The first work of art to appear in the new brick arched vaults which now lead the visitor from the Cast Corridor of the Royal Academy Schools through to the front entrance hall of Burlington House was the crucified figure of an elderly Irish Chelsea pensioner called James Legg. It first appeared wrapped in a plastic bag:-

The work was produced as a result of an argument between Benjamin West, the then President of the Royal Academy, Thomas Banks, the sculptor, and Richard Cosway, the miniature painter as to what a crucified figure looked like in its anatomy. They commissioned Joseph Constantine Carpue, a surgeon, to acquire a corpse, so they could find out. He acquired the corpse of Legg who was hanged on 2 November 1802, the body was cast by Thomas Banks shortly thereafter, and has been used to teach students in the RA Schools ever since:-

The Farnese Hercules looks suitably magnificent installed in the large niche downstairs in the RA’s vaults:-

It is a cast of one of the best known classical antiquities, which is said to have been found in the Baths of Caracalla in 1546, six years after its head had been found in a well in Trastevere.   By 1556 it was installed in the first courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese, where it remained until 1787 when it was restored by Carlo Albacini and transferred to the Museo degli Studi in Naples.   This cast was acquired for the Entrance Hall in Somerset House in 1790 when Council agreed ‘that the President be empowered to make an Agreement for the Cast of the Farnese Hercules – the whole Expence to the placing of it in the Royal Academy not exceeding seventy five guineas’.   In the event the cost of transport alone, arranged by Joseph Bonomi, was £108.   He greeted visitors at the foot of the precipitous staircase in Somerset House until transferred to the Academy’s entrance hall in 1837.

Some scenes from the press launch.

Sir David Chipperfield:-

Our Artistic Director putting the finishing touches on the Weston Bridge:-

The Lovelace Courtyard:-

And the plinth at the front finally cleared of builders’ debris:-

Today is the day when the press come to see and examine our new building.   There have already been good write-ups by Rowan Moore in yesterday’s Observer (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/may/13/royal-academy-london-new-extension-david-chipperfield) and this morning’s Guardian by Olly Wainwright (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/may/13/royal-academy-of-arts-expansion-reveals-hidden-life-art-schools).   Meanwhile, the sun is shining and there’s a huge banner in the Courtyard:-

In preparation for Tacita Dean’s exhibition which opens later this week in our new Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries, I have started reading her Selected Writing which the RA has published to accompany the exhibition.   I very strongly recommend it for the poetry of its evocative descriptions, its explanation for her obsession with clouds and four-leaf clovers, her description of the formation of collections, of the Gellért Baths in Budapest and the beach at Dungeness, written in the intensely allusive, memory-laden style – idiosyncratic and observational – of W.G. Sebald, but many of the pieces published before Sebald was (she first read Rings of Saturn in Fiji in September 1999 after her style was formed).

I was talking about the pros and cons of Postmodernism this morning, prompted by Edwin Heathcote’s long article about it in this weekend’s FT, when I spotted a characteristic piece of docklands pomo, which is a bust of the engineer, John Rennie, in a prominent position on Spirit Quay, itself a monument to that era of docklands development.   It’s by a sculptor called John Ravera.   Very hard to photograph against the light:-

Since publishing my book on East London (bizarrely and belatedly reviewed in this month’s World of Interiors), I have been much less adventurous in my excursions.   But today in walking up the Regent’s Canal, I was pleased to spot on a hundred yard stretch of the Regent’s Canal a multi-coloured version of the Venus de Medici:-

A new museum which opens this afternoon, described as an ‘archive of dreams’:-

The Widgeon Theatreboat which has a jazz evening next Sunday evening:-

Not to mention the copy of the Alcibiades Dog which guards the entrance to Victoria Park presiding over an ice cream van:-

In my tentative ventures on to Twitter, I have had barely any response to any of my tweets apart for one yesterday about Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.   I have known that for many years they have been candidates for the RIBA Gold Medal, because I have been asked to write in their support, but have been told (very forcefully) that there is absolutely no way that this will ever be allowed to happen.   Why the vehemence ?   I suppose it is partly that Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture was one of the early death knells of doctrinaire modernism, because of its admiration for references to history and particularly mannerism (the qualities of complexity in its title).   And Learning from Las Vegas was in its own way equally, if not more significant in its timing and recognition that architecture has a semiotics.   But these ideological battles are now long ago.   Surely it is time to bury the hatchet and recognise their significance in architectural thought, independent of the politics surrounding the competition for, and design of, the Sainsbury Wing.

I have just heard on the radio the news of the death of Tessa Jowell, not especially surprising owing to her cancer, but very sad nonetheless. I don’t always admire politicians, but I did her, for a special quality of warmth, friendliness and empathy which is rare is anyone, let alone a politician.

As I set off early in the morning to be interviewed with Tacita Dean on the Today programne (went out live at 8.50 this morning), I was struck by the quality of the shadows on the wall under the shepherds’ hats from Dagestan:-