EMMA DEXTER.

How does Emma Dexter (director of exhibitions at London's Institute of Contemporary Art from 1992 to last year) fit into Tate Modern's radical plans? In appointing Dexter to work alongside Iwona Blazwick, Frances Morris, and Donna De Salvo, Lars Nittve has recruited a curator with distinctive tastes and plenty of experience pushing the exhibiting envelope.

Even as an M.Phil. student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Dexter aimed straight for a subject--the often bizarre painted-wood sculptures of the Spanish Baroque--that took her well beyond safe high-art confines. From there, her 1985-87 appointment as assistant curator of fine art at Stoke-on-Trent's City Museum and Art Gallery enabled Dexter to begin putting curatorial ideas into practice; her show "Palaces of Culture" (an interrogation of the politics of display featuring site-specific work by Mark Wallinger, Lubaina Himid, and others) caused institutional ructions but attracted national coverage. Next, Dexter plunged into what she labels a "shocking" learning curve: solo-piloting London's "scarily large" Chisenhale Gallery from 1987 to 1990. While juggling everything from fundraising to dishwashing, Dexter initiated major capital improvements and curated a memorable series of solo installations that culminated in Rachel Whiteread's first major work, Ghost, 1990. Dexter's enthusiastic mid-'90s promotion of Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen also demonstrates her eye for emerging talent--headhunting will definitely feature among her Tate Modern duties.

Dexter assisted Blazwick as deputy director at the ICA from 1990 to 1992, working with her on "True Stories" (featuring work by Karen Kilimnik, Raymond Pettibon, and Renee Green, among others). She admits this "cult-zeitgeisty" show reflected her liking for "breaking good-taste rules," also evidenced by "Bad Girls" in 1993 and "Belladonna" in 1997, both co-curated with Kate Bush. Dexter also relishes the decorative and the ornately crafted-consider her 1998 drawing show, "Surfacing," or her enthusiasm for work by painters like John Currin, Marlene Dumas, and Gary Hume. "For me," she says, "visual pleasure is very important."

For Tate Modern's 2001 exhibition "Century City: Art and Culture in the Twentieth Century Metropolis," Dexter will join eight other curators in looking at nine cultural "capitals of the twentieth century." The checklist includes Paris from 1905 to 1915, Vienna in the '20s, and Rio de Janeiro and Lagos in the '50s and '60s; Dexter will survey the cultural scene of London in the '90s. Her stated aim: to combine art, design, fashion, events, and ephemera in a conception that identifies a common aesthetic without erasing distinctions between areas of practice. Reinventing relations between art "text" and context is surely the most difficult task on Dexter's schedule. Her solutions are awaited with interest.