Page 50 - Studio International - January 1969

The new

Tate Gallery hanging

Norman Reid

Anyone who has ever bought a picture knows which increases at the rate of eighty or ninety the collection affords. With the increased rate
that the pleasure of deciding how it should be works each year, many of which are large and of acquisition by purchase and, more especi-
exhibited is second only to the pleasure of buy- some very large indeed. ally now, by gift, this is no longer possible.
ing it. Most works of art are conceived as indi- Until five or six years ago it was possible to Three photographs of the same room, Gal-
vidual objects and by and large they are at attempt an arrangement of the two collections lery 15 at the Tate, demonstrate better than
their best when seen in this way. A private that are housed in the Tate which would indi- any written account the change in attitude
collector can sometimes provide these condi- cate their range all at once. With the historic towards the display of the collection which
tions in his house (or alternatively display his British collection this is still true to a certain has taken place over the comparatively short
collection in a dense profusion made viable by extent although it is becoming uncommonly period of four years. The first is obviously an
the dominating personal taste with which it crushed by the steady growth in numbers of attempt to show as much as the present day
was acquired). But the TATE GALLERY finds it- works of a quality which should be on current
visitor would bear. Nevertheless its message is
self after seventy years in possession of some exhibition. Over the past years we have tried clear: we are desperate for space but are doing
five and a half thousand works of art, paint- to maintain as representative an exhibition of our best. That it was possible to hang so many
ings, sculptures, and watercolours, a collection twentieth century painting and sculpture as
pictures at all is entirely due to their unaggres-
sive character. In the second photograph the
problem has changed but in many ways has
become more acute. For one thing the works
are much larger and they are also much more
assertive. The subdivision of the room as an
attempt to bring a degree of peace to this mot-
ley group has failed because it destroys the
single volume of the room and also because
the individual works insist on poking their
heads out of the cubicles in which there has
been an attempt to contain them; the sculp-
ture goes rollicking down the room, over-
powering, for once, even the metal floor grills.
With or without subdivisions there are far
more works than one room can comfortably
display.
It was at this point that I realized that we
must abandon the attempt to show a compre-
hensive group of modern work and change the
hanging policy to involve instead smaller
groups of work in rotation. This is an attempt,
as far as will ever be possible within the artifi-
cial context of a museum, to realize the ideal
of seeing each exhibit by itself, as well as in
meaningful relation to other works. Frequent
change therefore becomes a new way of in-
dicating the collection's range. Only in this
way can the individual quality of each work be
experienced, but it does demand more gener-
ous use of space than ever before. Apart from
the fact that frequent change gives full value
to the complexity of each work, each new
juxtaposition illuminating new aspects of it, it
is essential that we and our visitors should be
enabled to see, as far as the present building
allows, how works might be displayed in an
ideal building. This has been the guiding prin-
ciple in the rearrangement of Galleries 15, 16
and 17 which have just been opened.
Increased spaciousness does not mean that
works will never be shown close together: the