New look

There has already been a certain amount of controversy over this exhibition: not just the predictably ruffled feathers of Royal Academicians omitted from the selection, but also the kind of ill feeling among the Academy’s organisational staff which gives a museum a bad name.

There has already been a certain amount of controversy over this exhibition: not just the predictably ruffled feathers of Royal Academicians omitted from the selection, but also the kind of ill feeling among the Academy’s organisational staff which gives a museum a bad name. This is a great pity, as the exhibition is a remarkable one — out of 12 rooms, eight contain some of the best-displayed Mod Brit sculpture I’ve seen for a long time, in interesting and revealing juxtapositions. After that the exhibition trails off alarmingly, implying that the state of contemporary British sculpture is a parlous one. This is simply not true, so this fizzling-out is a serious misrepresentation. How did it arise?

Well, the exhibition was selected by the art historian Penelope Curtis (newly appointed director of Tate Britain) in collaboration with the sculptor Keith Wilson. They have set out to make a personal and provocative choice in order to stimulate debate and raise the questions of what constitutes sculpture and what constitutes British, let alone what we mean by that knotty term ‘modern’.

The result of this bold initiative is a series of galleries filled with art, closely juxtaposed or widely spaced, which makes us look again at old favourites and anew at less familiar names. There are around 120 exhibits, including sculpture from Native American, Indian and African cultures, which supply the effective counterpoint and illumination for works of British make. The intrusion of what might be called ‘influential foreigners’ is one of the things that makes this exhibition so exciting — at least in its early stages.