I did my first online interview yesterday in connection with my book. I found it an odd and interesting experience because I was asked not so much about contemporary art museums and how they display art, which is the subject of my book, but about history museums, including the National Portrait Gallery, and how they represent the past, based round the increasingly common view that we can in some way punish people retrospectively for the views that they held, many of which were, in the light of current attitudes, clearly unacceptable and sometimes abhorrent. It’s an issue which is caught up in the current culture wars which are polarised in a way which is incredibly unhelpful. It will be interesting to see what stance the new Mayor’s diversity commission takes and I was pleased to see that it was not about taking statues down, but putting them up, which seems to me to be the right approach, diversifying attitudes to commemoration, rather than trying to abolish attitudes to commemoration in the past.

It’s a brave moment to be launching a new Festival, but the attached, based in Castle Hedingham on the borders of Essex and Suffolk, looks interesting and unpredictable in a good way – music and poetry and performance. Hard to imagine re-establishing the sense of shared community involved in a Festival after these lonely months on Zoom, but something to look forward to.

https://mailchi.mp/24de81d462cc/launching-during-lockdown-the-ea-festival-4755212?e=00bf64b2e6

This is taking place close to the day of publication:-

https://www.artscapades.org/tickets/saumarez-marlow

On the off chance, you want to hear me talk about my forthcoming book, by which time I will (or may) have had some reviews, you can book now.

Everyone wants me to know about the future of museums. I wish I did. It’s so hard to predict what will happen post-Coronavirus. This morning, I was told that we would all be so addicted to Virtual Reality that we wouldn’t have to bother traipsing round the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa in a heaving crowd. But so far, the more art is available online, the greater the interest in its reality – to look, to experience the real thing in all its uncomfortable three-dimensionality, and I’m not yet persuaded that this will die away. Images in reproduction can never give the same frisson, nor can I be persuaded that the idea of authenticity is some make-belief delusion. It’s like saying people will no longer want to shake hands or hug. Hasn’t lockdown taught us that people don’t want to experience the world from their armchair ?

https://courtauld.ac.uk/event/the-art-museum-in-modern-times

I went out into the snow to see what it looked like – actually, not very attractive as it has mostly already turned to slush – and partly because I wanted to see what it looked like in photographs, as everyone else seems to be able to photograph the snow falling. I can’t, but tried:-

I have been reading the collected essays of Janet Abrams which have been published by Princeton University Press under the title Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bauhaus. They belong to an era which now seems as remote as the Pyramids: the medium being the large-format Blueprint with its its sense of optimism and confidence in the power of design, graphic as well as architectural; when the Independent was first launched, breaking the mould of journalism; the era of Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier; the early days of postmodern theory; when Andrée Putman was the epitome of fashionability and Frank Gehry was beginning to be known. I’m not sure how well it has all aged, but it is no doubt time for it to be excavated.

The consolation of the bright February sun:-

I have spent the day looking out of the window as the sleet has turned into snow:-

You may all be wondering what on earth has happened about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, as indeed am I. The truth is that it has all gone quiet since the Planning Inquiry finished at the end of October, first of all, while the Planning Inspector writes his report, which is apparently now done, and now while Robert Jenrick ponders his recommendation, which we know he is not obliged to accept. So, we are twiddling our thumbs while we await the verdict, hoping against hope that he comes to the right conclusion and forbids Raycliff to convert it into a now totally redundant posh hotel with only vestiges of its former use. The bells of the world will then ring out in celebration.