by Jon Lackman | 13 November 2008 | Modern, Museums
It’s caviar for modern art skeptics: Tate Modern hung Rothkos on their side and it made so little difference that barely anyone noticed. The truth of the matter is a bit more complex. From The Times of London:
Curators of the blockbuster Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern in London have displayed two of the artist’s best known works on their side, contrary to Rothko’s original intentions … Rothko outlined his request in a series of discussions with Norman Reid, then director of the Tate, before the paintings first went on display in 1970 … Although Reid followed Rothko’s instructions in 1970, he changed his mind nine years later after taking advice from a colleague and displayed the two paintings with the stripes running vertically. In 1987, the works were returned to their horizontal hang for a special Rothko exhibition. The catalogue at the time stated that the artist’s signature on the back of the canvasses indicated that this was the correct position. However, when the paintings were moved to the Rothko Room at the Tate Modern in 2000, they were once again shown on a vertical axis … Rothko is not the first artist who may have suffered the ignominy of having his work displayed the wrong way up. A painting by Vincent van Gogh called Long Grass with Butterflies briefly hung upside down in the National Gallery in 1965 before the mistake was spotted by a schoolgirl.
