As for the Caro business, it goes like this: "Tony was well over 60 when he became a trustee. He was a very effective trustee, actually. He cared passionately about certain things and was a powerful force...but it just seems to work better when you have artists who are a new generation, or indeed erring on the younger side, really." Enough said, I think: the two men respect each other and there's some choice Caro pieces on display in the Tate right now.

He is much concerned with the matter of today's art rather than yesterday's. Youth, Serota believes, is essential for the proper understanding of contemporary art: he even jokes that, in his early fifties, he may be over the hill. "It's important that there should be artist trustees who are significantly younger than me on the board, to make sure I and the gallery don't get out of touch." A regular complaint from visitors, he says, is that there's not enough contemporary art in the Tate, and they are right: the present display is conspicuously lacking in work by living younger artists.

Notwithstanding plans for a huge Matisse-and-contemporaries show at the Tate Bankside, all that will change. This autumn, Serota will signal a sea-change: much more contemporary art will find its way into both temporary exhibitions and the permanent displays. And after 2000, the buying policy will concentrate on the art being created now. "We'll be able to do other things in contemporary art beyond the Turner Prize," he says with satisfaction. "We will buy in the next ten years some of the most important things that are going to be made