I have been involved in a discussion on twitter as to whether or not Historic England is justified in supporting the transformation of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a boutique hotel. The argument is that the use of buildings has, and does, change over time. Why not just accept that the bell foundry was past its sell-by date and that it’s better now to adapt it for a smart new swimming pool and cappuccinos ?

The problem is that the Bell Foundry was a remarkable and wonderful survival. It was preserved in the 1970s when the GLC recognised its significance to historic archaeology. If it was important in the 1970s, how much more remarkable is it – or was it – that it had survived until 2017 in full working order, still functioning as a bell foundry with all its working practices and equipment. If it’s not the mandate of Historic England to protect it, why not ? They fought to protect Middleport Pottery. They should be fighting to protect the Bell Foundry, too.

I could do no more than taste the Antony Gormley exhibition at its opening tonight, leaving it to a later date to explore more conscientiously. But I saw enough to recognise how adventurous it is, and how well it uses the wonderfully grand spaces of Sydney Smirke’s Victorian galleries.

The upper ceiling space of Gallery 3 is full up with a form of elaborate steel wire mesh:-

Gallery 6 is brilliantly dramatic with figures hanging off the walls and from the ceiling:-

The Lecture Room, the last in the sequence, has been turned – I don’t know how – into a shallow pool which surreally reflects the grandiosity of the mid-Victorian gilt ornament and door case:-

I nipped off at lunch-time to see the work of the artists shown by The Cold Press, a gallery more normally in Holt in Norfolk, who are exhibiting in an empty house in Elder Street – it used to be Timothy Everest’s – during the London Design Festival:-

I went to the announcement of this year’s winners of the Praemium Imperiale, established in 1989 as the arts equivalent to the Nobel Prizes, although it attracts less publicity. William Kentridge was awarded the Painting Prize (it is more about drawing); Mona Hatoum, the prize for sculpture; Tod Williams and Billie Tsien the prize for architecture – they were responsible for the new Barnes Foundation building in Philadelphia and the Asia Society building in Hong Kong; Anne-Sophie Mutter, the violinist, for music;  and Bandõ Tamasaburõ, a Kabuki actor, the prize for theatre. A good statement of the importance of high culture in the world.

Back to Helmut Ruhemann. He was the German expert in the science of conservation, who moved from the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin to set up in private practice in London in 1933 and was employed during the second world war to work on the pictures of the National Gallery whilst they were in store. There was a report over the weekend that after the war he was responsible for the invitation to Professor Kurt Wehlte to come and teach at the Courtauld Institute in spite of the fact that Wehlte had worked during the war for the Ahnenerbe under the SS. At least as interesting is the fact that Ruhemann had originally trained as a painter at the Académie Julian under Maurice Denis. Denis believed that ‘a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order’. Roger Fry was a pupil at the Académie Julian as well.

I was sitting in the local Italian restaurant (they serve half-price pizzas on Monday) reading an article about Helmut Ruhemann, when a man came in with a delivery slip, looking as if he wanted to speak to the proprietor. I explained that I wasn’t the proprietor and he left. As the door closed, I realised that my mobile phone was gone. I said to a waiter that I thought that the man might have taken my mobile phone, so we both went out into the street and asked him. He had, and handed it back as if he was doing me a favour. He was.

I have been reflecting on the exhibition at Charleston about the Omega Workshops. The traditional view of the Omega Workshops is that it was somewhat amateurish – a group of well-to-do artists experimenting with the decorative arts and interior design in a way that was commercially unsuccessful. But what comes across is that it was a big and ambitious enterprise, occupying Roger Fry in the middle phase of his life and offering a bespoke service across the full range of household goods – carpets, screens, chairs, ceramics. The exhibition makes one adjust one’s view not just of the Omega Workshops, but of the role of Fry in making it happen, even if it ended, as it did, in commercial failure.

I was asked to speak to a large group of Chinese museum professionals on the subject of ‘How to be Creative and Successful Internationally’. I wish I knew. I ended up talking about the virtues of irrationality. In retrospect, I don’t think that success is made possible by financial analysis, by systems, but much more by intuition and belief. But then it was politely pointed out, I am a dinosaur. The other thing in which I realise I am a dinosaur is that I think that success in an organisation – any organisation – is dependent on having and developing good relations with staff. When I started at the NPG, someone said, ‘make sure they hate you’. I have never thought that this is sensible. So, I am indeed, and proud to be, a dinosaur.

The concert itself was highly atmospheric. Janáček’s String Quartet no.2, ‘Intimate Letters’, written right at the end of his life when he had fallen tragically in love with Kamila Stösslová, who singing voice he had heard in the café of a Moravian bar. Movements from the quartet were interspersed with readings by Joely Richardson from the 700 letters he wrote her. Then a piano quintet by Erich Korngold a Moravian, who migrated to Hollywood and wrote the sound track for The Adventures of Robin Hood, with readings from Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka and Stefan Zweig: all the spiritual and psychological torment of writers in central Europe in the early part of the last century made Bloomsbury seem much less tortured.

We arrived at Charleston just in time to catch its new exhibition on the Omega Workshops, set up in 1913 after Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibition to provide work for artists.

Duncan Grant, c.1910:-

Invitation card to an exhibition:-

An illustration to Roger Fry’s ‘The Artist as Decorator’:-

The advert for their pottery:-

A (beautiful) teacup designed by Roger Fry, made at Carter, Stabler & Adams:-

A pair of cupboard doors from Charleston after Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell moved their in 1916:-

Book covers in block printed paper:-

It closed in 1919.