Road to BAP Liverpool Conference 2023

A chance for BAP Fellows to meet at a Private reception at Tate Liverpool hosted by Helen Legg, Executive Director, Tate (BAP Fellow 2019)

HISTORY OF TATE LIVERPOOL

Read about how this gallery grew to be the heart of Liverpool's cultural scene:

In the 1980s Alan Bowness, then director of Tate, decided to create a ‘Tate of the North’, as the project became known. This would be a gallery with a distinct identity, dedicated to showing modern art and encouraging a new, younger audience through an active education programme.

A warehouse at the disused Albert Dock in Liverpool was chosen as the site for the new gallery. The dock, once a bustling site crammed with rich cargos from Asia, tea, silk, tobacco and spirits, was derelict. In 1981 the dockyard underwent a rejuvenation, with the Maritime Museum leasing one of the warehouses and restaurants and bars opening.

In 1985, James Stirling was commissioned to design the new Tate Gallery at Liverpool. His designs left the exterior of the brick and stone building built over a colonnade of sturdy Doric columns almost untouched, but transformed the interior into an arrangement of simple, elegant galleries suitable for the display of modern art. It opened to the public in May 1988.

2008 marked the year Liverpool was named European Capital of Culture. To celebrate this, in 2007 the gallery hosted the Turner Prize, the first time the competition was held outside London. More than 600,000 visitors a year visit Tate Liverpool, cementing its position as a venue for major European exhibitions of modern art.

Helen Legg

Helen was appointed director of Tate Liverpool in June 2018. Prior to that she was director for 7 years of Spike Island, Bristol, a gallery and studio complex where she focused on giving opportunities to emerging and under recognised artists. She curated exhibitions with British and International contemporary artists including Becky Beasley, Charlotte Prodger, Ciara Phillips and Corita Kent, Dewar and Gicquel, Cevdet Erek, Lubaina Himid, Andy Holden, Haroon Mirza, Laure Prouvost, Michael Simpson, Patrick Staff and Maeve Brennan. Previously she was curator at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2005 -2010), where she was heavily involved in the development of Ikon Eastside, a second gallery and events space based in a former factory building in Digbeth, an industrial area of the city.

She gained an MA in History of Art from the University of St Andrews in 1996, followed by an MA in Curating & Commissioning Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art. She completed the Chief Executive Programme of National Art Strategies, hosted by Harvard Business School and Michigan Business School, in April 2015.

In 2018 Helen was a judge for the second Hepworth Prize for Sculpture and part of the selection panel for Scotland in Venice 2019. She was an external advisor to the Arts Council Collection Acquisitions Committee from 2015-17, a member of the Arts Council England South West Area Council, Chair of Visual Arts South West and is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University West of England. She was part of the selection committee for the British representation at the Venice Biennale 2017 and a judge for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in the same year. In 2014 she was a judge for the Turner Prize and the Contemporary Art Society’s Museums Award and in 2013 was a selector for the Paul Hamlyn Artist’s Awards. She served on the acquisition committee for Frac Midi-Pyrénées 2012-15.

Helen has written about contemporary art for a wide range of publications and journals, most recently catalogue essays for British artists Emma Hart and Lubaina Himid, and South Korean artist Kim Yong-Ik.

Sponsored by Tate Liverpool and Red Ninja Labs.

Host or Publisher Lee Omar