5 Questions With: Tate Modern’s Director of International Partnerships

What’s the most surprising part of your work that visitors don’t see?

Obvious perhaps, but it would be the teams of highly committed and passionate people who devotedly collaborate to make every project is delivered to the highest standards, from Collection Care to Communications, the skill, dedication and camaraderie that underpins all that we do.

If you had a magic wand to fix one common mistake in the museum field, what would you fix?

Never to be content with being ‘an expert’ in any field, but rather constantly try to re-think, re-examine and re-imagine everything we do, to discover better models, new opportunities, perspectives and horizons.

If you could instantly correct one public misconception about museums, what would it be?

That visitors need to have prior knowledge and understanding of a particular subject to engage. Museums are for everyone and museum professionals and visitors should reflect the wider society in which we live. There is no right way to react, they are sites for learning, play, confrontation, contemplation and development.

Within an hour of landing, I was naked, in a sauna with the staff of a museum, most of whom I had never met in person

If you could send a message in a bottle to future museum professionals 100 years from now, what advice would you include?

Preserve and protect without discrimination and not only dominant themes, remain open to self-examination, explore and collect fresh stories, refrain from closing down opportunities, embrace challenge and evolve.

What’s your favourite “behind the scenes” museum moment that visitors never get to see?

I once visited a wonderful group of colleagues at a museum in Helsinki. Arriving at the airport late on a Friday afternoon, I was met by a car and driven to the harbour to take a boat to a sauna island. Within an hour of landing, I was naked, in a sauna with the staff of a museum, most of whom I had never met in person having only corresponded with over email. It was a brilliant ‘ice breaker’, literally running out of the sauna to jump into the frozen lake! Years later, many of us remain friends.