I thought that I had pretty well had all the reviews I was likely to get for my book, when, lo and behold, one has appeared in the Claremont Review of Books by Brian T. Allen, a writer and former museum director (at the Addison Gallery of American Art) who writes about the museums I have covered, adding his own perspective. He loves the Menil Collection, as do I, and writes particularly interestingly about the Broad Museum and both the strengths and possible weaknesses of the forthcoming Los Angeles County Museum, which I touch on only lightly in my Conclusion. I particularly like his conclusion: ‘it has a to-the-point look that fits Charles Saumarez Smith’s style and his studied detachment’. Precisely !

By the way, if you are desperately looking for Christmas presents, as am I, the book is available at all good booksellers, especially John Sandoe, Heywood Hill and Hatchard’s.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/art-house/

I was tipped off that there was an exhibition of Street Photography by Simon Bonner who took the excellent photograph of me pedalling my way through lockdown (without a proper helmet):-

The exhibition is in the Beer Merchant’s Tap, a big beer hall in remotest Hackney Wick:-

Having written about the new Munch Museum in Oslo for the December issue of the Burlington Magazine, I was both interested and relieved to read Sue Prideaux’s commendation of it in Apollo (see below): interested because it it is good to be able to compare one’s response to that of someone who knows Munch’s work so well, has written his biography and, indeed, whose godmother, Henriette Olsen, sat to Munch for her portrait; and a bit relieved because I was worried that other critics were hostile to the building, whereas I, like Prideaux, was impressed by the great wealth of gallery space and the ways in which it is used to interpret Munch’s life.

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/munch-museum-opening-oslo/?s=09

It was a beautiful, clear November morning:-

I’ve always liked Aberffraw, a small village on the coast of Anglesey, which was the capital of the Kingdom of Gwynedd from 860 to 1170 and the seat of Llewellyn the Great, now just a quiet village Square with a pub, The Crown, which we used to frequent:-

The old Welsh Methodist chapel next to the pub has been turned into a holiday home:-

They were riding in the river below:-

We had been tipped off that it was possible to buy good seafood in the old port office at Port Penrhyn, the surviving and attractively ramshackle old port to the north of Penrhyn Castle, much of the port rebuilt in 1820 before the castle itself. You can indeed, but only from Friday to Sunday. It provides a pretty impressive array of fresh fish, as you can see from their blackboard:-

For those who might be interested, I appeared on Mariella Frostrup’s daily radio programme on Times radio at 1.45 today. You can listen again at 45 minutes from the beginning:-

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/show/20211118-4754/2021-11-18