Sorcha Dallas

REP: Head to head with the national collectors of art

The pieces exhibited in Choice: 21 Years Of Collecting For Scotland have returned to their place within the wider collection. The rave reviews of this selection of works bought by Sir Timothy Clifford during his time as director of the National Galleries have been taken down. On is left to wonder whether the critics’ assessment of Clifford’s tenure focused too much on the works he bought. Certainly the man himself was more than happy that these should be the parameters by which he was judged. The collection did represent an impressive amount of cajoling, arm-twisting and sweet-talking. He raised the ¬£10.25million that was needed to buy Botticelli’s ‘Virgin and Child’ in eighteen days: an amazing act of networking, persistence and vision.

Yet hidden among the fulsome praise was a rather mute response to the contemporary art presented in Choice. Perhaps the exhibition did fairly represent Clifford’s tenure, which has been criticised in the past for not picking enough work by modern artists. Perhaps a gallery director should also be judged on the works he didn’t buy. Clifford himself is bullish in his own defence. ‘Throw your mind back twenty-one years. When I arrived here, the (Scottish) National Gallery of Modern Art had just moved out of the Botanic Gardens into the new building and really we could hardly fill it. It was pretty conventional. Indeed we had only started a separate gallery for modern art some thirty years earlier,’ he says.

Clifford states that one of his main early achievements was employing Richard Calvocoressi as director of the SNGMA. ‘He and I worked together like heavenly twins really, trying to squeeze out work from major collections,’ says Clifford. They approached Sir Roland Penrose (who was friend to Picasso, Ernst and Miro and a Tate Gallery Trustee) and purchased work from his collection in 1995. In the same year the gallery was bequeathed work by the champion golfer and Surrealist collector, Gabrielle Keiller after Clifford ‘moved in on her’ as he pus it. He also ‘nailed’ the Palozzi Gift.

Although he admits that some of the works in the ‘Gift’ is not as good as, well, other work in the ‘Gift,’ Clifford is unrepentant about the degree of focus that the degree of focus that the Dean Gallery puts on his work. The way Palozzi worked with architect Sit Terry Farrell on the Dean Gallery, turning Hamitlon’s gloomy, early 19th Century orphanage into a viable gallery, he says, capped one of his proudest achievements. ‘We turned the SNGMA from being rather a footnote in art history to becoming the most important collection of 20th century art in the UK, outside the Tate. I think that’s quite a contribution to have made in a relatively short time,’ says Clifford.

Toby Webster, director of the Glasgow gallery the Modern Institute, praises the collection as both connoisseur and gallery owner. ‘[The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art] in Edinburgh has got a very good collection that is quite specific. It’s been built up over several years from the surrealist collection, although it does get lost somehow when it moves into Scottish figuration. But it has that basic draw that you understand. There is some of kind of concept behind it,’ he says. The Selective Memory exhibition- which has come to the SNGMA on its return from the Venice Biennale- carries clear echoes of surrealism and the Keiller and Penrose collections; particularly in Alex Pollard’s work.

John Leighton, who will take Clifford’s place as director, is unequivocal. Works acquired by the director of a public gallery acquires, he insists, ‘are not the best way of judging his tenure.’ After all the razzmatazz of Clifford’s final fling, Leighton’s assessment is more sober. ‘Of course acquisitions are where directors put a personal handle on their time in charge; where they can express their personal taste. It’s also easier for the public and press to appreciate, as it’s quantifiable. What is far harder to judge a director on is the overall quality of the exhibitions brought in, the quality of the research etc. There are any other number of success factors,’ he says.

It’s tempting to think, well he would say that, wouldn’t he? During his nine-year tenure as head of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Leighton had little scope for purchasing. The museum was established in 1973 on a core of 200paintings and 500drawings, and little has been added, which is hardly surprising. On 15 may 1990, a Japanese businessman spent $82.5million on Van Gogh’s ‘Portrait of Doctor Gachet,’ the highest price ever paid for a painting. ‘His paintings- as you can imagine- are difficult to come by,’ says Leighton wryly.

But the Van Gogh Museum isn’t just about Van Gogh. A sizeable part of its collection is known by the charmingly literal phrase ‘Niet Van Gogh’- ‘not Van Gogh.’ The museum bought steadily in this field during Leighton’s directorship. ‘Our ambition was always to raise the quality of NVG. The artist himself collected works by his contemporaries and we’ve tried to build on that: Toulouse Lautrec and Gauguin, work by Seurrat, Monet and Manet, ’ he says.

‘We strengthened some of the symbolist work and we’ve carried it into the 20th century with work by Sluijters and Von Stuck.’

When he leaves Amsterdam, a book will be produced, featuring some of the work that has been bought during his time there. ‘I’m supposed to know nothing about it,’ he says.

Of course these purchases may give some idea how Leighton will ‘express his personal taste,’ but anyone expecting him to suddenly fulfil his desire to bag a Michelangelo for the Scottish National Galleries should not get too excited. Leighton is a different character from his ebullient English forerunner: a reserved Ulsterman from a family of architects. ‘It’s extremely important for a collection to grow and not be static, ’ he says. ‘But I have a feeling that our purchases will be less spectacular than they were under my predecessor.’

Gallery director Sorcha Dallas represents Alex Pollard, one of the artists from the Selective Memory exhibition. She has been very pleased with the investment its curators Jason E. Bowman and Rachel Bradley have made in the development of the artists- Pollard, Cathy Wilkes, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan. ‘The whole idea of the project was an investment in the artist’ practice rather than a standard showcase event,’ she says. ‘This was the second stage and they are planning a third, for all the artists to have a solo show in a different European city. Dallas thinks that if the show had simply gone to Venice, it wouldn’t have had a major effect on Pollard’s work. Now though he has ‘a succinct body of work.’