PAUL MOORHOUSE.

Paul Moorhouse, a Tate curator for fifteen years, has the enviable role of collections-department specialist in British contemporary art. Currently he is responsible for about ten of the specially themed exhibitions to launch Tate Modern. "Installing these thematic displays is the climax of everything we have worked for," he says. "We began with a blank canvas. Now for the results."

Comprising loans as well as works from Tate Collections, the inaugural displays are organized according to four categories: "Landscape, Matter, Environment" (which addresses the aesthetic migration from spatial depiction to environment creation); "Nude, Action, Body"; "History, Memory, Society"; and "Still Life, Object, Real Life." Moorhouse is proudest of his "Still Life" installations. "I had the idea of looking at the way illusion was replaced by the real thing," he explains. "Artists began the twentieth century with traditional paintings of objects but soon abandoned that, starting to incorporate or utilize a real object. I have grouped pairs of artists, sometimes in what might be seen as a provocative way--though I hope not gratuitously." Judd is juxtaposed with Ozenfant; Picasso with Andre; and Cezanne with LeWitt, because of their shared emphasis on harmony and order. A 1909-10 Braque painting of a drinking glass is paired with Michael Craig-Martin's Oak Tree, 1973; Morandi's 1946 Still Life sits next to Kosuth's 1965 Clock; and Richard Hamilton's 1995 computer--a thinking object if ever there was one--is contrasted with Duchamp's 1911 painting of an old coffee-mill.

Moorhouse has published almost two dozen books, monographs, and catalogues, whose subjects range from Leon Kossoff to John Hoyland. After Bankside's opening extravaganza, he will begin work on a Michael Andrews retrospective for Millbank and a Bacon retrospective at Gemeentemuseum, the Hague, both scheduled for 2001. The Tate's busy people obviously relish their mammoth task, the fruits of which we can all enjoy from May 12.