A review of Gauguin and the Impressionists at the Royal Academy. Wonderful exhibition, wonderfully quiet galleries to take your time and explore. Covid Diaries No More! Well, Sort Of… This is my first blog post in a long (and I mean long) time which isn’t a Covid Diaries entry. Mainly because I already wrote about […]
Review of the Royal Academy exhibition Picasso and Paper. In which I enjoy seeing Picasso’s immense creativity, but could have done without being herded from room to room. Navigating the Staggered Reopening of London’s Museums The thing about museums and galleries reopening is that it’s kind of all happening at once. They are staggering the […]
I didn’t like this exhibition. There, I’ve said it. And I had been looking forward to it, too, after reading five star reviews in various publications. There are some showstopping paintings, if you’re into old masters, a few recognisable works, and a lot of loans from big hitting collections like the Louvre and the Prado, […]
I intend to go back to this exhibition again before it closes. Not because I loved it so much I just have to (this remains to be seen) but because the main drawbacks I found with this exhibition were organisational and design constraints: too many people, wall texts too hard to read and not enough […]
This exhibition, like many of the artworks in it, bears up well under the weight of history. For Revolution is firmly rooted in the historic context of the period 1917-1932 in Russia – a time of upheavals, civil war, dictators and hopes born and cruelly dashed. Despite this, it manages to educate, illuminate and engage, […]
It would seem that Moroni has spent more time in fashion in the UK than elsewhere, making London perhaps the perfect setting for a small and well-curated exhibition that aims to increase the public’s regard for his work once more. Some early acquisitions by the National Gallery mean that perhaps his most famous work, known […]
Forgive my relative ignorance, but I knew very little about the work of Anselm Kiefer before coming along to this exhibition at the Royal Academy. I had seen a few of his mixed media works in various settings, but did not come in with pre-conceived notions of the weight of history or bombastic symbolism in […]
A relatively simple display of artistic commissions, Raise the Roof: Building for Change enables RIBA to confront some of the more problematic aspects of its history as manifested in the decoration of its London headquarters. RIBA and Colonialism/Imperialism Architecture isn’t neutral. Let’s start there. Buildings serve a functional purpose. They also convey information to us. […]
Two small, free exhibitions at the National Gallery explore artists in depth. Which will your favourite be between Pesellino and his sumptuous colours and Liotard’s portraits observed in soft pastels? The National Gallery’s Latest in Mini-Exhibitions It’s been a while since I’ve been to see the National Gallery‘s small exhibitions. As well as their bigger, […]
A response to the Royal Academy retrospective of Marina Abramović’s work. How does something as ephemeral as performance art transform into a museum exhibit? Content warning: references to violence and sexual acts. Marina Abramović at the Royal Academy In a burst of post-Christmas activity I managed to squeeze in a visit to Marina Abramović, a […]
