Why does the National Gallery only show 'western art'?
May 12 2016
Picture: Chen Hongshou, 'Magnolia and Erect Rock', Palace Museum, Beijing.
In a thoughtful essay for The Art Newspaper, Giles Waterfield looks at the gently shifting remits of institutions like the National Gallery in London. He discusses the National's desire to be less bound by its current 1900 dividing line with Tate, but also says:
What would be truly revolutionary would be if Finaldi suggested breaking out from the National Gallery’s restriction of its permanent displays to Europe, in order to embrace the world in the way that the Tate is doing. A bold start was made in this direction by the former director Nicholas Penny’s acquisition of George Bellow’s Men of the Docks in 2014, the National Gallery’s first-ever modern US painting. Could the National Gallery go much further than crossing its chronological frontiers, and leap beyond Europe too?
These days, inserting contemporary art in amongst more traditional displays is all the rage. In the National Portrait Gallery in London, in which galleries have traditionally been arranged on a strictly chronological basis, modern works have now been inserted into the hang, even in the Tudor galleries. They call it 'contemporary conversations', and slightly to my surprise I thought it worked quite well.*
But perhaps more relevant to today's globalised world is to obsess less about mixing old art with the new, but instead to have what we might call 'international conversations'. Once you think about it, institutions like the National Gallery present a very sealed view of mankind's artistic achievement. Why not hang a Dutch floral still-life by Roelandt Savery beside the work of Chen Hongshou (1598-1652) (above)?
* Although that said, I thought I counldn't help noticing that in the NPG's contemporary galleries downstairs no older portraits had been introduced into the hang - a shame, for the premise of mixing old and new is valid, and shouldn't be an excuse to try merely jazz up the old stuff.
