TATE AMERICAS FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT
We are delighted to share with you the Tate Americas Foundation Digital Annual Report for FY21/22. The report is available to view through the following link:
Tate Americas Foundation Digital Annual Report FY 21/22
It was an exciting year at Tate with visitors steadily returning to visit the galleries in person. Donors showed great generosity for Tate and TAF received over $6.3 million in gifts and art. This annual report gives you a full view of the programs supported and the art acquired.The Tate Americas Foundation continued to strengthen holdings of art from Latin and North America with a number of acquisitions and gifts made possible by individuals, foundations, and our own Latin American Acquisitions Committee and North American Acquisitions Committee. Grants to Tate provided crucial support for a number of projects including major acquisitions of art and important exhibitions such as Life Between Islands Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now; Anicka Yi: In Love with the World; Lubaina Himid; and Hogarth and Europe.The Board of Trustees, under the leadership of Paul Britton, Chair, and Bob Rennie, President, played a critical role in guiding the Foundation’s successes. Our Board members are inspired ambassadors for Tate and the Tate Americas Foundation.All that was achieved was made possible, as always, through the continuing support of our trustees, donors, sponsors and funders; we again thank all those whose generosity allows us to thrive.
LAAC LONDON PROGRAM
The Latin American Acquisitions Committee (LAAC) recently met in London for their annual Seminar Meeting. The Committee met with artists Hew Locke and Manuela Ribadeneira, visited Gasworks, and Committee member Catherine Petitgas graciously hosted a welcome dinner for everyone.
Pictured, Hew Locke provides a walkthrough of his Tate Britain commission for the Committee.
NAAC NEW YORK PROGRAM
The North American Acquisitions Committee (NAAC) met in New York for their annual Allocations Meeting at which the they voted to acquire many exciting works for Tate’s Collection. Committee member Miyoung Lee generously hosted NAAC for lunch and a collection visit, and after they visited with artists Rick Lowe, Adam Pendleton, and Oscar Murillo.
Pictured, artist Rick Lowe explains his work featured in the Whitney Biennial.
COLLECTION DISPLAYS AT TATE MODERN
New collection displays have just opened at Tate Modern and include many works by North and Latin American artists that were recently acquired through the North American Acquisitions Committee, the Latin American Acquisitions Committee, and gifts from donors. Highlights that feature recent TAF Acquisitions include –
LOUISE NEVELSON AND LEONARDO DREW in MATERIALS AND OBJECTS
Natalie Bell Building, Level 4 West
The Materials and Objects display looks at the inventive ways in which artists around the world use diverse materials. Increasingly over the last hundred years, artists have challenged the idea that certain materials are unsuitable for art. Some employ industrial materials and methods, while others adapt craft skills, or put the throwaway products of consumer society to new uses.
Leonardo Drew
In Number 185, 2016 long slats and logs protrude from a central grid, suggesting the force of nature disrupting the constructed world. Drew weathered and painted the wood used in these works to make them appear salvaged and charred. He describes ‘becoming the weather’ in his process of transforming the wood, emphasising our interconnectedness with forces larger than ourselves. Drew numbers his works rather than giving them descriptive titles. This allows viewers to create their own associations with their forms.
INHERITED THREADS in IN THE STUDIO
Natalie Bell Building, Level 2 East
In Inherited Threads, artworks are exhibited which incorporate used textile fragments or reference textile traditions to demonstrate the ways in which cloth holds memory. Textiles often carry personal, cultural and familial meaning. People without access to art studios or a formal art education have employed textiles found in the home as a creative medium.
Gee’s Bend Quilts
The Gee’s Bend quiltmakers are an intergenerational community of African American women living in the isolated hamlet of Boykin (Gee’s Bend), Alabama. Many of the quiltmakers are direct descendants of the enslaved people forced to labor at the cotton plantation established there by Joseph Gee in 1816. Though the Gee’s Bend quilts were originally made by necessity as bedspreads and blankets, the tradition has continued with new generations. In recent years the quilts have been shown in fine art museums and galleries internationally, displayed for their improvisatory compositions and resourceful use of materials. Currently on view are Mary Lee Bendolph (pictured, right), Annie Mae Young, and Aolar Mosely.
Antonio Pichilla Quiacain
Contemporary artist Antonio Pichilla Quiacain explores the cultural significance of textiles in relation to his heritage. He is influenced by the Maya culture of his grandparents, while also reflecting aspects of geometric modernist abstract painting in his woven works. In Kukulkan 2017 (pictured, left), a multi-color fabric appears folded in a zig-zag form, cutting through the area of a canvas with a black-dotted stripe on a bright yellow background. The abstract pattern of these stripes is a quotation to the design of traditional whitecloth trousers with black stripes worn by Maya-Tz`utujil senior men in San Pedro la Laguna, the artists’ birthplace.
These displays will be followed in July by a display of recently acquired photographs by Martha Rosler and two photographic series by Laura Aguilar and Lyle Ashton Harris.