Tate Director Sir Nicholas Serota has been the Chair of the jury since his tenure at the Tate ( with the exception of the current year when Chairman is the Director of Tate Liverpool, where the prize is being staged ).

Serota was educated at Haberdashers ' Aske's School and then read Economics at the University of Cambridge ( Christ's ), before switching to History of Art.

There he organised an important early exhibition of work by Joseph Beuys and formed an important working relationship with Alexander " Sandy " Nairne, who would work with Serota at various points in the following years.

News of Serota's appointment as Tate Director was received enthusiastially by Howard Hodgkin, who wrote in The Sunday Times, " Nick Serota has enormous energy and demonstrated at the Whitechapel a tremendous sense of diplomacy.

There was an interval of nine months before Serota took over at the Tate, during which time he was still employed by the Whitechapel Gallery and met monthly with the incumbent Tate Director, Alan Bowness, as well as arranging some informal study groups with the Tate Chairman, Richard Rogers.

Serota's spokeswoman said that Saatchi's suggestion was to " move displays of his collection from County Hall to the derelict ' oil tank ' spaces at Tate Modern ," ( which could not be renovated without major expenditure ) and that " At no point was there any suggestion that the collection was being offered as a gift to the Tate ", nor was there any possibility that Serota had misunderstood the conversation.

Nairne came into contact with Nicholas Serota, while working at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1974 – 76.

Michael Craig-Martin, a tutor at Goldsmiths Art College, used his influence in the London art world to convince Norman Rosenthal and Nicholas Serota to visit the exhibition.

In December that year he was part of the Stuckist protest outside the Turner Prize at Tate Britain to draw attention to the Tate's purchase of its trustee Chris Ofili's work The Upper Room and demand the resignation of Tate Director, Sir Nicholas Serota.

The painting was based on a photograph of Mann by Charles Thomson and was originally intended to promote the Stuckists Real Turner Prize Show 2003: at that time the placard contained the text, " Serota needs a good spanking ".

Left to right: Charles Thomson ( artist ) | Charles Thomson, John Bourne ( artist ) | John Bourne, Sir Nicholas Serota, Joe Machine, at the show, 17 September 2004.

In 1976, Serota was appointed Director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London's East End.

In 1984-1985, Serota took the bold step of shutting down the Whitechapel for over 12 months for extensive refurbishment.

In the later 1960s and through the 1970s, the critical importance of the Whitechapel Gallery was displaced by newer venues such as the Hayward Gallery, but in the 1980s the Gallery enjoyed a resurgence under the Directorship of Nicholas Serota.

It depicts Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Gallery and the usual chairman of the Turner Prize jury, and satirises Young British Artist Tracey Emin's installation, My Bed, consisting of her bed and objects, including knickers, which she exhibited in 1999 as a Turner Prize nominee.

Controversy has also come from other directions, including a Culture Minister ( Kim Howells ) criticising exhibits, a guest of honour ( Madonna ) swearing, a prize judge ( Lynn Barber ) writing in the press, and a speech by Sir Nicholas Serota ( about the purchase of a trustee's work ).

Many students of the Courtauld have gone on to become directors of major museums, including John Hayes ( National Portrait Gallery, 1974 – 94 ), Anne d ' Harnoncourt ( Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982 – 2008 ), Neil MacGregor ( National Gallery, 1987 – 2002 ; British Museum 2002 –), Sir Nicholas Serota ( Tate, 1988 –), Sir Mark Jones ( Victoria and Albert Museum, 2001 –), Nicholas Penny ( National Gallery, 2008 –), Kaywin Feldman ( Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2008 -), David Franklin ( Cleveland Museum of Art, 2010 -) and Thomas P. Campbell ( Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009 –).

Serota worked with Stevenson to create an efficient organisation, including departmental demarcation, a monthly Management Board to review policy, and improved records with computerisation, as well as the appointment of a Deputy Director, former banker Francis Carnwarth, to renovate accounting, which was still being done by hand and failed to provide the Trustees with an annual breakdown.

