There is no doubt that, for a considerable period, the position of the scholarly museum curator has been subject to a general attrition in institutions across Britain. While managers and administrators, departments for Human Resources, marketing, education and outreach have blossomed, curators have invariably found themselves sidelined. They are increasingly subject to pressures that diminish the effectiveness of their expertise and compromise their abilities to mount exhibitions and displays, acquire works and catalogue the holdings in their care. These responsibilities are grounded in scholarly knowledge, wide contacts and visual flair. But now, with their duties in disarray, poor remuneration and the impact of continuing financial stringency, their future, particularly for new recruits, is indeed bleak.

One insufficiently stressed problem is the suitability of younger applicants for museum positions. What are the appointments panels looking for? All collection curators must have some area of specialisation and many will also have undergone curatorial courses and internships. But not all academ­ically bright can­didates will make effective curators. They will prob­ably value interpretation above information; they will know little or nothing of the conservation of objects; their writing skills are often unhoned. Although they may be eager to improve what aptitudes they have, they will be met – especially in the larger institutions – with administrative duties that can prove overwhelming. They may also find that more experienced curators, to whom they might look for guidance and continuity, are on the move.

Such considerations have been given a sharper focus through recent, much publicised developments at Tate Britain. While the troubles besetting the gallery are not confined to Millbank, in a national collection they are deeply disquieting, especially the unprecedented exodus of some of its senior curators. Most of the problems stem from Tate Britain’s invention in 2000 and the reorganisation that preceded it. The gallery then became responsible for the acquisition and showing of British art from c.1500 (inexplicably changed recently to 1550) to the present, with the historic collections ending in the early twentieth century. It is in effect the national gallery of the British School, a publicly accountable institution. Its management bears responsibility for the display of and access to its collections, the standard of its temporary exhibitions and the quality of its scholarship. A visit made to Tate Britain at the time of writing demonstrates all too clearly several shortcomings.

Current refurbishment has closed a number of rooms on the east side of the building. Of the fifteen or so rooms to the west, only one is devoted to the primary historic collection (with three much smaller ‘Focus’ rooms on aspects of seventeenth- and eight­eenth-century art). Double-hung, this anthology runs from Hans Eworth to Burne-Jones. Even if this is only a ‘temporary’ hang, it surely shows a contemptuous attitude to the collection and to its audience. Visitors from abroad may take delight in some popular Victorian paintings but they may well be disappointed to find in this room not a single Constable, an artist of whom they are likely to have heard.1 In the other galleries now open, eight are given over to A Walk through the Twentieth Century, an idiosyncratic, occasionally revealing, stroll that introduces the non-specialist to many obscure names among other well-known paintings and some good groups of sculpture. Throughout, wall labels omit any context or information beyond artist, title and date: a visitor wishing to know more of such representative figures of modern British art as Winifred Knights or James Gunn (individual works by them dominate two of the rooms) are left in ignorance. When the renovations are finished next year, it seems that a new hang will devote much more space to the historic British holdings. We can only hope that it will prove an arresting and visually authoritative display. It should also to some extent reflect, without losing sight of public interest, recent enlightening art-historical research into many aspects of British art in publications and exhibitions (including several fine ones held at Tate Britain itself). We hope not to see again those thematic displays with their clunky juxtapositions that in the early 2000s were greeted with considerable dismay; nor yet the somewhat skittish narrative currently in evidence.

Over the years, the gallery’s staff structure became top-heavy and labyrinthine; internal communication faltered; and cura­torial demoralisation was no secret beyond Millbank. Excellent curators left, happy to go but unhappy in their leave-taking. The curatorial structure is at present subject to another shake-up with important positions to be filled, the result in part of staff being asked to re-apply for their jobs (not an uncommon move today), in a manner that was obviously insensitive and embarrassing and which has led to resignations and redundancies. There are further instances of a lamentable disregard of the gallery’s responsibilities – the cavalier attitude to the Turner Bequest, for example, or the jettisoning a while ago of much of the photographic archive.

The diminished public reputation, an insistent stress on the contemporary, sometimes at the expense of the historic, and the broken continuity in the handing on of the curatorial baton are all now urgent priorities to be redressed by the directorate. A more seamless flow between historic and modern is desirable; scholarly publications (printed and/or online) must not be allowed to dwindle; and the staff structure should be simplified in an effort to reduce interdepartmental distrust. Knowledge is power, not vice versa. In 2013, with renovations and other projects completed, we hope to see a comprehensive, well-paced, beautifully hung, chronologically based and intellectually coherent conspectus of the development of British art. This is the Tate’s duty as the guardian of the British School and is what the public deserves.

1 A patient visitor might luckily discover a cloud study by Constable in the excessively meandering installation of dozens of works on steel stands selected by Patrick Keiller, a work that runs the length of and is dwarfed by the central Duveen Galleries.