Tate’s Britain: issues of continuity and comparison when re-presenting and advertising historic and contemporary British art beyond the gallery walls

Abstract

Tate Britain’s 2011 poster campaign boldly states ‘This is Britain’ and reproduces two works from the collection, one historic, one modern or contemporary, with a strip of Union Jack flag at the bottom. The design suggests a sense of coherence in the collection and in British art in general. This article questions the purpose of this supposed coherence, by questioning its art historical basis, and focusing on its consequences for the reception and perception of historic, modern and contemporary British art amongst Tate’s audience, both within and without the gallery space. The ideas presented draw on press commentary, visitor statistics and museum advertising practice and look at three points in Tate’s history: the Millbank gallery’s 1897 opening, the 2000 rebrand as Tate Britain and the current moment of this poster campaign. This article will argue that the transhistorical juxtapositions seen in these posters are a central tenet of how Tate builds its own identity and that of British art, and that these posters are used as a satellite exhibition space, but with a curatorial approach other to that of the gallery itself, so that the collection is displayed to attract the maximum potential audience.

Keywords:

• art
• identity
• Tate
• Britain
• advertising

Notes

1. BP is a British multinational oil and gas company.

2. ‘Cool Britannia’ (a pun on the song ‘Rule, Britannia!’) refers to a resurgent period of British cultural pride in the 1990s, related to both popular culture, particularly ‘Britpop’ music, and the ‘New Labour’ government coming to power after 18 years of Conservative power.

3. While Nevinson was not a Vorticist, his co-authoring of ‘Vital English Art’ in 1914 with the Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti demonstrates his iconoclasm against the Royal Academy.

4. It could be argued that the problem is owed to geography; Tate Modern is just one iconic bridge away from St Paul’s, an inescapable part of London’s tourist trail. In fact, a criticism of the Millbank site for the original Tate gallery was its position in an inaccessible area of the city (Taylor 1999, 114). However, the positioning of the gallery there has brought about considerable cultural regeneration for former prison district (Lorente 1998, 134).

5. Turner and the Masters, 221,146 total visitors, Pop Life: Art in a Material World 192,754 total visitors (The Art Newspaper 2011, 24).