Iwona Blazwick

Iwona Blazwick is Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Before this, she was Head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Modern. She has also been Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and worked as a curator in Europe and Japan.

Blazwick writes art criticism and contributes to television and radio broadcasts. She has been on numberous juries including the Turner Prize and the Jerwood Painting Prize. In 2008, she was awarded an OBE for services to Art.

She spoke to Choices° about her unusual career path, her mentor and inspirations. Also what a gallery director does, and why she feels positive about the arts in a recession.

Inspired to work in the Arts

"The main inspiration for my involvement in the Arts was really the experience of my parents, who were immigrants.

"They'd come away from the war, from the terrible strife and trauma of what had happened in continental Europe. They became architects and they were really dedicated to tomorrow, to try and find a future which transcended nationality, the enmities and the struggle against different borders, different ideologies. And they found that through culture.

"I went to two very ordinary state schools, convents actually. But I think what made that exciting were the teachers, who are those key figures in your early life who inspire you to take up a subject. We had an amazing art teacher called Miss Salmon, who, partly by her own personality but also the amazing facilities -- she really was an inspiration."

Getting into visual arts

”You've got to love what you do. You've got to have an absolute 100% knowledge of it, you've got to be completely immersed in it.”

"I went on a combined honours course at Exeter University where it was a combination of English and Fine Art. I wasn't quite sure whether I was going to go into languages or into English or into making art.

"I clung to the idea that I would be an artist when I left university, and I got a job as a receptionist in a company called Petersburg Press. I was surrounded by this extraordinary art as I answered the phone, and I'd go home and make my own work.

"After about a year, I had an epiphany where I realised I was really a bad artist. I knew I wasn't ever going to be anything but mediocre, but I knew where I wanted to be, which was in the world of visual arts."

Building a career in visual arts

"I walked into a place called the ICA, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and I thought 'This is somewhere I'd like to work' and I applied for a job as an administrative assistant. I was in general administration and then something came up in the gallery office and I went for it and I got it.

"I was very lucky then to have an extraordinary mentor called Sandy Naime, who's now director of the National Portrait Gallery. He kind of taught me everything I know. That's another step in building one's career: when you find somebody who's a little further along than you, but can actually give you guidance, support you in exploring the world."

"After the ICA where I ran a programme, I became Director of Exhibitions and ran a programme, but before I did that I left and went to run an artists' space called the Air Gallery. And this was a space which had no money and no staff, so I did everything. I cleaned the toilets, I chose the artists, I wrote the press releases, I painted the walls, I hung the work and I invigilated.

So it was a brilliant experience. If you haven't cleaned the toilets in the gallery, you'll never know how important they are! Also, working with artists hanging work, having tried to be an artist myself, that was a great experience to know what the struggle is. I'd been through that, and that gave me a tremendous empathy with artists.

Becoming a gallery director

Iwona Blazwick is Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery. "I was part of the team that set up the new Tate Modern before it existed. Wonderful experience, five years of bliss, extraordinary. In 2001, I got a call, would I like to apply to the Whitechapel.

And I said 'Yes please' and I went through the process and so forth, and I was offered the post of Director. And I had to make a decision: I was leaving one of the most prestigious ocean liners in the world for a small yacht. But what was exciting was that I could be the boss.

Running an art gallery

"The day to day organisation of a gallery like the Whitechapel is really dictated by the rhythm of exhibition changes. We have four seasons a year, and within those seasons exhibitions are arriving, being unpacked and then being installed. But that is the final final part of the process.

"It's like making a movie. Tthere's an idea at the beginning of the process, there's the discussion about what's relevant within a very crowded cultural landscape, there's approaching different artists, forging relationships with other museums to partner on the project, and then there's the process of moving towards the exhibition."

Skills for a gallery director

”That's another step in building one's career. When you find somebody who's a little further along, but can actually give you guidance, support you in exploring the world.”

"The key skills for a gallery director are, in my view, passion for the subject. 'Expertise is based on love'.

You've got to love what you do. You've got to have an absolute 100 percent knowledge of it, you've got to be completely immersed in it.

"It's a very very competitive field, London particularly is a very crowded cultural landscape. You also have to make sure that the gallery is a great place to come."

Art and recession

"Recession both creates a potential crisis and offers some opportunities. Culture has to play a part because without it, we become just surviving animals. It’s part of our humanity and it’s part of what makes us a society.

“I feel, actually, recessions are always the time of the most innovation. I'm sure we'll see artists colonising empty spaces. And I think it's a time when the private sector should offer up their resources for a creative invasion, which I'm sure we're going to see take place."

Women in the workplace

"Until quite recently, culture was a very male preserve. The way that I think women can succeed in it is when you have a more holistic approach to maternity cover, to enabling women to go and have children if they want to do that. And absorbing that into the way institutions are run."