Tate Britain: Rehung or Highly Strung?

It is easily forgotten that a gallery’s prerogative is to get people through the doors to look at art, but it is made all the easier by arguably ill-considered decisions like the Tate Britain’s recent rehang. Gone are explanatory white plaques and cast aside are discursive, curatorial decisions in which thematically relevant and often radically different works are hung alongside each other. Instead, we are to step into a timeline of British works to potentially see the vibrancy of Britain’s art scene through the ages, in exhibition rooms labelled by the date of the art shown. While chronology has its place and time, it is not in my mind meant for a permanent collection and I am rooted in the stance that reorganising the Tate Britain chronologically is fundamentally flawed.

I do not often take the time to look at permanent collections and it is a rare occurrence that I will visit a gallery unless to see a newly intriguing exhibit. This is not due to a lack of interest, but just from a general malaise I feel in the rarely curated space that is ‘the permanent collection’. Left to gather dust, comfortable in their thematic and often librarian organisation, a permanent collection can feel nothing short of pedestrian.

In fact, that is potentially the perfect word: they are designed to be walked through and to be digested in the easiest manner possible. And the easiest way is often the apathetic way. When history takes over as the focus, so does the artist and the art itself becomes part of something far less exciting. Discard everything but the works themselves in their presentation and you effect something far more exciting.

There’s no synaptic joy to be gained from a timeline. And without a bit of information about the artwork, the discussion is left to be a soliloquy when it comes to the individual work. I’m inclined to read everything I can about what I have seen and loved. The opportunity to immediately look to the left of an artwork and see a few important details is brilliant. While the free programme of galleries (such as the Mead Gallery) is an equally excellent source of information, these require capsule collections of art, not entire permanent collections.

However, all this is well and good but what of the average museum and gallery goer, and their reactions to the changes at the Tate Britain? National critics have sung its praises. Jonathan Jones, who I greatly respect, has called the rehang “a revelatory journey to meet the British” (Guardian). The rehang has been described as a more discursive democratisation of the Tate’s collection which, for all intents and purposes, does a better job of displaying an eclectic collection of British art: the Tate Britain’s authority. I feel that art critics perhaps have too much of an advantage in their sound, theoretical knowledge of art history, to view the benefit of the white plaque. But then, I am no better than my fellow theorists and writers as I have not been and watched how people react to the changes at the Tate Britain in person.

I can only speak as someone who looks at pictures, like any other who frequents those gallery rooms, and wants to know a little bit more. I am addicted to audio guides, always want the programmes to be a bit more affordable and tend to buy the coffee table catalogues, just so I can do some background reading afterwards. I don’t go to galleries just to let my own, relatively informed opinion start fizzing into life. I go to galleries to acquire knowledge, facts and anecdotal information. Just because a permanent collection is not collated to mirror a thesis statement, like a temporary exhibition, does not mean that information and support should not be provided to explain the pieces displayed. The wonderful aspect of permanent collections is that they are free, and, more than that, free sources of information about art movements that could otherwise be forgotten and become the interest only of the stuffy and well-informed. The white plaque is a symbol of a much needed helping hand in a world of symbols and hidden meanings and I lament its passing.