Museum report·London
Tate Adds Dolly Parton-Titled Yearwood-Dan and 1992 Zapata Papier-Mâché at Frieze
Tate has announced its two purchases from the 2026 Frieze fairs through the annual Frieze Tate Fund: Michaela Yearwood-Dan's glitter-and-glass-bead painting Peace Unknown from Frieze London, and Luis Fernando Zapata's 1992 hand-moulded papier-mâché sculpture Barge from Frieze Masters. Both works join the national collection.
Tate has announced its two acquisitions from this year's Frieze fairs in London, bought through the annual Frieze Tate Fund and destined for the national collection. The pair spans a contemporary mixed-media painting and a historic papier-mâché sculpture, continuing a tradition that has brought more than 170 works by over 100 artists into Tate's galleries since Frieze London launched in 2003. Millions of visitors have encountered earlier fund purchases, from Frida Orupabo's collages to Tessa Boffin's photographs, across Tate's four London galleries.
From Hauser & Wirth's presentation at Frieze London comes Michaela Yearwood-Dan's Peace Unknown (2026), a 220 by 220 cm canvas built from oil paint, glitter, glass beads, paper, ribbon and lustred earthenware. The London-born artist, known for richly layered and heavily ornamented abstract compositions, borrows the title from Dolly Parton's country classic "Islands in the Stream", continuing the personal musical references that frequently run through her work. Yearwood-Dan has shown with Hauser & Wirth and Boesky Gallery in recent years as her reputation has grown on both sides of the Atlantic.
The second acquisition, from Frieze Masters, looks further back: Barge (1992) by the Colombian artist Luis Fernando Zapata, shown on the shared stand of Galería Elvira Moreno and Alonso Garcés Galería. Made from natural pigments on hand-moulded papier-mâché, the 186 by 62 by 10 cm sculpture was produced just two years before Zapata died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994. Its inclusion brings a little-seen figure of Colombia's late-twentieth-century art scene into a major British public collection for the first time.
The fund gives Tate curators early access to the fairs to select works for the collection and is supported by the patrons Alexander Lewis and Alexander V. Petalas alongside other private donors. Both works are expected to enter Tate's collection in due course, joining a pipeline of Frieze-bought acquisitions that now spans more than two decades of the fair's history.
