Nicholas Serota: art's modern champion

For three decades, Serota has led Tate with ambition, charm and grit – opening world-class spaces, battling cuts and insisting culture is everyone’s right. That bodes well for his new employer Arts Council England – and for galleries across the countryThere is an anecdote that Sir Nicholas Serota told in a lecture he gave in November 2000, almost exactly six months after the triumphant opening, in the gargantuan chambers of the Bankside power station in London, of Tate Modern.