Split the Tate
Sir: Giles Auty (`Caring about art', 20 October) says that few will argue about the Historic British Collection part of the latest Tate Gallery report. But many do question its whole basis, regretting that it is put in the shade by the more exciting Modern half, and arguing that it should be hived off into a separate gallery. The delightful Stubbs exhibition it currently shows re- minds us how it lost the opportunity to buy, when comparatively inexpensive, works by Stubbs that were snapped up by an American who has instituted a Gallery of Historic British Painting that puts the Tate in the shade. And the latter is still missing bargain pictures of the 17th cen- tury onwards which it would not miss if its Director and Trustees did not have modern distractions.
It is also arguable that the Turner Bequest should be separated off into yet another gallery, as such a collection can never be both shown in its entirety and as a section of a balanced display of British painting. Certainly the present show of Turner watercolours, the subject of a new book and much research, receives scant notice in the Tate monthly bulletin, though a year or two ago we were told, insincerely it would seem, that Turner was the jewel in the Tate's crown. What is needed is a minister or body competent, not to run our museums, but to establish their para- meters. Why have we no Museum of Oriental Art, for which the old Connois: seur ineffectually campaigned? Why is the National Art Library, so miserably defi- cient in some ways, a department of a museum of decorative arts and not of the National Library, except for historical acci- dent? All these institutions were set up by Parliament, and Parliament has a duty to review the set-up at least every century or so.
Selby Whittingham
153 Cromwell Road, London SW5
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