Linklater's Scotland: Sir Timothy Clifford

Magnus Linklater

Columnist, Scotland on Sunday

This article, which was originally published in the Spectrum section of
Scotland on Sunday on 3rd July 2005, is reproduced on Land-Care
with the kind permission of the author and the newspaper

Filed 07 Jul 05
©Magnus Linklater

TIM CLIFFORD is preparing his swansong exhibition - the one that will, after 21 years at the helm of the National Galleries of Scotland, allow him to let his hair down and tell us what kind of art he really likes. As if we didn’t know already. He has the stars of the show chosen in his head: “The Bernini bust, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo - an absolutely five-star achievement . Botticelli’s Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, you couldn’t not have that. The Fabula by El Greco. Do you want me to go on?” The quick answer is yes. But time presses and he has a lot to say.

He’s going to call the exhibition Choice. Isn’t that a rather New Labour-sounding title? “Oh, but I’m a very New Labour person, you know,” he declares, roaring with laughter at the thought. “The idea of choice is simply a choice of objects over the last 21 years exercised by me, my board of trustees, my chairman and my staff, who are obviously guided by me; and it has that awful other connotation, it’s a choice work of art. My own staff came up with a wonderful idea of ’21 glorious years’, and I said I really couldn’t go for that, it sounded so incredibly...” He hesitates. Over the top? He grins.

Over the top is the style that Clifford has always preferred - and it has been hugely to the benefit of Scottish cultural life. Looking back, one remembers the great battles (the defeat over a planned Gallery of Scottish Art; the long-running dispute with the RSA over the use of its building) and the great gaffes (the description of Scottish art as “second-rate”; the day he almost lost the bid for Canova’s Three Graces by offending John Paul Getty); but these pale into insignificance compared to the triumphs: the opening of the Dean Gallery, the completion of the Playfair Project, the acquisition of great pictures such as Raphael’s Kneeling Nude Woman and Titian’s Venus Rising from the Waves, and the raising of the NGS’s international reputation.

Today, galleries across the world look at the Scottish collections with a new respect, lending and borrowing pictures in a way that would have been impossible 20 years ago. Not surprisingly, Clifford agrees. “We’re probably the most important picture gallery in northern Europe now,” he states. “Overall, our collections are richer, deeper and better than any of the Scandinavian countries, that’s the first thing to say.
“It’s difficult to position oneself as far as North America is concerned because the North American museums are phenomenal in terms of size and firepower. We’re not in that league at all. I think, on the other hand, that we’re certainly more important than the Frick. I meet people on the street and they say that, ‘After the Frick, the National Galleries of Scotland are my favourite,’ and I’m always very flattered, but people don’t seem to realise that the National Galleries are not just this building on the Mound, and once you’ve taken into consideration the glories of the Gallery of Modern Art and the Portrait Gallery we are in a very different bracket.”

Oddly, the one decision he still calls “revolutionary” is the one which now seems so obvious - to redecorate the entire National Gallery, bringing in dark red walls in place of the modest oatmeal wallpaper that everyone was used to, and double-hanging the pictures. The howls of outrage dominated the letters pages of The Scotsman for months. Today the revolution is standard. “You know, I think there’s something like seven galleries in the National Gallery in London now that have red walls and quite regularly double-hang,” he says.

Is it conceivable, however, in this era of public accountability and political correctness, that the galleries could ever choose a maverick director in the same mould as a Clifford? When, next January, he stands down as director-general and sets off to lecture, write and discover old masterpieces hidden in dusty drawers, he will hand over the galleries in a new political climate. Shortly after we talked, the Cultural Commission issued its weighty report, and subjected the National Galleries to the full force of its bureaucratic prose. It talked of “regional development”, “sectoral co-operation”, “benchmarking standards”, and concluded with a statement of breathtaking banality: “The primary criterion for inclusion [in the national collections] is quality, as determined by an object’s artistic and cultural significance, properly judged by experts.”

