Tate Britain, like the National Portrait Gallery, has emerged from the Pandemic completely transformed. During the worst of the lockdowns and their aftershocks these two fine museums survived by dint of the combined forces of serendipity, devoted staff, available government funding, and inspired leadership. With hands kept firmly on the wheel supporting a fractured employee base, as well as protecting and preserving a priceless collection, Tate Britain emerged reborn, not broken. The gallery triumphs not only with a completely re-designed interior with new materials from floor to ceiling, but with the entire collection newly curated: culled as well as expanded, and rehung with creative opportunities for enriched relationships between works of art. Invigorating background colours, from rich green for Gainsborough and Reynolds, remind us of 18c interiors, to light grey walls that offset and sharpen the endlessly fascinating details of Victorian works. Dove-grey walls deepen the warm-toned patinations of Henry Moore’s bronzes, and the purple chosen for a hang of Surrealist works takes us into their oneiric world. Bravely, some of the great 18c works are hung in an 18c Royal Academy-style, in rows running from floor to cornice, helping us understand the challenge of making impact at the Royal Academy show when then, as now, paintings have to jostle for attention. The experience is one of the joy of renewed looking. We are encouraged to think anew about how British art has offered a narrative of this often bizarre and complicated nation, with all its manifold strengths and weaknesses.
Tate Britain’s rehang invites a richer, sometimes unfamiliar, conversation with its visitors, revealing complexities previously avoided in the depths of British history. Works by the obvious greats whether Hogarth, Gainsborough, Turner, Millais or Burne-Jones are hung in the context of silent admissions of the greater truth about Britain’s history as a, sometimes polite, sometimes not so polite, subjugator drawing sustenance from conquered lands and enslaved humans. Paintings never seen before because of their ‘questionable’ content or little-known painters are presented not as blatant propaganda or strident dogma, but as honest attempts to allow viewers their own experience of the illuminating context of the works of art. The new hang illustrates how art can sometimes function as a dangerous form of dark magic in its capacity to conjure images that distract and disguise uncomfortable truths. Bucolic scenes of well-dressed slaves dancing, as in the image above, may actually deliberately conceal the brutality of the system embraced by many in the quest for human and other capital to fuel the empire.
Is this deliberate contextual presentation justified or is it a form of ‘politically correct’ thinking that is shallow and inauthentic? Does it run the danger that the collection, rather than being viewed as a gallery of works of aesthetic interest where we admire the composition or the handling of paint, is seen simply as a collection of historical documents? Is it helpful to be seen thus? If so, how? What kind of story of Great Britain is now told through its art? Do we need to revise our previous understanding of that story? Many painters such as Mary Beale, Joan Carlile, Marianne Stokes and many other women painters have been brought up from Tate’s dark stores. Is this reconsideration of their works validated by their qualities as artists, or is it a shallow gesture of tokenism?
Just as in the summer we spent a study morning discussing the newly-hung National Portrait Gallery, so this autumn we offer a similar walk through Tate Britain’s collection, from the 17c to the early 20c, discussing the questions raised above, and many others, before repairing to an optional lunch in an upstairs room overlooking the Thames in the Morpeth Arms nearby. Do join us for another face-to-face event!
Cost: £75 per Member
Please meet Nicholas inside the MANTON entrance of Tate Britain on one of two dates : 10.45 a.m. Wednesday 8 November, or Monday 13 November. We regret that numbers must be limited to 14 each day. Please let us know if you are able to join us for lunch. We expect the cost to be around £30 a head.
Booking Information
On receipt of your payment we will send you an information sheet, requesting details of travel, room, dietary requirements etc to be filled out and returned to Henrietta in the stamped addressed envelope we will provide.
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