BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
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The BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art is an arts centre located on the South Bank of the River Tyne close to the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, in Gateshead in the north-east of England.
Dominic Williams of Ellis Williams Architects won an architectural competition in the mid 1990s to convert the redundant 1950s flour mill into an arts centre at a cost of £46 million. BALTIC, which opened in 2002, is now recognised as a major new centre for international contemporary art.
BALTIC has attracted frequent controversy and criticism for its management since before its opening. The project was awarded £32 million from the Arts Council of England's Lottery programme with a variation to the then rules of the award programme that a portion of this would be used for running costs though at the time the Arts Council was insisting publicly that new lottery funded capital projects such as BALTIC would not require an increased demand from the taxpayer for revenue funding and would pay their own way. In 1996 the Swede Sune Nordgren was appointed as Director even though he had no prior experience of managing a new building project of this scale. Nordgren's first action was to dismiss most of the team that had been responsible for securing the main funding awards to make BALTIC possible. Prior to the opening of the building Nordgren launched a costly pre-programme of publications and events — most controversially a launch for BALTIC in Venice reputed to cost £150,000. A Deputy Director was appointed in 2001 to attempt to place better financial controls but left after less than a year. In June 2002 BALTIC opened almost a year later than scheduled but with many parts of the building poorly finished.
In February 2003, a critical memo from the Arts Council of England to the board of the BALTIC has leaked to the press. The items included poor management of exhibition budgets, exorbitant management costs and expenses claims and concern over the low level of income generation from the trading elements of the building. One exhibition by the artist Chris Burden was reported to have cost £800,000 with no money being secured from sponsorship or other funds. The Burden exhibition featured a model in Meccano of the Tyne Bridge that local enthusiasts had offered to make for £25,000 but the artist insisted was made in the US and then shipped to the Baltic at a cost of £100,000. In May 2003, the Head Curator resigned and in late 2003 Nordgren also announced he was leaving for a job in Norway. His replacement Stephen Snoddy, on taking over the post publicly, admitted that work needed to be done to stabilise the organisation. In March 2004 it was announced that the Baltic would receive a £500,000 increase in its annual grant from the Arts Council regardless of the structure of its original lottery funding. In August 2004, Snoddy was suspended from his post following charges concerning an indecent assault in London and subsequently resigned. [1]
Since then, the Baltic has improved dramatically. It has attracted many contemporary, and controversial, artists. It has also participated in the promotion of local visual and auditory arts, such as art-inspired bands. However annual audiences have dropped from an initial high of over 600,000 to 400,000. In October 2005, the Director Peter Doroshenko admitted in an interview with The Guardian that the Gallery has suffered from poor administration, in particular a failure to constrain costs on some high-profile commissions or prioritise the need for additional fundraising activity.
In June 2006 it was reported that Baltic is subject to investigation by the National Audit Office. Advance reports revealed that the Chris Burden piece had been sold to Louis Vuitton for £400,000 but the Baltic had not acted to recover the cost of the commission. An installation by Anthony Gormley cost £175,000 and again the NAO report found that it was unclear the Baltic would recoup any money from a sale. Gormley was also appointed a trustee of the Baltic in January 2006.
