Interpreters of the past
From Sir Nicholas Serota Sir: By highly selective quotation from a panel discussion, Roger Kimball (Arts, 12 February) presents a parody of the views expressed by Glenn Lowry, John Elderfield and myself at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. None of us wishes to 'dispense with the traditional idea of a museum' or its role in 'keeping the past alive', nor do we 'transform the great institutions into empo- ria of the ephemeral'. Rather do we seek, by imaginative scholarly interpretation of the past, to make both the work and its meaning more vivid for a present-day audience. Would Mr Kimball be satisfied with only one immutable production of Hamlet, and would he not admit that our understanding of Shakespeare's words is profoundly affect- ed by contemporary events? T.S. Eliot, among others, well recognised that 'the past should be altered by the present, as much as the present is directed by the past'.
Nicholas Serota Director, Tate Gallery, London SW1
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