Tempest at the Tate

In 15 years as director of London's Tate Gallery, Sir John Kneestub Maurice Rothenstein has made his museum one of the world's best showcases of modern art. The gallery draws as many people (1,000,000 a year) as Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. But by trying to please both ultra-modernists and conservatives, Sir John frequently gets himself into hot water.

In 1949 he infuriated the Royal Academy's President Sir Alfred Munnings, a horse painter with mid-Victorian tastes, by deciding that hanging was too good for 400-odd pictures and sculptures which the Royal Academy had bought for the Tate. Last year indignant M.P.s wanted to know why publicity-conscious Sir John had allowed pictures to be taken in the Tate of Cinemactress Zsa Zsa Gabor simpering at a Toulouse-Lautrec. Last week Director Rothenstein faced far more serious trouble.

In the House of Lords, questions had been asked about how the Tate spends some of its bequest moneys. It turned out that in one case, part of the proceeds from -L-40,000 ($112,000) left by a wealthy spinster for the purchase of works by contemporary Asians had been spent for Portrait of a Lady by John Constable, who was no Asian and died in 1837. From another bequest for the purchase of paintings, the Tate had bought some sculpture. In a third case, some funds left for the purchase of works by British artists had been spent on works by foreigners. A more serious charge: the Tate trustees had sold good paintings, bought inferior works at inflated prices.

The Tate's board of trustees admitted that some bequest money (-L-2,750) had not been used as directed, but insisted that the sum had been refunded from other income. Nevertheless, Painter Graham Sutherland (twelve of whose starkly modern paintings hang in the Tate) resigned his post as a trustee, last week charged that "several breaches of trust" had been committed and that the board had been duped on the current market value of modern works of art, resulting in "considerable wastage of public money."

Director Rothenstein's old enemies were using the affair for all it was worth. Trumpeted 75-year-old Sir Alfred Munnings: "An investigation of the running of the Tate is long overdue."

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