The more people who pass beneath its Corinthian portals the greater the need to be seen to

The more people who pass beneath its Corinthian portals, the greater the need to be seen to be successful. The more that success can be measured by numbers, the more likely that politicians will continue to channel money into institutions like the Tate. Yet the number of people who enjoy contemporary art, for whatever reason, has grown significantly.The Tate has, for better or worse, become part of the entertainment and leisure business. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who squeeze into the Tate Gallery each year, relatively few will have the opportunity or the inclination to see new works of art in exclusive, remote or foreign locations.

Not every artist can be, or wants to be, a Turner (still the lode star of the Tate) or a Picasso.Just as well, for Morris and Rainbird plan five exhibitions of new art a year, bringing to the Tate, and thus the public realm, new stars who will, in turn, bring the best of work normally shown in small, private galleries and art events (like the Venice Biennale or Documenta) into the public eye.This is surely a good thing. So, if Picasso were still alive and experimenting today, the curators of "Art Now", Frances Morris and Sean Rainbird, would find the old devil hard to keep at bay. Most artists find their voice early on and carry on singing variations of familiar airs for the rest of their lives. "Art Now" will feature the work of artists, young, middle- aged and even venerable, who are engaged in bringing something new to the art world. While it is possible to bring fresh life to old paintings, not just by cleaning them, but by placing them in new or unexpected contexts, this is often no more than a case of rearranging the deckchairs. Which is partly why the Tate - anxious to be much more than a precious, if popular, museum - today opens a gallery dedicated to all forms of contemporary art.

Only a few artists can possibly hope to retain the power to stop us in our seen-it-all tracks a century or two on. These processes are both literal - Yves Klein's pigments losing their sheen - and conceptual - who is shocked by Whistler in 1995? Again, there is nothing wrong with this. As contemporary art becomes historical, it is assessed by obfuscating academics and cocooned by jealous conservationists. Whole collections are, like exotic butterflies, pinned down and labelled by archivists. A part of the collective memory, the teeth of what was once savage art are drawn; its fires reduced to embers. It isn't a snapped Achilles tendon after all, it's a ruptured muscle. Relieved, I hop out with my new fashion accoutrement - a support stocking "Bad luck," mutters Jean - and she means it..

The Tate Gallery is not a museum, but it has acted like one for much of this century This is not a bad thing, simply a fact. "I just hope I've got at least a broken foot," she says, trying to look optimistic. Ironically, Jean fell over when she was on the way to her doctor to make an appointment. "Typical of me," she says, almost falling off her seat with raucous laughter.I finally get to see a doctor after three hours and 10 minutes. Once, after a car crash that had left her paralysed, she'd done a six-month stretch What's more, she enjoys hospitals.

"Slit wrists, I'll wager you."Jean, it transpires, is a veteran hospital-goer. Surveying the available patients, she begins a series of dark prognoses. "A miscarriage, I expect," she says, pointing to an agonised Indian lady with glee. Then, yanking her head to the right, she spots a young girl in her clubbing outfit.