‘Troubling’: that’s the word chosen by Penelope Curtis, the new director of Tate Britain, in her preface to the catalogue for Migrations, the gallery’s recently opened exhibition (it closes on 12 August). She’s referring to the name of the institution she heads. The launch of Tate Modern in 2000 gave Tate curators the thankless and well nigh incoherent task of demarcating which of their holdings belonged to a story about a specific nation and which to a story about value systems in general. Equally awkward has been the relation between the nation in question, ruled from London, and the more symbolically potent local allegiances that divide the island geographically. Now, however, Curtis sees a need to multiply the conundrums of Tate Britishness.

LRB 8 March 2012 | PDF Download