Funny thing. I had never noticed that there was quite a fine bust of Edward VII on the Mile End Road, not far from the statue of William Booth, but much less rhetorical. It was apparently ‘Erected by a few freemasons’ by a local firm, Harris and Sons of the Mile End Road. I hope it isn’t on the list of statues to be torn down, although he was certainly an Imperialist:-

I had an unexpectedly long chat with Robert Elms this morning about museums (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p098ppml) (I was on at about 10.35), starting with our joint experience of Tate Modern, which was so important in transforming people’s attitudes not just to museums, but to contemporary art more generally. We talked about the Museum of Modern Art, so incredibly important in the way it was about the modern and contemporary, originally more about exhibitions than establishing a collection, particularly when one remembers that it was started in 1929, only opening its new building on 53rd. Street ten years later. He was sceptical about the Guggenheim in Bilbao, as some people are, but it has certainly been extraordinarily successful in attracting visitors, not just to the museum, but to Bilbao more generally, and it has also always had an adventurous programme of exhibitions. Then, we talked about some of the museums I maybe should have included. I did think of including Kettle’s Yard and, in retrospect, maybe should have done: so important for its domestic setting and so influential in providing an alternative model for the display of art to the Fitzwilliam. And I now feel badly not having included Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which must have been very pioneering in the way that it showed art in the landscape. Maybe I can do a second edition.

I know you will all be getting absolutely sick of the number of posts I have been doing about my book, but publication day only comes once in a blue moon and I have now spotted that Pentagram have done a very nice piece on their website about its design (https://www.pentagram.com/work/the-art-museum-in-modern-times/story).

As it says, I have worked with Harry Pearce both at the Royal Academy and in the design of the book (now, sadly, out of print) which I did, also for Thames and Hudson, on East London. Following this, he was recruited to do the redesign of Thames and Hudson’s typographic identity, a job of exceptional significance given Thames and Hudson’s long-established involvement in issues of book and graphic design. I felt that the design of the book strangely benefitted from lockdown because of the amount of time he and his assistant designer, Johannes Grimond, were able to devote to its look and layout, tweaking the relationship of image to text and the overall visual layout jointly with Johanna Neurath, the Director of Design at Thames and Hudson, in a way which immeasurably enhances it and gives it a very distinctive visual character.

I did not know the sans-serif typeface they used, as I probably should have done – Paul Renner’s Futura. Renner was a member of the Deutsche Werkbund, published books on typography in the early 1920s and designed Futura in 1927. Since the first museum I cover is MoMA, which itself has had such an identifiable modernist typographic tradition, there is a subtle – or perhaps not so subtle – homage in the look and feel of the book to the legacy of Alfred Barr.

My thoughts on museums and how I got interested in their architecture are now live on the Thames and Hudson website, together with some of the very beautiful images used in the book (actually, they look even better online than in the book):-

https://thamesandhudson.com/news/fun-palace-or-public-monument-the-evolving-role-of-the-modern-art-museum/

A touching and thoughtful review of my book has just appeared unexpectedly on my screen on the official day of its publication. I am particularly pleased that Daniel Baksi commends the choice of images, which gave me the utmost pleasure – picture of architects, donors and museum directors, which are very easy to find online, if hell for my poor picture researcher to have had to negotiate; and the quality of the book’s typographically luscious design by Pentagram. As he rightly says, there are plenty of other people who can do the dirty work of deconstruction.

https://theartsdesk.com/books/charles-saumarez-smith-art-museum-modern-times-review-%E2%80%93%C2%A0-story-modern-architecture

The medlar tree in the front garden is in leaf. Less than two weeks ago I took a photograph out of the dining room window:-

This is how it looks this morning:-

One of my greatest pleasures in the last few weeks was a long conversation with Romas Viesulas, based in Lisbon, both about my museum book, but more about the books which influenced me while writing it and a couple of books which were being written more or less in parallel.

I feel badly about recommending the book by Michael Govan because it is not easily obtainable, but very revealing of the ideas of the group influenced by Tom Krens at Williams College who have done so much to change the priorities of the museum – from an encyclopedia to a poem, as Govan describes it.

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/the-art-museum-charles-saumarez-smith/

The first review is always a bit nerve-wracking because you never quite know how people will respond and react to things which one has laboured over and then seem obvious when they are in print. So, I was very reassured by my first proper review in Studio International, which is very detailed and very fair. I know that it is all a bit compressed and should really have been six books, but, as she rightly points out, it was a way of providing an overall survey of changes in museums without getting too bogged down in the detail.

https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/the-art-museum-in-modern-times-charles-saumarez-smith-book-review-thames-hudson

This is a very good survey of how the art world has fared round the world. It is hard to escape the feeling that we have done badly, both in terms of very high numbers of deaths and massacring culture, however well we may have done in developing a vaccine (by the way, I remember being told that we would develop a vaccine within a year in January 2020, so it is not all due to the brilliance of Rishi Sunak).

What will be really odd is the period between April 12th. and May 17th. when Fortnum’s and Hatchard’s are open, but the Royal Academy remains closed and the National Gallery and British Museum too. I suppose it is not long to wait, but indicative of the government’s ranking of culture below beauty parlours.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/analysis/covid-19-in-the-art-world-a-year-on

I went into the west end today – the first time for three or four months. I felt unexpectedly apprehensive, not looking forward at all to the resumption of minimal human contact, sitting at a distance from people in the tube, all masked up, and walking the streets with almost no-one there. So many familiar shops now closed. Bond Street: empty. Piccadilly: empty. The gates of the Royal Academy firmly shut. I found it incredibly melancholy, walking the streets where I lived and worked, but with no possibility of meeting anyone from a former life. It’s hard to imagine it starting up again.