Museum directors in 2012

Although both started work in 2011 - Chris Dercon came to Tate Modern in April and Martin Roth joined the Victoria and Albert Museum in September - these high-flying European directors have much in common as they start their first full year in charge of two of London's top museums. Both in their fifties with many major institutions on their CVs, the two silver-haired new kids on the block are uniquely placed to reinforce and reinvent the museum landscape of London.

Not only do both have major building projects to oversee - Tate Modern's phase two begins with the opening of the Oil Tanks before the Olympics and the V&A is remodeling its courtyard and opening up a new Exhibition Road entrance on to the Cultural Quarter - they also have to face similar budget squeezes, online challenges and a brave new political world. Belgian-born Dercon left the Haus der Kunst in Munich, where he'd been since 2003, having had stints at PS1 in New York and in Rotterdam, at the Witte de With Centre of Contemporary Art and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Professor Roth was a curator at Berlin's German Historical Museum before taking over the Dresden State Art Collections in 2001, where he renovated the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen and the Albertinum.

Was there anything you said at the interview that got you the job?
Chris Dercon: 'You're asking the wrong person! When they asked me to come up with a possible programme for the future, everybody started smiling, and I said to myself “Why are these people smiling?” - because they like it? But then I figured that the examples I was giving were already in place.'
Martin Roth: 'I don't think so, I'm not some arrogant 26-year-old genius. I was just really lucky. Honestly, I've been constructing museums for 20 years now and not only in Dresden. I can't say I'm experienced, because it's all different, but I'm not scared of what we're doing here.

Will you be more outward looking, more international, in your focus?
CD: 'Don't we do that already? In 2002, at least in the part of Europe where I come from, they didn't get why Tate was starting up a Latin American collection and yet only a couple of months ago we set up the African acquisitions committee, another good example. Most museums would say: “don't start it”, thinking it's impossible to change the direction of a museum.'
MR: 'Well this is something Mark Jones [previous V&A director] did as well, so we have a lot of exhibitions touring the world. In terms of design innovation there are a lot of global issues to discuss: inventions, environmental discussions and solutions for problems we have today, which might come from India or Brazil.'

Do you pride collections over blockbuster shows or vice versa?
CD: It's exciting to be part of an organization that doesn't shy away from the permeability of combining the really big blockbusters with the really niche. I'm happy to see thousands of people coming and going at the weekends - that's the ultimate luxury of the museum - but you can also stay. So you have this core group, of influential people sitting and thinking about archives and film.'
MR: 'I don't want to separate the two parts of the museum, that's not my idea, but the V&A is great for special exhibitions, only if the collection is working. A couple of days ago I was sitting next to Tom Campbell of the Metropolitan Museum, who is obviously a great admirer of the V&A, and it's always so much better when somebody else tells you how great your own collection is.'

How do you see the institution, as political or non-political?
CD: 'It's a mass medium, because we have five million visitors, and 80 million users. It's almost like a political party isn't it, like a movement.'
MR: It's dangerous to think it's a non-political institution - it's always political. In Germany, I raised a lot of money for provenance research because I didn't want objects with blood on them in my collections. That's perhaps a strong way of putting it, but at least I wanted to know who the owner was and whether to return it or not.'

Have you noticed any cultural differences between UK and European institutions?
CD: 'It's more open here. I shouldn't say that, but in some places in Europe the public is still considered as a burden, as a hindrance. Sometimes I miss certain things, like maybe the more discursive effect of art and, of course, I would like most to see floor pieces without all the barriers. But then again, the fact that the public is taken so seriously makes it an absolute privilege to work here.'
MR: 'I've learnt that Britain has a slightly different view of government, in that my colleagues want to have distance from the political class. In Germany I always thought that government was there to support the institutions of a society and the public was somehow the owner of the institutions. Here, there is a much more philanthropy, a lot more support and commitment from trustees and donors.'

How important is fundraising to your role?
CD: 'It's much easier to fundraise for difficult things than it is for the obvious, because the media, entertainment and money industries are all thinking about the same things. That's why I'm so interested in the live activities, the symposia, the debates, but also the film programme. I think my job as director is like a producer or an editor in chief, I have to help to execute these projects.'
MR: 'It's always important. In 20 years, I can't remember one budget that was safe. At least now I'm not the only one asking for money and that makes me feel a lot better. Here it's a team. It's not paradise, but at least there's awareness and a lot of action.'

Should a director be a good curator or a good bureaucrat?
CD: 'Both, and I try to be a good listener and a good arbiter too - you have to find the balance. It's so inspiring to be able to talk with curators about their ideas and then say “think about this” and make a connection.'
MR: 'I think there's a different scale. I see myself much more as a facilitator, the one who has to control the blood system and the nerves to make this body be a great organism in a healthy, lively way. We have great scholars and experts at the V&A, and this connoisseurship - our backbone, our spine for 150 years - is something I have to support in these fast-changing times.'

Can building projects ever be detrimental to a museum?
CD: 'A building is never finished and a museum is always a form of transformation and disruption. An expansion is not just an expression of physical change, but also of social change. We're opening the oil tanks this year, which is a very important thing, but it's also a way of creating another form of a social organisation, that's why we will have so much public space.'
MR: 'If you have a structure somewhere else [like the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi] and you invest a lot of money in creating a new building, then you risk losing sight of the old one. We had this problem ten years ago with the Spiral - it was just a sculpture. I think the Exhibition Road scheme is so feasible, so rational. Think about the neighbourhood, think about Albertopolis - what a great idea. It's like a cultural and scientific brain trust, a think tank in the best sense of the word, a combination of all those institutions.'

Is 2012 an exciting year to be here?
CD: 'It's a difficult year… it's incredible, what's going on in the world. I think we have to a gear up for a future in which every day something is different. If we stick together and think carefully about what we can do in terms of politics, economics and culture, then we can overcome.
'I'm looking forward to Tino Seghal's Turbine Hall piece in the summer, because the museum is increasingly becoming a place for mental and bodily exercise. How else can you explain the success of all these performances and reconstructions and participation projects? People want to be part of something. We have many different kinds of art right now and there is also the expensive art, the art market, so I'm curious to see our show of the ultimate comeback-kid, Damien Hirst - he's laughing at everybody, he's disturbing the peace.'
MR: 'It's always an exciting year to be in London isn't it? I always thought I knew London quite well but to live here is completely different, much more exciting. The speed is great, you get addicted immediately. We're working very hard on finishing the furniture gallery and the 1600-1800 galleries, which are extremely important for us in order to show all those beautiful collections in a proper way. I can't wait till we have a bit of an upgrade. I don't want the V&A getting a little sleepy, because it is such a cool institution.'

And what about the future?
CD: 'What are we going to call this thing in a hundred years - a contemporary museum? A modern museum? Tate Modern? What will modern mean in a hundred years? Where are we going to make delineations?'
MR: 'It's always easier if you come in to try and change a rundown institution, but one of my biggest problems is to keep up the quality and quality is everywhere. It's how you say hello to the guards working in the gallery - it's the whole appearance, the whole fabric of the museum.
'But, if you go back to the nineteenth century, to when photography was invented, it was immediately collected by the V&A. That's an unbelievable idea, isn't it? This is like the curators flying to the moon and I own the spaceship. So I want to do a little bit more of this spaceship thing, I want to change from being in a reactive position to being at the forefront, to a spearheading situation.'