In 15 years as director of London's Tate Gallery, Sir John Kneestub Maurice Rothenstein has made his museum one of the world's best showcases of modern art. The gallery draws as many people (1,000,000 a year) as Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. But by trying to please both ultra-modernists and conservatives, Sir John frequently gets himself into hot water.
In 1949 he infuriated the Royal Academy's President Sir Alfred Munnings, a horse painter with mid-Victorian tastes, by deciding that hanging was too good for 400-odd pictures and sculptures which the Royal Academy had bought for the Tate. Last year indignant M.P.s wanted to know...
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