at the
fore of concerns.

We will continue to investigate how the collection might

accommodate more experiential works. We will create new
strategies for the acquisition and display of wide-ranging
media, including those new to Tate, such as fbre and textile
art, as well as digital forms, such as early electronic and
computer-based works.

Thanks to the Performance Activation Fund, performance works

have become a stronger feature of displays, underlining how
live forms in the collection are essential to the understanding
of recent contemporary art.

Tate Library & Archive will grow in tandem with the art
collection and continue to develop as a centre of excellence
for the study of British and international art.

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BRITISH ART

Tate’s collection of British art – the most comprehensive in the
world – is displayed at all Tate’s galleries and loaned extensively
nationally and internationally. Tate Britain will continue to
provide a comprehensive picture of the history of British art,
exploring art’s impact on the world, while the modern and
contemporary British collection will also be displayed within an
international context at Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool, and at Tate
St Ives, where the St Ives modernists and other British artists
will continue to be shown.
New acquisitions will ensure that Tate can present a narrative
of British art from a contemporary perspective. We will grow
the representation of women artists across the modern and
historic periods and build our holdings of the foreign-born
artists whose infuence has been crucial to the development
of British art.
The range of media represented in the collection will
be broadened to refect changing practices in British art
without duplicating the national collections that complement
Tate’s. Miniatures, the print medium and photography will
be integrated into the history of British art told by the
collection. We will also trace more recent developments
such as performance, flm, video, sound and digital.
The boundaries between high and low culture will continue
to be challenged, as will the synergies between art and craft,
art and design, art and architecture, art and music, and art
and the archive.

Research into the multiple histories within the collection will

continue to develop new understanding of the history of British
culture, with particular focus on ethnic, cultural, religious and
sexual diversity and such issues as disability, age and gender
in British art.

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INTERNATIONAL ART

Tate remains one of the frst international art museums

to pursue a global collecting strategy and will continue
to acquire work by artists previously overlooked by the Western
canon. Regional acquisition strategies will be informed by the
work of the new Hyundai Research Centre Transnational.

Another area of growing interest is the acquisition of works

by First Nation and Indigenous artists. Recent acquisitions have
focused the need for Tate to further embrace artists who –
coming from different histories and backgrounds – often fall
outside mainstream gallery representation.

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C ARING FOR THE COLLEC TION
Tate is a leader in collection care research and practice,
and we will continue to innovate and evolve approaches
to collection management, conservation, preservation,
discovery and access.
Tate has been at the forefront of the development
of techniques to care for work in ways that respond both
to technological advances and the changing media used
by artists. This will continue, through Reshaping the Collectible,
a major research project into contemporary artworks in the
collection, and other research initiatives. The outcomes and
expertise of the Collection Care team will be shared with
colleagues nationally and internationally.
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We will respond to the public demand to know more about
how we care for work. A plan for the long-term storage,
preservation and management of Tate’s growing collection
is being developed, with a view to reducing carbon use and
environmental impact.
The plan will also meet Tate’s commitment both to increase
access to our stored collections physically and digitally and
to lend more works, particularly to partner institutions in the
UK who have not been regular borrowers.
Systems for the display, management and preservation of Tate’s
expanding digital collection and assets will also be improved.