Gilane Tawadros

Gilane Tawadros, director of Whitechapel Gallery, was conferred Honorary Doctor of Letters at the University of Sussex’s Summer Graduation 2024.

“Sussex has such an expanded, living notion of what knowledge and research, and intellectual inquiry is about. It isn’t about sitting in a dusty, dark library going through tomes. It has a real-life connection to the world, and that’s critical.”

Gilane Tawadros, director of Whitechapel Gallery in London, is reflecting on why her undergraduate and postgraduate years studying art history at the University of Sussex in the early 1990s have been so influential in her life.

“People misunderstand what higher education is about,” she continues. “For me, it is about giving you a toolkit to go out into the world and also to light a spark of curiosity and sense of possibility.”

That spark continues to burn brightly for Gilane. For the past three decades she has championed the work of living visual artists from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds through representing them, writing about them and curating exhibitions of their work.

 Championing artists’ rights

She was the founding director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), a groundbreaking agency that supports the work of culturally diverse British and international artists and, until 2022, was at the helm of DACS (Design and Artists Copyright Society), which champions the rights of visual artists.

Becoming director of the Whitechapel Gallery has been the perfect fit for her. Opened in 1901 “to bring the finest art of the world to the people of the East End of London”, under Gilane’s leadership the gallery continues to fulfil its remit. The latest exhibition is a retrospective of the works of exiled South African artist Gavin Jantjes.

“I have always had a very close connection with this institution,” she says, as we chat in her second-floor office that looks out onto pigeon-filled roofs. “It was one of the first galleries in the country and had a global agenda. It was showing Muslim art and Chinese art at the beginning of the 20^th century. 

“This area was full of migrants, as it is now. It was built without a grand entrance. The idea was that it was accessible to ordinary working people and was connected to the world. That’s still our mission and it’s still pioneering.”

Inspirational Sussex tutors

Although Gilane was so keen to go to Sussex that she put it as both her first and second choice on her university application form, studying art history was not her original intention.

“I applied to do English literature, but I was 17 when I was offered a place and they decided that I was a bit too young. They said, we think you should take a year off, explore the world and grow up.”

With nothing planned, Gilane found a job in the Photographers’ Gallery in London, where she worked as a trainee technician for six months. Surrounded by the work of living artists, many of whom she met, she soon realised that literature was not her calling after all.

Shortly after arriving at Sussex in 1983 and beginning her English degree (in what was then the School of European Studies), she went to see the head of art history, Norbert Lynton. She remembers him being “an extraordinary man, who had a passion for art and made it so compelling”. It was agreed she could switch courses.

Initially, she thought she had made a terrible mistake. “We began by looking at Renaissance art and reading traditional art history books. I thought these were useful for those going to work in art auction houses, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do.” 

However, she then met another inspirational tutor, David Alan Mellor, who was still curating and working with artists, including photographers, and incorporating cinema in his teaching. He encouraged her to write about contemporary artists who interested her.

Non-traditional background

She swiftly followed her BA – which had included spending a year in Paris watching art house movies in tiny cinemas – with her Masters. And, following David’s advice, she focused her dissertation on three living but little-known artists. 

Her dissertation was so brilliant it was published in the influential academic journal Third Text. The practitioners she wrote about included Black British artist Sonia Boyce – who last year won the coveted Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale and will be exhibiting at Whitechapel Gallery later this year.

Gilane is forever thankful to David (who sadly died last year) for his advice and encouragement. She says: “That’s what an extraordinary teacher does, they support you.”

Part of her connection with David and with Norbert, she now recognises, is that like her, they came from what she describes as “non-traditional backgrounds”.

“I was born in Egypt and came to the UK in the 1970s with my parents, who were political exiles. Norbert was German-Jewish and came on the Kindertransport. And David was from a working-class background in Leicester. 

“I was conscious of occupying a different space, and I think that’s why I felt a connection to them.”

Seismic shift

Gilane went on to become education officer at the Photographers’ Gallery and then at the Hayward Gallery – organising public talks and learning programmes. 

In 1994, she became the founding director of Iniva that had Professor Stuart Hall, the influential Jamaican-born cultural theorist, as its chair. It was a pioneering organisation in crossing cultural boundaries, she says. 

“We think nothing now of seeing artists from all over the world and the work of Black British artists. But 30 years ago, it was almost impossible to see them. The Tate’s collection had a few artists from South America. Now there are artists from Africa, from Asia, from every part of the globe. It has been a huge privilege to be part of that seismic shift.”

A few years ago, she tried a change in direction and studied for a law degree in human rights.

“I thought I might become a human rights lawyer, but found myself writing my dissertation about art,” she says. “I realised that, while law is very important and legal mechanisms are very important, art had something very particular to do. 

“Visual culture has a way of connecting people and experiences in a very visceral way. The best art allows you to bring your experience, your response, whatever you have in your archive of memories that are triggered by what you see. It’s a very powerful way to communicate.”

Although she has lost none of her enthusiasm for her job, or her passion for the role of art education in society, she says that governments and policy makers need to be constantly reminded about the multiple benefits of the arts.

“Art is not part of the curriculum because we adopt a very instrumentalist view of education,” she says. “We don’t see it as having a practical vocational outcome that is of economic value. 

“But we underestimate to our cost the huge value of having an arts education – in the broadest sense – because it develops critical skills and problem solving and fosters creativity and innovation…all things that people value hugely in the workforce.”  

She points out that studies have shown that the arts “contribute a bigger proportion of Gross Domestic Product than many other industries – including aviation and farming”.

And she highlights how we survived spiritually during the Covid pandemic lockdowns.  

“We gravitated towards the arts because, when we all felt that degree of precarity and when everything was shut down, the things that fed and nurtured us were music and art and literature.  How can we forget that?”