TATE AMERICAS FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT 2016 4 TRUSTEES 6 INTRODUCTION 8 ART ACQUISITIONS 28 COMMITTEES 30 INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL 32 DONORS 36 EVENTS 40 CONTRIBUTION CATEGORIES Cover: Yoshua Okón Octopus 2011 CONTENTS © Courtesy of Mor Charpentier and the artist BOARD OF TRUSTEES Jeanne Donovan Fisher (Chair) Paul Britton Estrellita Brodsky James Chanos Henry Christensen III Glenn Fuhrman Pamela Joyner Noam Gottesman John J Studzinski, CBE Marjorie Susman Juan Carlos Verme EX-OFFICIO TRUSTEES Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian (Chair, Latin American Acquisitions Committee) Gregory R Miller (Co-Chair, North American Acquisitions Committee) Christen Wilson (Co-Chair, North American Acquisitions Committee) STAFF Richard Hamilton (Director) Virginia Cowles Schroth (Head of Development) Daniel Schaeffer (Events Manager) TRUSTEES 4 5 I am delighted to introduce the latest annual report of the Tate Americas Foundation. In 2016, we received nearly $13.4 million in cash gifts and made grants to Tate of $9.4million. Numerous projects at Tate were supported ranging from acquisitions, exhibitions, scholarship and capital programs, but we were particularly happy to have supported Robert Rauschenberg exhibition at Tate Modern. A highlight of the past year was the opening of the Switch House at Tate Modern, an iconic new building at the south end of the existing gallery that has created new spaces for exhibiting the collection, performance and installation art and learning, allowing visitors to engage more deeply with art. We are enormously proud that the Tate Americas Foundation, thanks to its supporters, was able to make over $50 million in grants to this capital campaign over the last few years. This past May we held our fourth Artists Dinner in New York City. The event raised over $1.5 million and was skillfully led by an energetic group of Co-Chairs: Estrellita Brodsky, Kira Flanzraich, Pamela Joyner, Komal Shah, Robert Sobey, Christen Wilson and Juan Yarur Torres. Our deepest thanks goes to the committee and all supporters for helping consolidating the event as a key fixture in contemporary art calendar. There is no other art world event that celebrates contemporary artists with such passion and joy and I hope that as many of you as possible will join us for the next dinner on May 8, 2019. Towards the end of 2016, Tate’s visionary director, Sir Nicholas Serota, announced that he would be retiring in mid-2017 after nearly three decades. It goes without saying that Nick’s contribution in transforming Tate has been remarkable but without his commitment to the Tate Americas Foundation there would not be such an important and vibrant network of supporters across the Americas. We all owe Nick a deep debt of gratitude for his guidance and leadership. Thank you for your support, as always! Jeanne Donovan Fisher INTRODUCTION Chair, Tate Americas Foundation 6 7 ART ACQUISITIONS KEVIN BEASLEY Your face is / is not enough, 2016 was made for Between the Ticks of the Watch, a group exhibition at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in 2016. It is an installation comprising twelve individual sculptures and a performance that takes place at its opening. Eleven of the sculptures consist of a microphone stand topped by an altered and encased gas mask, and an altered and encased megaphone resting at the base of the stand. The twelfth sculpture is just the altered gas mask and the altered megaphone, without a microphone stand. The materials used to alter and encase the gas marks and megaphones include found thrift-store clothes, feathers, baseball caps and umbrellas. These fabrics are sometimes filled with polyurethane foam and sometimes hardened after being soaked in resin. These are materials Beasley has used previously in his sculptural work. Whenever the work is installed, a performance takes place on the occasion of the opening. Twelve performers wear the altered gas masks over their heads and carry the megaphones. Each stops beside a microphone stand attaches the hand-held voice-receiver of the megaphone to the nozzle of the gas masks using Velcro, and begin a series of three deep and audible breaths followed by a loud ‘AAH’ sound. This sequence is repeated thirty times over a period of several minutes. At the end of the sequence, the receiver is detached from the gas mask, and re-attached to the megaphone. The megaphone is rested on the floor, and the mask is placed on top of the stand. The performers bow and leave the space. Thereafter, the work is experienced as a sculptural installation. Though some of the sculptures recall the shapes of cartoon characters with Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny ears, the incorporation of gas masks and megaphones in all the sculptures cuts against associations of child-friendly characters. Instead, the masks and megaphones bring to mind protective