WHOLESALE GRATIFICATION 

In the last issue I noted the gradual but relentless erosion of space allocated to historical pictures in Tate Britain. This contraction will now accelerate because the collection is to be re-hung, yet again, on this occasion thematically – a policy undoubtedly designed to demonstrate the State Art Commandment that all roads shall lead to the Usual Suspects. Long gone are the reassuring days of my youth when a regular visitor to Millbank would know exactly where to find the enduring gems of British art. This trend of squeezing the historical is also inevitable because new art increases as a percentage of the collection. Hedging their bets, and in order not to miss something the future decides is important, the Tate now acquires anything by anyone. To them the idea of exhibiting discernment is as damningly reactionary as the idea of figurative art itself. The result is that Serota’s true legacy is not really all those expensive new buildings and extensions but his total surrender to mediocrity.

A well-researched article on the Guardian website recently arrived at the startling, though not entirely surprising conclusion that during Serota’s recently concluded 28-year tenure the number of works in the Tate’s holding – excluding the Turner Bequest – doubled. Serota added over 30,000 new items, the majority of them box fresh. We’ve pointed out previously in these pages that the Tate’s stock has grown every two years by more works than the National Gallery has acquired in total in the 193 years of its existence. The irony here is that this massive growth, both of the collection and the galleries in which to house some of it, has taken place during a period when scarcely a month passed without warnings of dire consequences if more public subsidy wasn’t found. On the evidence of the collection alone, and for all Serota’s gloomy predictions to the

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contrary, the Tate has enjoyed a golden age of expansion during which it swallowed far more than its fair share of the national arts budget.

Most of the work acquired during the Serota years is by a roll call of artists you’ve never heard of, many of whom are not only living but young, and whose