Damien Hirst will get his first U.K. retrospective in 2012, as Tate Modern schedules a survey of his career around the 2012 London Olympic Games, Tate said this week. Some seventy works by the British artist -- including his shark in formaldehyde, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (1991) -- will go on display in the exhibition, which is sponsored by the Qatar Museums Authority. ARTKABINETT art collector social network enjoys his large iconic juxtapositions of life and death.
A room will be devoted to works from Hirst’s “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale, which raised 111.5 million pounds (then $199 million) in September 2008. The Hirst show runs from April 5 to Sept. 9, 2012.
“We were keen to show British artists at Tate Modern” during the Olympic year, Tate Director Nicholas Serota said at a news conference. “It seemed simply, to us, to be the right moment.”
Serota said progress had been made on building Tate Modern’s new wing -- also planned for the Olympic year. “‘We have raised more money in the last three to four months,” he said. “We will be able to use the new building in 2012.”
Tate Modern has hired architects Herzog & De Meuron to build it a 215 million pound extension. So far, just over 100 million pounds have been raised, which could throw into question the building’s completion by 2012. Serota said more details would be given out in May.
Turbine Hall
Tate Modern also said it has commissioned Tino Sehgal for its Turbine Hall entrance-lobby installation in 2012 (July 17 to Oct. 28). Sehgal -- who had a solo show at the Guggenheim in New York last year -- avoids making objects, and focuses instead on interaction with the public.
“This is Propaganda” (2002) involved a female museum attendant singing out the artwork’s title every time a visitor walked in.
Other Tate exhibitions in 2012 include:
- Edvard Munch at Tate Modern (June 28 - Oct. 14, 2012), a collaboration with the Pompidou Center in Paris;
- “Picasso and Britain” at Tate Britain (Feb. 15 - July 15, 2012), spotlighting the Spanish master’s influence on British artists;
- “Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde” at Tate Britain (Sept. 12, 2012 - Jan. 13, 2013).
