Art: Britain's Liveliest Museum

A familiar profile along the Thames-side skyline in London is the sooty statue of Britannia, bearing a trident, atop the Victorian baroque pile that is the Tate Gallery. Britannia grasps her trident in what heraldry says is the wrong (that is, right) hand. In the past, this maladroitness has seemed symbolic of the Tate.

Sugar Merchant Henry Tate had the devil's own time getting the nation to accept his costly gift in 1890. A cruel tradition makes the Tate turn over any painting that can be defined as an old master to the National Gallery. For years, the public virtually ignored the Tate; during the 1930s the guards' first chore mornings was spinning the turnstile to build up fictitious attendance. But in the past decade the Tate has pulled ahead fast, and now, under the direction of Sir John Rothenstein, it is the largest and liveliest art museum in the British Commonwealth.

Muddling Through Brilliantly. The Tate's early troubles came from subordination to the trustees of the 140-year-old National Gallery and members of the stodgy Royal Academy, which had managed to be hostile in turn to Constable, Turner, Whistler, the Pre-Raphaelites, French impressionism and most everything else that subsequently mattered. "Mal à la Tate," punned a peeved Punch. At first the trustees forced the stepchild Tate to accept Victorian tearjerkers that no one will even borrow today. The Tate did not succeed in winning its complete autonomy from the National Gallery until 1955, and it had to wait till after World War II for annual government grants, still a pittance at $112,000 a year, to buy works of art.

The Tate's keepers, or administrators, simply had to muddle through, and they did so brilliantly. By watching their purse, they developed shrewd eyesight. Two Henry Moore drawings that cost a paltry $18 apiece in the early 1940s would now fetch a hundred times that; two Giacometti oils, bought for $112 and $168, are now worth around $25,000 apiece.

The keepers also found rich friends. Sir Joseph Duveen gave a new wing to house the Tate's vast, unique J.M.W. Turner collection; his son (eventually Lord Duveen of Millbank, titled for the medieval name of the Tate's site) added the museum's soaring sculpture hall. Formed five years ago, the Friends of the Tate Gallery, some 830 amateurs who banquet by candlelight three times a year amid the modern sculpture, have already given six Henry Moores, bringing the museum's total to 35, and have widened the U.S. collection with works by Louise Nevelson, Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly. Three years ago, John Hay Whitney, then the U.S. Ambassador, helped found a group of American Friends of the Tate to add U.S. artists to the gallery. And two Jackson Pollocks were bought with a $70,000 gift from H. J. Heinz II, chairman of the Pittsburgh food company.

Over the years the Tate collection (see color) has grown to nearly 4,000 British paintings, more than 300 modern foreign paintings, and some 360 pieces of sculpture. Only in the museum's 86 works by William Blake can the romantic prophet who enthroned man's imagination be seen so amply. There are now 278 Turner oils. Before Rothenstein took over in 1938, the subtle, chromatic late Turners such as Norham Castle, Sunrise were kept in storage. Now their pale fire blazes across five Duveen Rooms.