As it was sunny (briefly), we decided to go to the new Kettle’s Yard for Mothering Sunday.

This is as it was in the 1950s:-

I first went in October 1972, nearly my first weekend in Cambridge, when Jim Ede was still in residence, but only just before moving up to Edinburgh and was available to talk about the precise placement of objects, the combination of art and artfully placed stones – my first introduction to modernism:-

I had forgotten how good Leslie Martin and David Owers’s 1970 addition is with its brick floors and changing levels and use of side lighting:-

Jamie Fobert has now added a sensitive and intelligent couple of contemporary gallery spaces on the ground floor behind the retained façade of the Victorian cottages on Castle Hill, which, with their ample use of polished concrete and steel staircase, make the house into more of an art space:-

Before someone points out that my pedantry about Winckelmann is flawed (possibly Mary Beard), I have realised that Winckelmann first refers to the Apollo Belvedere in his Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst which was published in 1755 before he had even arrived in Rome (only 55 copies were printed) and was translated by Henry Fuseli ten years later, in 1765, as Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks. It was here that Winckelmann first referred to his admiration for ‘noble simplicity and calm grandeur’, demonstrated most obviously not so much in the Apollo as the Laocoon. Then, he published an essay specifically on the Apollo Belvedere in 1759, also translated by Fuseli in 1768. So Robert Adam may have been influenced by him more than I realised (although he did not apparently meet him, or even refer to him, when he was in Rome).

Having now seen the second programme of Civilisations, we have been discussing over breakfast how far Mary Beard’s view is true that it was Winckelmann who was responsible for the idealisation of Greek sculpture, the glorification of the Apollo Belvedere, its enshrinement in Robert Adam’s display at Syon House, and Kenneth Clark’s snooty passing reference to it in one of his programmes as representing ‘a higher state of civilisation’. I know that Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums is regarded as key to any understanding and interpetation of the ideology of neoclassicism. But it was not published till 1764 and translated into French in 1768 (Beard refers to the French translation in Syon Library). The conversion of Syon and creation of its brilliant neoclassical interiors took place during the 1760s, so Winckelmann and Robert Adam were both similarly influenced by the archaeological interests and dsicoveries in Rome during the 1750s. What I’m not sure was adequately conveyed was the extent to which Winckelmann was responsible for a properly historical understanding of classical sculpture and not just a homoerotic idealisation of it.

The necessity of being vaccinated against  yellow fever (but I was told that it was nearly as dangerous to be vaccinated as to catch it) led me to Borough Market for the first time for a while.   I had forgotten how much I like its odd mixture of cathedral, fruit and vegetables;  the ironwork of the railway lines overhead;  and the ability to buy cheese and ceps:-

I’m pleased to discover that the Mound – that mysterious, small, round, landscaped tump in the backyard of Marlborough, which was pretty disregarded by the school, apart from the eighteenth-century grotto which was a convenient place for smoking – has been revealed to be not Merlin’s grave or a Norman motte, but an authentic archaeological remain, as old as Silbury Hill:-

I was asked to give a talk at my old school – somewhere in Wiltshire, as we used to say. The topic, by request, was my career, a rather boring subject, I decided, by the end of the talk. But the questions were good. What did I think about the return of the Elgin marbles ? What did I think about modern art ? What did I think about museum charges ? What did I think about the toppling of statues in the southern States ? What did I think about the school’s sale of its Gainsborough ? Is a copy a legitimate substitute for an original ? All the questions that I’ve got used to not being asked or, alternatively, not answering.

I’ve gone quiet on our building project of late because there is a blanket ban on all photographs pending the formal public opening on May 19th.   There is a vast amount of work going on ahead of the opening.   Indeed, it feels a bit like the pyramids must have done, pending the death of a pharaoh, with hundreds of workmen putting the finishing touches on the tasteful shade of pearl grey, slightly purple-ish paint.   Wonderful top-lit galleries at the back.   And the vaults.   Roll on May 19th.

Since my post on Civilisations has had exponentially more readers than anything I have written before, I am doing a follow-up post on the television original. I write as a deep admirer of Kenneth Clark, the quality of his writing and of his mind, his wide frame of cultural reference, including music and literature (he could quote Burns from memory) and his ability to communicate with a global audience about the qualities and characteristics of European art and culture. But his cultural attitudes and beliefs were formed at Winchester and Oxford in the early 1920s and then by working under Bernard Berenson in the late 1920s. His description of Civilisation was not merely Euro-centric, but omitted much of northern Europe, the whole of Spain, and Eastern Europe as well, not to mention India, China, Japan and America. He was mournful of his inability to relate to art after the second world war. So, it is surely wrong to be too nostalgic about his view of Civilisation, and right to celebrate a broader and more international view of Civilisations in the plural.

A week or so ago I was encouraged to write a letter to the Times commenting on an article which implied that the new, multi-part series on Civilisations was a sad letdown from the cultural authority and certainty expressed by Kenneth Clark in the original 1969 television series on Civilisation (in the singular).   I refused on the grounds that I could not possibly comment on something I hadn’t seen, other than the short clips shown at its launch.   I have now watched the first episode, Second Moment of Creation, which I thought was wholly admirable:  extraordinarily wide-ranging (I don’t think I have been to a single one of the places filmed), beautifully filmed and delivered with appropriately intelligent and avuncular authority by Simon Schama.   So, I disagree with the many people who have been disparaging about it.

In finding out about Henry McIhenny and his time as a curator of the Phildelphia Museum, I have also been finding out more about Fiske Kimball, its long-serving Director, who was appointed by McIhenny’s father, who apparently described him as a ‘Germanic boor’. McIlhenny half-jokingly claimed Kimball to have caused his father’s death.   But he wasn’t German, although married to one.   He was trained as an architect, helped establish the Institute of Fine Arts, and was appointed Director of the Philadelohia Museum in 1925, so was responsible for the installation of all those period rooms.  He wrote a good description of public attitudes to curators in 1935: 

To the unreflective outsider, one fears, museum work consists in guarding and perhaps dusting the objects.   On a little higher plane, the curator is thought of as a man with a long beard who sits in a littered office, occasionally peering through a lens at some old curio, ultimately rendering a verdict on its great age and fabulous value.   The galleries, once arranged, sink gradually into drab stagnation, in which the echoing footsteps of a rare, intruding visitor arouse the resentment of the somnolent guardian.   The museum official might be forgiven if, in a moment of weariness, he wished it were actually so….