Resumen de Painting and Sculpture of a Decade '54-'64 Revisited
From 22 April to 28 June 1964, the Tate Gallery hosted one of the largest surveys of modern painting and sculpture ever undertaken in London. Sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, co-selected by Alan Bowness, Lawrence Gowing and Philip James, and installed in galleries redesigned by Alison and Peter Smithson, this exhibition of over 350 works attracted over 95,000 visitors and showcased the previous decade’s remarkable artistic achievement. This essay examines the ways in which the Painting and Sculpture of a Decade ’54–’64 exhibition marked out a key moment for contemporary art in Britain by reinforcing calls for improved government arts funding and the need for a museum of modern art in London. Exploiting new sponsorship arrangements between corporate and charitable bodies, commercial dealers and museums in post-war Britain, the exhibition instantiated the developing links between London’s and New York’s art worlds. In a distinctively modern way, the show also underlined the importance that innovative exhibition design aesthetics had in generating media interest and attracting an expanding younger audience to exhibitions of contemporary art.
