Nicholas Serota Explains Tate Modern’s Need To Expand

“The museum of the 21st century should be based on encounters with the unfamiliar and on exchange and debate rather than only on an idea of the perfect muse…. It has to have some anchors or fixed points for orientation and stability, but it also has to be a dynamic space for ideas, conversations and debate about new and historic art within a global context.”

Racing To Be The Biggest Spender On A Middling Picasso

“Let’s imagine, for a minute, that this picture truly was a great cultural landmark. Would Tuesday night’s record deserve celebration, even then? What would a Martian anthropologist make of a society that produces a roomful of bidders with such vast reserves of surplus cash that they can drop more than $100 million on a fancy picture — while millions of their fellow citizens have their homes repossessed?”