The Heckler: Tate Britain is a mess. Its director Penelope Curtis must go

Things have not been happy at Tate Britain for some time. Last year Waldemar Januszczak wrote an article culminating with this cri de coeur: ‘Curtis has to go. She really does.’ The meat of the argument against Tate Britain’s director was that she had presided over a run of misconceived exhibitions disliked as much by critics and scholars as by the public. In her defence, these were not the blockbuster shows but the low-cost fillers that UK museums must put on when the coffers are low. As such they tend to be long on ideas and short on jaw-dropping loans. It is not much of a defence. The massive unseen collections of the Tate present plenty of opportunity to mount extraordinary exhibitions.

Now, however, she has presided over a stinker of a blockbuster. Sculpture Victorious has been panned across the board.  The Guardian’s good art critic, Adrian Searle, labelled it ‘an epic fail’ and Richard Dorment, who is not only the Telegraph’s chief art critic but also an eminent scholar of Victorian sculpture, wrote the worst review I have ever read.