Nicholas Serota

Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota CH (born 27 April 1946) is a British art historian and curator. He has been chairman of Arts Council England since February 2017.

Serota was director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, then director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and then director of the Tate from 1988 to 2017. He was also chairman of the Turner Prize jury until 2007.

Born and raised in a Jewish household in Hampstead, North London, the only son of Stanley Serota, a civil engineer, and Beatrice Katz Serota, a civil servant, later a life peer and Labour Minister for Health in Harold Wilson's government and local government ombudsman. His younger sister, Judith Serota, who also works in the arts, is married to Francis Pugh. Serota was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School (where he became school captain) and then studied economics at Christ's College, Cambridge, before switching to history of art. He completed a master's degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, under the supervision of Michael Kitson and Anita Brookner; his thesis was on the work of J. M. W. Turner.

In 1969, Serota became chairman of the new Young Friends of the Tate organisation with a membership of 750: they took over a building in Pear Place, south of Waterloo Bridge, arranging lectures and Saturday painting classes for local children. The Young Friends staged their own shows and applied for an Arts Council grant, but were asked to desist by the Tate chairman and trustees, who were concerned with the appearance of official backing for these ventures. Serota and his committee resigned, which precipitated the end of the Young Friends, whose accommodation was taken over for rehearsals by the National Theatre.

In 1970, Serota joined the Arts Council of Great Britain's Visual Arts Department as a regional exhibitions officer. In 1973 he was made director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (now Modern Art Oxford), where he organised an early exhibition of work by Joseph Beuys and formed a working relationship with Alexander "Sandy" Nairne, with whom he worked at various points in the following years.

In 1976, Serota was appointed director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London's East End. The Whitechapel was well regarded but had suffered from lack of resources. Serota assembled at the Whitechapel a staff including Jenni Lomax (later director of the Camden Arts Centre), Mark Francis (later of Gagosian Gallery) and Sheena Wagstaff (later chief curator of Tate Modern), and organised exhibitions of Carl Andre, Eva Hesse and Gerhard Richter as well as early exhibitions of then emerging artists such as Antony Gormley.

In 1976 he was a judge for an art competition run by the brewers Trumans. In 1980, assisted by Sandy Nairne, he organised a two-part exhibition of 20th century British sculpture. In 1981, he curated The New Spirit in Painting, with Norman Rosenthal and Christos Joachimides for the Royal Academy.

The shows, where Serota was helped by his administrator Loveday Shewell, often received adverse reviews in the press, which reacted with an uncharacteristic dislike for contemporary avant-garde art. Thus Serota remained somewhat distanced from the English establishment, although developing a growing reputation internationally in the art world.