We went to lunch at Arlington, Jeremy King’s new restaurant – actually, also his old restaurant, formerly the Caprice.  It could not have been nicer.  The thing which was striking is how well Eva Jiřičná’s luxurious, polished interiors have worn after more than forty years.  And Jeremy himself was there as we arrived, the best possible host as ever, making sure that everything is in immaculate order.  The only person who was missing was Tony Snowdon who always insisted on eating there, even though the photographs are by David Bailey.

A great treat.

I went on a tour of UCL Marshgate, the vast new building constructed on the opposite side of the river from Zaha Hadid’s Olympic swimming pool:-

It is designed to be open to use by the local community, although accessibility is not the first characteristic that came to mind.  Impressive, certainly.  It is education on an industrial scale.  5,000 students.  Cross-disciplinary.  No books (books have to be ordered from Bloomsbury).  The brief specified no lecture theatre as public lectures are dead, although this changed during construction.  It only opened in September, so it is only running in.  Beautiful in the abstract and only the first of a series of buildings for UCL at the south end of Olympic Park:-

It has taken me a long time to realise how surprisingly nice the Barbican is as a place to explore beyond its arts centre, full of unexpected views and gardens visible from its pedways:-

I spent the morning exploring the area round the old Museum of London, which is now scheduled for demolition if the City of London planning committee gives the Corporation of London permission to demolish the building, although this would seem to be contrary to its own recently issued planning advice to retain existing buildings where possible.

I don’t think I had appreciated how complex a site Powell & Moya were given for the Museum of London, some of it the space on top of a roundabout:-

It was required to occupy a narrow site south of the tudorbethan Ironmonger’s Company:-

What I had never experienced before is the strange charm of the lawn to its east, the Barber-Surgeon’s meadow, a small oasis in the heart of the city with a surviving fragment of an old Roman fort:-

Presumably much of this will disappear in the plans for its redevelopment, along with Bastion House, which the City authorities say is falling down:-

The last museum I planned to include in my survey of art museums since the Second World War (actually since the foundation of the Museum of Modern Art) was the new MOMA, as redesigned by Diller Scofidio + Renfrew, which re-opened in late 2019.  I planned to visit it in April 2020 and had made all the necessary arrangements, but then COVID came.  I’ve not been to New York since.

I was looking up comments on it – there are remarkably few that I have been able to find, apart from the usual bland puffs which appear when a new museum opens – when I came across by the purest accident a review of my book which I had forgotten.

I am putting it on to my blog as a way of thanking the author, but it comes with a request: what has been the response to the new version of MOMA ? 

https://connectwith.art/art/books/book-review-the-art-museum-in-modern-times/

I was very glad to have been able to hear the talk by Dan Pearson (landscape) and Mary Duggan (architect) on their joint plans for Lambeth Green next to the Garden Museum.  I was involved in the second stage of the architectural selection.  Two things struck me: how much the plans had evolved since the competition through discussion and collaboration, so that the scheme feels more organic and less purely architectural, a symbiosis of walls and planting and garden sheds/pavilions; the second was how large the space now seems between the church and the roundabout and how much will be achieved by a thoughtful intervention into an otherwise somewhat arid area of tower blocks, the road, and the fortified, medieval entrance gate of Lambeth Palace.

https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/talk-dan-pearson-mary-duggan-on-lambeth-green/

The current planning system, and particularly the protection of historic buildings, seems to be a shambles.

After a lengthy public debate as to whether or not it was sensible for Marks & Spencer to pull down their landmark building and replace it with an extremely indifferent office block, it went to a lengthy planning enquiry and Michael Gove as Secretary of State – very unusually – refused permission.  But now Marks & Spencer have got the High Court to overturn the Secretary of State’s decision.  What an incredible mess !  And what a waste of public money.

Does the Secretary of State not have proper legal advice ?

The real estate sector may breathe a sigh of relief.  But it reduces efforts to encourage re-use of buildings to rubble as M&S pour the most grotesque and ugly scorn on issues of public opinion and climate change.

https://www.dezeen.com/2024/03/01/marks-spencer-oxford-street-demolition/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Dezeen&utm_content=Daily%20Dezeen+CID_f48041dcea57c75e00c1ae99f324f7cd&utm_source=Dezeen%20Mail&utm_term=Marks%20%20Spencer%20wins%20rights%20to%20demolish%20Oxford%20Street%20flagship

A very brilliant and informative lecture by Thomas Marks about Elizabeth David and her (mostly postal) relationship with Lett Haines, Cedric Morris’s partner at Benton End.  It helped to humanise Benton End, now stripped of its contents, with so many photographs of the kitchen, including the cooker (very basic), the refrigerator, and detailed menus of what they ate.  It seemed surprisingly sybaritic for the 1950s, but then there was apparently a very good delicatessen in Dedham, as well as a good butcher in Hadleigh.  Maggi Hambling made the soup.

Slightly surprisingly, she left her library of cookery books to the Warburg Institute in 1992.  They are mostly on the fourth floor under Banqueting, apparently well thumbed and with her book plate inside.

I have only just spotted that the article I wrote a while back about the V&A Dundee has now appeared online.

I felt slightly badly that I had not visited when it first opened and rectified this in November.  In reading its press coverage on the way up, I was struck that few were enamoured of its design.  But I thought it worked well in its prominent position on the River Tay.  The galleries are quite small scale, but the exhibition space is big and impressive.

See attached:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/jam-jute-journalism-japanese-design/

I am pleased to have been sent the online obituary of Marc Pachter from the Washington Post and even more pleased to be able to read it.  I knew Marc had died – totally unexpectedly – in Bangkok where he often stayed.  He was a citizen of the world, with an apartment in New York, often in London where he celebrated his eightieth birthday, sometimes in Edinburgh and sometimes Sydney.  I always found him a good and helpful critic of books.  He read and helped me with my National Gallery book and very characteristically suggested that I should visit MONA in Tasmania for my book about museums.  He also helped organise the content of a workshop on museums in about 2001 held at J. Paul Getty’s villa north of Rome, an event made worthwhile by the eclectic range of speakers he and Charles Landry had assembled. 

I will miss our breakfasts in the Wolseley.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/02/22/marc-pachter-portrait-museum-dies/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzA4ODM3MjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzEwMjE1OTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MDg4MzcyMDAsImp0aSI6IjQ3NWIyNmZkLTZhNzktNDBkYi05YWExLTA3ZjI1NmE1YWFhOSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9vYml0dWFyaWVzLzIwMjQvMDIvMjIvbWFyYy1wYWNodGVyLXBvcnRyYWl0LW11c2V1bS1kaWVzLyJ9.Qyv5ljm4Y0Y9WZsHbzKPsimjTgKnlPdpvn4o4iFmurc