Michael Mosbacher

The Tate’s grubby cancellation of Rex Whistler

The Rex Whistler restaurant before its closure (Photo: Tate)

Tate Britain’s Rex Whistler restaurant will never reopen the gallery announced yesterday. The restaurant – once known for its excellent and well priced wine list – won’t reopen due to the apparent offensiveness of the mural on its walls. Diners used to be embraced by the mural, The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, a painting by Rex Whistler, an artist best known for his decorative murals in grand country houses. He was killed in France in 1944 fighting the Nazis, in other words engaging in anti-racist action. When the Tate restaurant first opened in 1927 it was described as ‘the most amusing room in Britain’. It was a favourite spot for BBC political editors to lunch their political contacts.



Not so long ago the Tate was still proud of The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats. As part of Tate Britain’s £45 million rejuvenation in 2013 the mural was extensively restored – of which much was made in the museum’s annual report for that year. The restaurant closed at the start of lockdown and did not reopen – a situation now made permanent.

The reason? In one corner of the mural – a clearly mythical landscape of hunters, nymphs and satyrs – is a black slave boy with a chain round his neck. White Pube, ‘the collaborative identity of Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad under which we write about art, video games and food’, kicked off the fuss about the image during lockdown.

Rex_Whistler_-_The_Tate_Gallery_Restaurant_mural_1926.jpeg





It is not hard to guess the kind of ‘interpretive material’ that will now accompany the mural

The slave boy is not easily spotted – for most people to see it, it has to be pointed out to them. When Labour MP Diane Abbott demanded on Twitter that the restaurant not reopen after lockdown, she stated: ‘I have eaten in Rex Whistler restaurant at Tate Britain.

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