ARRANGEMENT AND PLANNING The method of housing and arranging picture collections has changed with changes in the purpose they are intended to serve. Broadly, until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, pictures were treated mainly as material for the decoration of walls: and the ideal picture gallery was regarded as a palatial building, containing a series of vast rooms on whose walls pictures were hung in tiers, according to size, shape and colour. This theory of arrangement was pushed to its extreme point, when in 172o-28 the Imperial collections were brought together in the Palace at Vienna, and the pictures were ruthlessly cut down, or added to, to fit the walls. Generally, however, its limitations were admitted by the provision of a series of cabinets for showing smaller pictures, though in each cabinet the pictures might be close packed in several rows. Another modification sometimes adopted (as in the Salon Carre of the Louvre, and the Tribuna of the Uffizi) was the hanging in one room, in comparative isola tion, of a few selected pictures. In private galleries, the obvious drawback of such methods could to some extent be overcome by the use of ladders, or temporary removal of a picture from the wall; in public galleries such devices were impracticable. The first breach with established custom was largely due to the grow ing size of collections and took the form of establishing separate collections of modern pictures, and in most cases placing them in separate galleries. Thus came into existence the National Gallery of British Art (generally known as the Tate Gallery from its founder Sir Henry Tate) in London, the Luxembourg in Paris, the Gallery of Modern Art in Madrid, the Neue Pinacothek at Munich and the National Gallery at Berlin. As a rule, these modern galleries were intended for the work of native artists; but most of them now represent painters of all countries. For example, the Tate Gallery, which at one time contained only British work, now includes a large Modern Foreign section. Of
specialization in other ways, examples are the National Portrait Galleries in London and in Edinburgh, containing portraits of men and women who figure in the history of the countries con cerned. In some cases special galleries have been provided for sculpture; though more frequently this forms a section of a museum or art gallery and occasionally (as in the case of Renais sance Italian sculpture at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum) is exhibited with pictures of the same period and country. Special ization of galleries, however, did not in itself modify methods of arrangement. These have been altered partly by an increasing attention to the claims of students and of historical study; partly by growth of the feeling (largely due to influences from the Far East) that the individual picture was of greater importance than the decorative ensemble. As a result, the director of a modern gallery tries to satisfy four main requirements. (I) Decorative arrangement of the gallery, both on a large scale and in detail. (2) Grouping of pictures according to their country of origin, with subdivisions according to local schools, or according to artists; these groups and subdivisions being arranged within the gallery in chronological order. (3) Chronological arrangement of pictures within each group. (4) Such placing of each picture as will best facilitate its study and appreciation. These requirements are not always easily reconcilable. In particular, arrangement of a group of pictures to secure decorative balance of size and colour, may easily conflict with chronological order, or put a picture into a place where i cannot be well seen. On the other hand, systematic arrangement into schools and periods may prevent a decorative ensemble on a large scale; though often it favours decorative harmony in smaller groups and the appreciation of individual pic tures, since works of the same school and period usually are sim ilar in colour and tone, and even tend to conform to set sizes.