Every so often Google’s search engine supplies me with reviews of my museums book which I have previously missed because they have appeared in obscure magazines or websites. Tonight, I was supplied with a review which I thought was amongst the more thoughtful responses to the book, saying, quite correctly, that it does not go far enough in reflecting on the current character and dilemmas of the museum. It’s true. I wrote the book to try and clarify in my own mind what was happening and the issues that museums faced; but I can’t, and didn’t try to, disguise that it was an insider’s account, helped, but also, in retrospect, perhaps a bit inhibited by that fact. Anyway, I like reading students’ examination and critique of it.

https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/journal/2021/8/23/art-museum-modern-imaginary

The entries for Hoxton in my East London book were a bit weak because for some reason I had never walked up Hoxton Street which is a bit like a parallel universe to the Kingsland Road.

An old timber merchant:-

An eighteenth-century house set back from the street:-

And the back of St. Columba, Kingsland Road:-

There was an event at Tate Britain to commemorate Alan Bowness, its Director from 1980 to 1988. As always at such events, one learns thing I didn’t know – particularly about his great knowledge and passionate expertise about contemporary music, documenting performances in his diary from the age of seventeen.

But what I particularly want to be able to record in case it isn’t published was Jeremy Dixon talking about Bowness’s role as an architectural patron. First at St. Ives in keeping Barbara Hepworth’s studio as a museum which opened in 1976. Then, sitting on the competition for an architect for the Clore Wing and the selection of Jim Stirling in 1979 (it was Jeremy Hutchinson as chairman of trustees who had apparently instigated the project). Tate of the North followed, with Stirling again as the architect – a very important project. And then Tate St. Ives with Evans + Shalev as its architect after they had designed the law courts in Truro. Jeremy and Fenella Dixon were employed to design the Tate’s coffee shop before they won the competition to redesign the Royal Opera House. And then Dixon.Jones designed the Henry Moore Institute next door to the Leeds City Art Gallery when Bowness was running the Henry Moore Foundation. Quite a track record as a patron and supporter of architecture, leave aside his influence as a teacher of modern and contemporary art, his innumerable pupils, and what was acquired by the Tate during his time as its Director.

I was interested to see the list of the best art museums selected by Art News which I missed when it appeared last month. It’s a version of what I was trying to do in my book The Art Museum in Modern Times: what museums give the best purely architectural experience ? And which work best for the art ? Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of overlap. The Pompidou, the Sainsbury Wing, the Yale Centre for British Art. They like the ones that are more purely architectural, including some which I did not know, like the Jan Schrem and Maria Manetti Schrem Museum of the University of California, David. My list of ones to visit grows longer.

https://www.artnews.com/list/art-news/artists/best-museum-buildings-1234615068/azerbaijan-carpet-museum/?s=09

The only thing I really miss about not working in the West End is no longer being able to have breakfast at the Wolseley: the sense of a strong community; the greeting at the front desk; the discreet hierarchy of the seating arrangements; and the way that Jeremy King would nearly invariably stop by, sensing intuitively exactly how long to engage one, or not, in conversation, always impeccably dressed, just off his scooter. I have always been his greatest admirer and am sad to read that he now has to lock horns with brutish financiers in order to maintain the impeccable calm and orderliness of his various establishments:-

https://www.ft.com/content/9850ece6-a3b2-40c4-9342-645d4a4378b9

I am often cautious about public campaigns, sceptical that people in authority pay much attention, whatever the requirement of local democracy. I certainly wasn’t aware of anyone in authority paying the remotest attention to the long-running and vigorous campaign to preserve the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, where the more the public campaigned, the more Tower Hamlets and Historic England dug in against the campaign, presuming they were right if everyone thought they were wrong.

So, it is with the utmost pleasure and some considerable surprise, that I read that Westminster City Council has reversed its position on gas lighting and are now planning to retain the historic gaslights which are such a feature and have been preserved so long through successive previous campaigns to get rid of them. Bravo ! Bravo not just to the campaigners, but also to the Council for changing its mind !

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10524139/Stay-execution-Westminsters-historic-gas-lamps-council-halts-replacement.html?s=09

I normally re-post the monthly articles I write for The Critic on my blog, but I missed the one I wrote for the February issue about Chelsea Barracks when it appeared online, so am now posting it belatedly.

As you will be aware, I have got interested in issues of urban planning and how relatively little public discussion there is about it, even though it affects us all deeply. As it happens, there was a vast controversy round the redevelopment of Chelsea Barracks, but there has been very little discussion of the quality of the eventual result, if any. Whatever one thinks of it – I can’t say that I am totally enamoured – it is one of the bigger chunks of new urban development apart from the new city in Vauxhall.

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/february-2022/urban-skirmish/

The review by Owen Hatherley of the new book about the Barbican reminds me that I feel that there has been surprisingly little publicity, let alone controversy, about the current competition to redevelop the Barbican.

What exactly is being planned ? It looks to me as if the City authorities are looking for an ‘imaginative’ scheme by a superstar international architect which is almost certain to change its current lowkey and very generous allocation of public space because they want – but don’t need – to get rid of the current requirement for public subsidy.

It is surely better to raise these concerns in advance of the public competition, due to be judged in April following the arrival of the new Chief Executive, rather than leaving it till when some monster new development is announced to great fanfare after the competition has been judged and it may be too late to preserve and protect the Barbican’s currently still intact original character.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/barbican-estate-golden-lane-modernist-architecture-post-war-london?s=09

Rowan Moore is a bit more negative about the Burrell Collection than I am inclined to be. I don’t really remember it as it was, but it seems that it had become pretty unloved, whereas its renovation has reinvigorated it, added new galleries and opened it up to the public, while remaining pretty faithful to its original character. If its revitalisation means it has lost some of the more idiosyncratic aspects of the original design, then I’m not persuaded we should mourn their loss.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/13/burrell-collection-glasgow-renovation-review-reopening-john-mcaslan-and-partners-john-meunier

Following my statement to the Planning Inquiry yesterday, I have been trying to figure out what it was that made possible the regeneration of the South Bank of the river in the 1990s and what it would need to enable an equivalent regeneration of the North Bank now. The answer seems to be, as so often, a fortunate combination of people, politics and accident. The decision to put Tate Modern into Giles Gilbert Scott’s power station was partly accident, after the trustees had looked at Billingsgate and other possible locations. The idea originally came from Gavin Stamp who was making a television documentary about the power station. But the idea was then seized upon by Fred Manson, who was the Director of Regeneration at Southwark, and by Nick Serota, who had a vision for the wider public and social responsibilities for Tate Modern.

So, the question is, who are their equivalents in the City Planning Department who could engineer a change in policy for the Custom House and its surrounding area ?

The answer is that there is a new Head of Planning in the City called Gwyn Richards, who previously worked in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea as a design and conservation officer.

There could surely be a better and more creative solution than the one currently proposed.