Serpentine Gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones, who launched the Serpentine Pavilion commission and turned the small London arts venue into one of the UK’s most influential architecture clients, is to stage down soon after 25 many years.
Peyton-Jones – who instigated the pavilion programme that gave architects including Zaha Hadid, Peter Zumthor, SANAA and Frank Gehry their initial opportunity to construct in the Uk – announced her impending departure nowadays.
She has been director of the gallery, which occupies a constructing in Kensington Gardens, since 1991. She will depart in July 2016, and the gallery has begun recruitment for her replacement.
“There is in no way a excellent time to depart an institution but I wished to depart the Serpentine at a time of strength and achievement,” she explained in a statement.
“It has been a great honour to be director of the Serpentine by means of this kind of an interesting time period and to have worked with this kind of incredible artists, personnel and Trustees. In specific, I want to shell out tribute to Hans Ulrich Obrist, our collaboration above the final ten many years to more develop the Serpentine’s international reach across all its programmes and, to coin our phrase, ‘to consider the unthinkable’, has been an outstanding privilege.”
Connected story: Toyo Ito “gulped” when asked to design and style the 2002 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion
Obrist joined the Serpentine Gallery as co-director of exhibitions and programmes and director of global tasks in 2006.
In 2013, the duo oversaw the opening of the gallery’s satellite venue – the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, which attributes a tent-like extension by Zaha Hadid.
The annual commission for the Serpentine Gallery pavilions has turn out to be one particular of the most anticipated events in the British architecture calendar given that its launch in 2000.
The pavilions programme aims to give progressive architects their very first chance to construct a stand-alone construction in the Uk. Subsequent pavilion architects have incorporated Herzog & de Meuron, Toyo Ito, Daniel Libeskind, and Sou Fujimoto.
This year’s pavilion was developed by Spanish architects SelgasCano, who developed a colourful see-through plastic cocoon.
Dezeen is publishing a series of interviews with Peyton-Jones about each of the pavilion styles to mark the 15th anniversary of the programme.
