The problems at Tate Britain go beyond the director

Last week, Tate Britain was one of six museums across the UK to be nominated for the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year award, an annual prize in which the winner receives the not inconsiderable sum of £100,000. A couple of weeks earlier, Waldemar Januszczak, the Sunday Times’s ‘cor blimey’ art critic (don’t get me wrong, he has a winning shoot-from-the-hip style) was calling for the head of Penelope Curtis, Tate Britain’s director since 2010.

Despite approving of the chronological rehang of the permanent collection which she oversaw last year – in fact, he proclaimed it a ‘miracle’ – Januszczak still insisted Curtis must go. He gave his reasons: she puts on rubbish shows and under her leadership visitor numbers dropped significantly (by 10 per cent last year). However, he didn’t mention that most of Tate Britain’s galleries had been shut for major rebuilding and refurbishment (which is where the splendid rehang came in and the later unveiling of Tate Britain’s showpiece spiral stairwell). Despite