Millennium makeovers

Martin Gayford visits the Gilbert Collection at Somerset House and the Wallace Collection

Aid still the millennium museum openings and refurbishments roll on. Tate Modern is a success on an almost embar- rassing scale. The National Portrait Gallery extension has gone well. The British Muse- um Great Court project is still to come. But what of Somerset House, where the Gilbert Collection opened at the end of May? I must admit I have long had my doubts about Somerset House.

Indeed, Sir William Chambers's master- piece has long been an object of puzzle- ment and debate. Once upon a time, it was proposed that the Turner bequest should be put here. Perhaps it would have looked more at home in the rooms — once the exhibition galleries of the Royal Academy, where so many Turners were first hung — than in the ghastly Clore Wing of the Mill- bank Tate where they have ended up. But instead the Courtauld Collection was put there, and has never looked quite as happy as it once did in a top-floor flat in Bloomsbury.

So when it was announced that Somerset House was also to be home to a rather recondite assembly of objets d'art, as I say, I had my doubts. Would anybody come? The building itself — reticent, well-mannered and a little pompous, like an old-style English gentleman — lacks star quality (imagine what Vanbrugh or Hawksmoor would have done with a site like that). It is hard not to mourn the Tudor and Caroline Somerset House, with chapel by Inigo Tones and Mannerist gardens stretching down to the Thames that Chambers's dull but worthy edifice replaced.

Well, on the scale of popularity at least, I needn't have worried. When 1 went round it was actually verging on crowded. In the first month, more than 20,000 people paid a visit, which is probably about one-thirti- eth of Tate Modern's monthly attendance, but quite respectable. Admittedly, initially it was a little hard to see what the draw was.

The Gilbert Collection was assembled by Sir Arthur Gilbert, a businessman born in this country who made a fortune in real- estate in California. With admirable gen- erosity he presented the lot to this country in 1996. With the help of £20 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, it was installed in the rusticated portion of Somerset House along the Embankment.

De gustibus non est disputandum, of course, but I was taken aback to discover what an enormous array of items had been put together here, almost none of which was at all my cup of tea. The Gilbert Col- lection focuses on a few areas — pietre dure work (or inlay in hard stones such as agate and lapis lazuli), European silver and gold, miniature mosaics and snuffboxes.

Pietre dure work, of which the later Medici were fond (there is a great deal to be found in the Pitti Palace), certainly has its appeal. Or at least the earlier examples do — the 19th- and 20th-century examples struck me as ripely hideous. Micromosaic, a term apparently invented by Sir Arthur himself, refers to decorative panels made of tiny mosaic tesserae so. as to resemble paintings. In the case of earlier specimens, such as a 16th-century Venetian St Jerome, the result is pleasant.

But the large array of classical land- scapes in the manner of Claude struck me as so much skill and industry misapplied, while the copies of Michelangelo, Raphael and of all people Caravaggio in mosaic are weird. Items such as the mid-19th-century table with mosaic views of Rome are the kind of thing that got the Great Exhibition of 1851 a bad name.

Beyond the mosaics are snuffboxes, which are pretty things, though I could manage with fewer: there are 200, includ- Howdah, India, late 19th century ing ones decorated with micromosaic. After that comes something which it is sur- prising — and unfortunate — that anyone ever invented: micromosaic jewellery.

Among the gold and silver there was more to my taste: some silver doors pre- sented by Catherine the Great to churches in Kiev, and other Russian items, are fairly spectacular. A candelabrum presented to a 19th-century marquis by the Society of Madras and representing an ancestor of his defeating the Danes, with baroque candle- holders sprouting above, has an undeniable surreal quality.

But, personally, I found the highlight of the collection to be the Indian silver palace furniture, including two howdahs and a throne. These are magnificent objects, con- structed by native craftsmen. It would also have been interesting to see the silver bed, designed for a 19th-century nawab, of which the posts consist of four entirely naked and apparently live women — Dail would have liked that too — but only a drawing is on view.

This is a collection of treasures, some- thing which clearly has an appeal to the public. And its presentation (which is excel- lent: each snuffbox, for example, twinkling in a darkened room) fosters that feeling. So too does the massive vaulted architecture of this part of Somerset House. The V&A — a world-class museum, bursting with masterpieces, which nonetheless somehow fails to whip up excitement — could take some lessons from the drama of the instal- lation here.

There is, come to think about it, quite a bit of similar treasure at the Wallace Col- lection: snuffboxes, bibelots and other accoutrements of 19th-century wealth. But generally you don't notice them among the great pictures. The Wallace Collection, too, has had a millennium makeover. But, I was relieved to discover, it has made very little difference to most of the collection (the modern age has only manifested itself at the Wallace in a certain amount of disas- trous overcleaning a few years ago).

Architecturally, what has happened is that the courtyard has been excavated and remodelled by Rick Mather — who was also at work at Dulwich Picture Gallery — to create underground exhibition rooms, a lecture theatre, educational facilities and, in the court itself, a restaurant.

All this has been deftly done, but I'm blessed if I can say why these modifications were necessary. Of cafés, information tech- nology rooms, education rooms and so forth, gallery directors are inclined to say, evasively, 'Got to have one, you know,' or 'The visitors demand it.' Having all these bits and pieces is allegedly part of being a modern museum.

Maybe. But the whole charm and point of the Wallace Collection — like the Frick in New York or the Isabella Stewart Gard- ner in Boston is that it isn't a modern museum. Still, no harm has been done, and the café looks as if it may be quite good.