Art · London
Edward Enninful Curates the Nineties at Tate Britain
The former British Vogue editor guest-curates 100-plus works by nearly 70 names — Hirst, McQueen, Westwood, Corinne Day — at Millbank, open since 8 October.
Tate Britain has given the 1990s a full exhibition, and it handed the curation to the man who edited British Vogue. 'The 90s: Art and Fashion' opened at Millbank on Thursday 8 October and runs to 14 February 2027, guest-curated by Edward Enninful OBE — drawing, Tate says, on his own experience of the decade — working with Jessica Vaughan, Helen Little, Dominique Heyse-Moore, Alex Farquharson and Celeste McEvoy.
The scale of it: over 100 photographs, paintings, sculptures and garments by nearly 70 artists, photographers and designers. The art is the YBA roll-call — Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Steve McQueen, Tracey Emin, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Gillian Wearing, Jenny Saville, Mark Leckey, Mona Hatoum, Yinka Shonibare, Sonia Boyce, Helen Chadwick, Gary Hume, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and Jake and Dinos Chapman.
Then the clothes, and the people who shot them. Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Hussein Chalayan, Stella McCartney, Ozwald Boateng, Joe Casely-Hayford, Philip Treacy, Stephen Jones and Shaun Leane on the fashion side. On the photography side: Juergen Teller, Corinne Day, David Sims, Nick Knight, Wolfgang Tillmans, Elaine Constantine, Glen Luchford, Craig McDean, Ellen von Unwerth, Steven Meisel, Nigel Shafran, Eddie Otchere, Ewen Spencer and Normski.
The decade London defined, hung on one wall — with the man who edited Vogue deciding the order.
Tate's own framing is the useful one: a period in which high art and pop culture fed into one another, and a groundswell of creativity changed the face of British culture. Which is another way of saying the gallery, the runway and the studio stopped being separate rooms — a thing this city has never quite undone since. Tickets are £22, £20 concessions, £5 for Tate Collective members, free for Tate members. Millbank, SW1P 4RG, 8 October to 14 February 2027.
The first word from the press view, a day before the public opening, was warm. Hello!'s head of fashion Becky Donaldson, writing on 6 October, found it 'a nostalgic trip' built on the decade's 'fearless optimism', and picked out Corinne Day, David Sims and Juergen Teller's 'Young Pink Kate London, 1998', Naomi Campbell in Vivienne Westwood's 'On Liberty' look, and the vintage issues of i-D and Dazed & Confused in the cases. 'The decade wasn't perfect,' she wrote, 'and the show doesn't pretend it was.'