Needs must when deadlines loom: to complete Tate Modern’s extension by 2016, despite the recession, the trustees of the Tate last year transferred more than £12m from a fund earmarked for collections, the institution’s latest annual report reveals. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has also lent a helping hand with the cash-flow challenges of a building project described by the chairman of trustees, John Browne, as the “single largest fundraising campaign from private sources ever undertaken in the cultural field” in the UK.
The culture department made an advance of £9.8m from its future grant-in-aid to the Tate, a spokesman confirms. The department is the largest single source of public funding for the project, having made a £50m capital grant to build the £215m extension designed by the architects Herzog and de Meuron. The Tanks, the first phase of the new wing, opened in July to critical acclaim.
Income from the collection fund would ordinarily be used to buy art and to support research, conservation and access to the stored collection. When the extension is completed, the trustees will restore the fund to its former level. Until then, it will be reduced by 75% to £4.5m.
A Tate spokeswoman says: “This is a temporary allocation of unrestricted reserves to meet the timing gap between receipt of donations and construction expenditure. It is not a substitute for donations fundraising.”
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as ‘Tate Modern’s cash-flow fix'