In November 2004, in an interview in The Art Newspaper, Charles Saatchi said that the previous year he had phoned Serota and offered to donate his entire £ 200m collection to the Tate, including key works by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and other Young British Artists, which the Tate was in need of but lacked funds to buy.

In 2005, 160 paintings from the Walker Art Gallery show, including one by Richards, were offered as a donation to the Tate gallery, but rejected by Sir Nicholas Serota, because " We do not feel that the work is of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation or originality of thought to warrant preservation in perpetuity in the national collection ".

The appointment of Tate Director, Nicholas Serota, led to many changes such as the introduction of an annual rehang of the Collection and giving priority to modern and contemporary art.

Under Tate Director and Turner Prize chairman Nicholas Serota, changes are made to involve the public in the viewing of the nominated artist such as a published shortlist, a nomination of four shortlisted artists and an individual exhibition of nominated work within the Tate.

Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota ( born 27 April 1946 ) is Director of Tate.

Nairne became Director of Programmes for the Tate Gallery under Nicholas Serota.

In 2002, Ivan Massow, the Chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts branded conceptual art " pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat " and in " danger of disappearing up its own arse ... led by cultural tsars such as the Tate's Sir Nicholas Serota.

Sir Nicholas Serota had wanted to acquire it for the Tate Gallery, and Hugo Swire, Shadow Minister for the Arts, tabled a question to ask if the government would ensure it stayed in the country.

held in September 1999 in Joe Crompton's Gallery 108 ( now defunct ) in Shoreditch, followed by The Resignation of Sir Nicholas Serota.

Ikon replaced the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery as the venue for travelling exhibitions of contemporary art such as Diane Arbus curated by John Szarkowski, Chris Orr curated by Nick Serota, Objects and Documents featuring works selected by Richard Smith, An Element of Landscape curated by Jeremy Rees, The Human Clay featuring works selected by R B Kitaj, and Berenice Abbott.

The Tate Gallery that Serota took over was in a perilous state.

Sir Nicholas Serota has been the director of the Tate since 1988, when he took over from Sir Alan Bowness.

* In 1998, Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, conceived ' Operation Cobalt ', the secret and ultimately successful buyback of two of the Tate's paintings by JMW Turner that had been stolen from a German gallery in 1994.

Sir Nicholas Serota has validated the artists by the nomination of several of them for the Turner Prize and their inclusion in the Tate collection.

In 1969, Serota became Chairman of the new Young Friends of the Tate organisation with a membership of 750.

In January 1989, the Tate Chairmanship passed to Dennis Stevenson, who had become a Trustee three weeks after Serota assumed office, although initially rejected by Margaret Thatcher who disliked Stevenson's liberal views.

Saatchi said that he had been told by Serota in 2000 that planned extensions to Tate Modern would add 50 % extra display capacity, but that this had been allocated by the time of his offer, necessitating its rejection.

" In contrast, Peter Fuller made a scathing attack in Modern Painters magazine, saying that Serota would be incapable, by temperament and ability, of maintaining the Tate's historic collection.

who is the subject of group's co-founder Charles Thomson's satirical painting Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision ( 2000 ), one of the best known Stuckist works.

In September 2005, Serota wrote to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport ( DCMS ), assuring them that this purchase of a serving trustee's work was " exceptional " and had happened on only one other occasion.

In December 2005, Serota admitted that he had filled in with false information an application form to the Art Fund ( NACF ) for a £ 75, 000 grant towards buying the work, stating that the Tate had made no commitment to purchase the work ( a requirement of the grant ), whereas they had in fact already paid a first instalment of £ 250, 000 several months previously.

* Angus Fairhurst, Sacha Craddock, James Cahill ( foreword by Nicholas Serota ), ( London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2009 )

* 2000, International Selection Committee: Nick Waterlow ( Chair ), Fumio Nanjo, Louise Neri, Hetti Perkins, Sir Nicholas Serota, Robert Storr, Harald Szeemann.