Bryan Robertson

Who was Bryan Robertson?

Bryan Robertson OBE was an English curator and arts manager described by Studio International as "the greatest Director the Tate Gallery never had".

Robertson was born in London and educated at Battersea Grammar School. Unfit for military service, he became a junior editor on The Studio magazine in 1945. The art-historian and curator Kenneth Clark became a mentor, funding a year in Paris for study. In 1949 Robertson became curator at the Heffer Gallery in Cambridge and mounted a ground-breaking exhibition of contemporary French art at the Fitzwilliam Museum. From 1952 to 1968, as curator of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, he created an influential programme that gave major presentations of works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg and the 1956 exhibition This Is Tomorrow. The Pollock exhibition created 'an absolute furore', and police were summoned to control the crowds queuing to get in. The same happened with the Rauschenberg exhibition in 1964. He also revived interest in the work of Barbara Hepworth and organised exhibitions of Turner and Stubbs. Robertson was key in promoting the careers of many emerging British artists; Anthony Caro, David Hockney, John Hoyland, Bridget Riley, William G. Tucker, and Phillip King. Robertson placed public education at the heart of the Whitechapel programme giving space to exhibitions of work from schools.