Tate Gallery badge

This month’s badge is very rare. In fact, I’m not sure if anyone else owns this badge except me. It’s the badge staff at that the Tate gallery staff wore a couple of decades ago.

I became a Tate employee twenty five years ago in Feb 1996. I was taken on as they were desperate for staff to work in the book shop during the very popular exhibition of Paul Cézanne. I was really lucky to work alongside a great team of people and have many happy memories of that time. I believe the show ran from 8th Feb till the 28th of April. According to the Artist Newspaper the number of catalogues sold was 23,000 in paperback (priced at £28 each) and 2,000 in hardback (costing £50 each), with the Tate’s Interpreting Cézanne illustrated booklet selling 36,000 copies at £7.95 each.

Cézanne’s painting, The Card Players is worth 150 Million pounds — I don’t dislike it but I never quite understood why this painting of two men playing gin rummy was the one so many visitors said they loved the most and were so desperate to own a representation of.

More than 400,000 Cézanne fans managed to buy a ticket and the amount of Tate Members (then called ‘Friends of the Tate’) doubled, but many were turned away or put off by how crowded it got. Towards the end of the run I remember seeing a queue of art lovers that went from the front of the Tate all the way to Pimlico tube station.

Many famous people came to see the show such as; John Cleese, Spike Milligan, Joan Rivers etc. Aside from the post card of The Card Players, the item a lot of people went wild about was the complementary Cézanne plastic bag. I remember Stephanie Beacham (a.k.a. Sable Colby from Dynasty) really pleading with me to give her a second one.

There have been other shows at the Tate that made more money but no other artist seemed to create the same amount of mania — people travelled to the Tate from miles away and there were sometimes tears when they discovered the mini print they wanted was out of stock. All four Tate Galleries are currently closed because of Lockdown but I hear Tate Online is doing a roaring trade. I look forward to the gallery doors reopening and the next 25 years of my employment there.

Harry Pye