Masters of the artistic universe

On The Courtauld’s 75th anniversary, Robin Simon looks back at its colourful and distinguished history

The Tate Gallery …sorry, I’ll start again. ‘Tate’ spent £100,000 a few years back just to lose its ‘the’. Staff are strictly instructed by the gallery’s Oberkommando to refer to it according to the brand name, as in ‘I’m at Tate’. It sounds as if they come from Mars — or Yorkshire. It doesn’t work, and I enjoy the announcement on the Victoria Line at Pimlico which gets it all wrong: ‘Alight here for the Tate Britain.’ The Courtauld Institute of Art turns 75 on 6 October this year and has also undergone a rather expensive ‘brand refreshment’. There is the usual accretion of ‘logos’ and the like, but the advisers involved have resisted dropping the definite article (‘Courtauld’, tout court) as threatened at one point, although they may have gone too far the other way.