Tate Britain rehang review: An ambitious attempt to rebrand British art – as well as Britain itself

This reshuffle of Tate Britain’s displays re-energises historic moments that we think we know well

Rachel Jones’s ‘lick your teeth, they so clutch’ (© Rachel Jones; Photo: Tate (Sam Day & Rod Tidnam) 2021)

Until recently, a major rehang of Tate Britain’s permanent collection might have been of interest only to museum professionals. Who else cares if a few Turner and Constable canvases have been shunted between rooms? But our great institutions are now in a state of near-crisis, gripped by post-Covid budget issues as well as hot button cultural debates. Questions such as “do treasures like the Elgin marbles need to be returned?” and “where are all the women and artists of colour?” abound. There’s far greater public awareness of what galleries choose to show, and the messages these curatorial choices give to the world.

Nowadays, then, a reshuffle is a significant news story. And with questions of British identity more to the fore, and the country at large more divided than at any time in living memory, the matter of how the national collection of British art – the biggest in the world – is presented, and what it tells us about ourselves, feels suddenly of urgent interest.

I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear that the rehang does indeed include more works by women artists and artists of colour – and more images of people of colour – then ever before. But the new rehang is about a lot more than identity issues. By linking the art to great moments in social and political history (wars, strikes, beginnings and endings of empire) it attempts to refresh and rebrand not only Tate Britain – which has struggled for audiences since the creation of its larger sibling Tate Modern – but British art as a phenomenon, and, by extension, it feels, Britain itself. No shortage of ambition here then.