wear for riots and war, as well as equipment used in protests. In the current context, they evoke the gassing of civilians in Syria and unrest in African American communities over the past few years, and the protests that have taken place following the succession of killings of black men by police. Mark Godfrey, Senior Curator, International Art (Europe and the Americas) Your face is / is not enough 2016 Mixed media Dimensions variable Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the North American Acquisitions Committee, 2016 © Tom Van Eynde, Courtesy the artist, Casey Kaplan, New York and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago 10 11 WILLIAM EGGLESTON William Eggleston is one of the most important living photographers, known primarily for his rich and complex color photographs of the American South. Eggleston was identified in the 1970s by the leading critic and curator of photography John Szarkowski as among the most important and innovative photographers working in color, with his work being characterized by bold arrangements of form and strong color balance, printed using a highly complex and expensive process called ‘dye transfer’. Dye transfers allow the various colors within a photographic print to be printed as separations, maintaining strong red and green tones within a single image, they are also extremely durable to light exposure, and so perfect for museum collections. Eggleston’s historic dye transfer works are among the most valuable post-war photographs on the market today. Eggleston’s subject matter varies considerably but primarily concerns everyday life in the southern states of America, often around the city of Memphis where Eggleston has lived and worked for much of his life. The ten images for Election Eve 1976 were made during a road trip in the state of Georgia, around Plains County and Sumter County (which housed Jimmy Carter’s headquarters), on the eve of the American election in 1976, and depict life in what appears to be an abandoned and outmoded corner of the country as a moment of high tension and anxiety takes place on the national stage. The works from the series Chromes were taken in the early 1970s. Although they were never before printed in this format, they include some characteristic and iconic elements of Eggleston’s style: bold colorful interiors, cars and gasoline stations, and portraits, both of individuals known to Eggleston and strangers encountered in the street. In his work Eggleston pays close attention to the complexity of the formal organization of the composition, often employing strong diagonal lines and reflections, but he also relishes the power of strong contrasts in color with vivid reds, blues and greens. Simon Baker, Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) Portfolio of 42 photographs, dye transfer prints on paper 10 from the series Election Eve 1976, printed 2012, of which 8 are 508 x 609 mm 20 x 24 inches), and 2 are 609 x 508 mm (24 x 20 inches) 32 from the series Chromes 1970–3, printed 2012, of which 23 are 406 x 508 mm (16 x 20 inches), 9 are 508 x 406 mm (20 x 16 inches) Number 3 in an edition of 10 Presented by Michael and Jane Wilson in honor of Sir Nicholas Serota (Tate Americas Foundation) 2016 © Eggleston Artistic Trust. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London 12 13 YOSHUA OKÓN Yoshua Okón is among the most prominent of a generation of artists who emerged in Mexico during the 1990s. Octopus 2011 is a four-channel video installation. Videos are projected on four different walls at different scales and heights and visitors are invited to view the footage while sitting on upturned red, plastic buckets. The footage shows a re-enactment scene intended to portray the thirty-six year long civil war in Guatemala from 1960s to 1996, being carried out in the parking lot of a DIY store called The Home Depot in Los Angeles. Groups of unarmed men are shown miming weapons. Casually dressed they are grouped according to their black or white t-shirts and riding supermarket carts and trolleys, or else crawling like commandos on the asphalt. The men engaged in this activity are illegal immigrant workers and former combatants from the war in Guatemala who, displaced after the war, come to find informal work as day-laborers by waiting in the parking lot of The Home Depot. The title of the work – in Spanish, “Pulpo”, meaning octopus, is the nickname given to The United Fruit Company (now called Chiquita Banana) in Guatemala, a company which was implicated in the origins of the conflict through its links with the CIA-led coup to overthrow President Jacobo Árbenz that triggered the war. The United Fruit Company, a US firm, at the time of the civil war was Guatemala’s largest landowner and possessed tax-exempt export privileges dating back to 1901. It accounted for 10% of the Guatemalan economy through a monopoly of the ports and rights over the railways and communications systems.