Nowhere did it suggest that this might best be achieved by appointing a mercurial egotist with a nose for a great picture, an encyclopaedic knowledge of Europe’s art treasures, the bouncy enthusiasm of a boy scout, a notoriously thick skin, and the habit of asking for impossible sums of money, then getting them, in order to buy pictures that others only dream about - all on a budget rather smaller than that of a minor provincial gallery in down-town Denver.

I asked him, in advance of the report, what he hoped for - and feared - from it. “The fact is that there’s nobody on the Cultural Commission who is a major player in the visual-arts world,” he said, “so that’s why I have grave doubts and worries about it. Secondly, I do believe that the driving force for the arts has been placed with the boards of trustees who operate at arm’s length from government. I’m worried about the way this link to government is being pared to the bone. And I actually believe the National Galleries of Scotland, of all major museum complexes in Britain, have been more thrusting, more visionary and have achieved more than any other gallery in Britain, outside perhaps of the Tate, so therefore why bring in something else when the present system seems to work extremely well?”

In the event, the commission did not suggest replacing the present structure, and it did stress the need for more investment in the galleries, but it went on to say that this might best be funnelled via a new Board of National Collections to bring the major museums, galleries and libraries of Scotland together. In the aftermath of its publication, Clifford was reluctant to comment. I suspect he recognised that his response would have been less than enthusiastic, and decided that, for once, discretion was the better part of valour.

As for his own legacy, he believes that there are still major goals ahead for a successor brave enough to realise them, First, the £14 million refurbishment of the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, then a new Gallery of Scottish Art that would finally display some of the treasures that have been hidden too long in dusty basements, and finally the great vision that this quintessential Englishman - the “hired gun” as he calls himself - has always longed to deliver for Scotland: “After the Portrait Gallery scheme is completed, we’re going to be moving on to the Gallery of Modern Art in Belford Road. I would love to see a great new building being put up there. I don’t see it in terms of a £10 million or a £20 million building. I think, if anything, it could be a £100 million building which would be a really major rival for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, even to Tate Modern.

“What visions has Scotland got? What great aspirations has Scotland got? Well, this is an aspiration, this is a vision and it’s something that could be linked in with a huge educational programme for Scotland and an opportunity for everybody in Scotland to become so much more visually aware. We could make ourselves one of the most artistically aware countries in the world; we could do that.

“If you get visual things right it hugely helps you in your enterprise. And, you know, you can see that in the way France positions itself and the way some of the Scandinavian countries position themselves as well - and we could do it too.”

He paused briefly. “I must stop. I’m talking too much.” On the contrary, Sir Tim, I don’t know how we’re going to get along without you.

References

This article:

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/spectrum.cfm?id=716682005

Earlier articles in the series

1. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland. Scotland on Sunday 20th March 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 24 Mar 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

2. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Easter in Easterhouse. Scotland on Sunday 27th March 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 31 Mar 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

3. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Farming. Scotland on Sunday 3rd April 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 07 Apr 0505, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

4. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Pitlochry. Scotland on Sunday 10th April 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 15 Apr 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

5. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Supermarkets. Scotland on Sunday 17th April 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 19 Apr 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

6. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Kelvingrove. Scotland on Sunday 24th April 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 29 Apr 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

7. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Scottish regiments. Scotland on Sunday 1st May 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 05 May 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

8. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Pete Irvine, impresario. Scotland on Sunday 8th May 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 13 May 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

9. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - once a nation of adventurous entrepreneurs. Scotland on Sunday 15th May 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 16 May 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to VIEW

10. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - the heroism of John Moffat. Scotland on Sunday 22nd May 2005
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 24 May 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

11. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Edinburgh pronounced World City of Literature.
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 04 June 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

12. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Scotland's fish-farms.
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 10 June 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

13. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Scotland's budding tennis talent.
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 16 June 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

14. Linklater, Magnus (2005). G8 summit at Gleneagles.
See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 24 June 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

15. Linklater, Magnus (2005). Windfarms in the Highlands.
See ENVIRONMENT Homepage, filed 30 June 05, www.land-care.org.uk Click Here to View

Finis

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