Director, Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am sure you feel exactly the same way as I do when you enter the Tate, whenever you enter it or re-enter it. It is a magnificent building in itself and we are eternally grateful to those late-Victorians who built it in such splendid style with the beautiful domes and stonework as you enter and it is for us to keep up this marvellous heritage. Indeed we are very fortunate in London in having such a great number of art galleries which are being restored now which will really make London I think the artistic centre of Europe if not of the world. I also notice that, since I came before, a great deal has been re-decorated ready for the display of this Collection and I know because they've told me that since they didn't have to go to PSA they've got a lot more value out of the money they've had—and of course I must tell you we have found the same in Number 10 Downing Street but I think it has been done absolutely beautifully and it enhances the initial beauty of the building itself.
And then we come to what is called the rather prosaic way the re-hanging of this Collection of our British pictures and Modern pictures and from what I've seen that too will enrich our knowledge and enlarge our understanding of the most beautiful [end p1] art that we have on display in this Gallery. When I'm overseas I always go and have a look at their galleries if I can and see how they display their things, how they put one picture with another, how people who perhaps don't fully understand all about it can appreciate the true works of art that we have and I think now that we are just about the best in the way in which we display and design our art galleries and museums. And that I say having been even to Paris which always did regard herself as the cultural centre of Europe, but I think in fairness that accolade would no longer exist in that form, I think we are very much up front in the way we do it.
May I say thank you to so many people—to the Director for his genius, for the new Chairman who has had so much to do with the new initiative, above all to BP who have made it possible. It means so much to so many people and particularly to people like me in my past life. I did not have access to see too many really beautiful pictures and I think we only came to London once to see what it was like as part of our education when we were children and I remember I was eternally grateful to have a very good art teacher who knew that if you're showing a pupil a painting you must say what it is about it that is so remarkable and you must look at it with a tutored eye but I saw very few. And then we were taken round a few great houses to see their exhibitions and I remember to this day that I was so interested in Brueghel because I was shown a Brueghel picture with a tutored eye when I was about eleven or twelve. [end p2] And then one came to London and coming into these galleries it is like opening a great treasure chest of jewellery. You cannot take it all in at once because each thing on its own is beautiful and so, for young people to be able to come here, for overseas visitors and I know both come in enormous quantities as well as people fortunate enough to live in London, it will greatly enrich their lives to come and see this Collection, to come and see it in its new form and as it has been re-hung in a very, very both artistic and telling way and I am sure it will add greatly to their understanding and to their enjoyment.
We have a task as Government to try to keep these great galleries going with some of our help, not our help, the help of the tax payers, who would wish it to be in that way to preserve the heritage and always but always, it is not enough to conserve the heritage, we have to enlarge it before we pass it on. So yes we have to look after new artists and purchase new pictures and I know that you will appreciate to the work of the Minister for Arts and the Treasury in that they have given a large grant, particularly the next three years, so that we may conserve the fabric of our buildings as well as enlarge the Collections and also we are doing it in partnership with great companies who understand too the need not only to be successful commercially but also to have the artistic side and that by their work they often give opportunity to many of their employees to come round here and see this very rich Collection which belongs to us. I would like to say also thank you to the Director and the Trustees. [end p3] I am very glad that they have too many pictures to display here because we do profit from the overflow in Number 10 Downing Street—and it is a very good overflow which they let us have because as they point out we have the Heads of State of the world and many people coming to Number 10 Downing Street and we just like them to see that we value the richess of our own artists as much as they value theirs and we like them to see the display. So it is thank you all round. Many, many, many congratulations and I am sure that Sir Henry Tate would be very pleased if he could see this building and its new, the new way in which everything has been designed, the way in which attention has been paid to detail, this new great asset for London and I hope that it will enrich the lives of many many of our people. Thank you—I have great pleasure in formally opening this new re-hung Collection.
Thank you.