Artists together with Tracey Emin and Ai Weiwei have led tributes to the long-serving BBC arts broadcaster Alan Yentob who has died, aged 78. Each artists featured in Yentob’s documentary arts collection Think about, which ran primarily on BBC One from 2003 to 2023. Emin says in an Instagram submit: “I’m so proud to have been certainly one of his topics for his groundbreaking Think about documentaries [2018]. Ai Weiwei says: “[Yentob’s] data, ardour, in addition to his understanding of arts and tradition are laborious to come back by these days. It is going to be troublesome to fill the void after his passing.”
Within the Think about episode With out Concern or Favour (2010), Yentob launched Ai Weiwei, who is thought for his activism, as “pioneering in his artwork and fearless in his politics”. Ai Weiwei provides: “I’ve personally felt the social impression of the episode. It supplied a stable voice of help and raised consciousness about my scenario throughout the society.”
In an episode, devoted to Marina Abramović in 2020, entitled The Ugly Duckling, the efficiency artist spoke about her household and rising up in communist Yugoslavia. “His decisions had been authentic, very important and created an actual bridge between the cultures of artwork and tv. For us artists, he was our voice: a platform to speak our concepts with an viewers to which we would not usually have any entry,” she says.
Yentob was additionally engaged on an Think about programme devoted to the artist Jenny Saville whose exhibition is because of open on the Nationwide Portrait Gallery in London subsequent month. She tells The Artwork Newspaper: “The contribution Alan made to British tradition was immense. A variety of worldwide creativity turned accessible to all by way of these documentaries.”
Yentob joined the BBC in 1968 as a trainee—the one non-Oxbridge graduate after graduating from Leeds with a regulation diploma—rising up the ranks to turn into editor of the established arts present Enviornment in 1978. “The present managed to take a look at each excessive and low tradition with the identical mix of seriousness and dedication, suggesting that punk rock and Orson Welles alike had been worthy of mental evaluation,” Alexander Larman writes in The Telegraph.
Yentob turned each controller of BBC2 (1987-1993) and controller of BBC One (1993-97), commissioning programmes such because the comedy Completely Fabulous and the panel present Have I Bought Information For You? His different BBC roles included director of drama, leisure and kids’s programming; in his last submit, he was inventive director from 2004 till 2015 when he resigned following an argument over his function as chair of Youngsters Firm, a charity based in 1996 by Camila Batmanghelidjh to help disadvantaged interior metropolis youngsters.
He was additionally chairman from 2002 to 2010 of the Institute of Modern Arts (ICA), the London cultural centre. His departure coincided with the resignation of Ekow Eshun who stepped down as government director following monetary difficulties on the ICA. In 2015, Yentob was appointed CBE within the 2024 King’s birthday honours record for providers to the humanities and media.
The artist Anish Kapoor tells The Artwork Newspaper: “Alan Yentob was heat, beneficiant and understood the significance of the humanities in public life. We will miss his presence, notably now when the humanities and the general public establishments that promote them are underneath such big strain from ideology-biased governments all over the world.”
Alan Yentob, born London 11 March 1947; married 2020 Philippa Walker (one daughter, one son); died 24 Might 2025.
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