Ever since the beginning of lockdown, or at least since March 31st. when the final text was due, I have been preoccupied by completing my book about art museums, a good preoccupation since it involved detailed picture research, which is now so easy thanks to Google Images, and also liaison with Harry Pearce at Pentagram, which was a pleasure seeing the initial layouts, the design being gradually being tightened, the choice of typeface (it’s Futura) and the amount of care and thought which went into the cover. Now, I have just seen the page of Thames & Hudson’s Spring catalogue and the whole process feels real again. It shows the cover – Frank Lloyd Wright with the model of the Guggenheim and James Turrell in the 21st Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa – and the layout of the pages devoted to MONA in Hobart, the West Bund Museum in Shanghai and the Louvre Abu Dhabi: enough to whet the appetite, I hope.

Today’s post in Spitalfields Life of photographs of East London by Tony Armstrong-Jones suggest that he was a ‘jobbing’ photographer before he met Princess Margaret. On the contrary, I think they show what an interesting and creative photographer he was when he was living in Rotherhithe and riding on his motorbike round East London, exploring aspects of society which were not at all routine for someone making his living as a society photographer.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/11/10/tony-armstrong-jones-east-end/

We have just taken delivery of the first four volumes of writing and poetry, published by a new small press based in the depths of rural Cambridgeshire or, as the colophon suggests, Bedfordshire, a product of lockdown, designed by Dale Tomlinson and printed in Beccles – a very nice piece of small press design and book production.

https://hazelpress.co.uk/#:~:text=Hazel%20Press%20is%20an%20independent,change%2C%20feminism%20and%20the%20arts.

Newlands House, a gallery in Petworth, is doing a programme of high-profile exhibitions, including one at the moment on Ron Arad. I am doing a talk with Ron and Antony Gormley on Wednesday 18th. November:-

https://newlandshouse.gallery/events/webinar-ron-arad-in-conversation-with-sir-antony-gormley-and-sir-charles-saumarez-smith/

I find it fascinating how quickly the mood of the world order can change. A week ago we were still necessarily in thrall to an elderly, lying, dishonest, golfing President, worried by the possibility that he might be re-elected. How instantaneously his allies in the press and the world have deserted him, leaving him to give an unattended speech in the car park of a suburban garden centre, while suddenly there is a sense of hope and possibility in the world. It’s legitimate to talk about the perils of climate change, about the benefits of international collaboration, the problems ahead in Ireland if we pursue a hard Brexit, the need to work together. I am enjoying watching Johnson re-invent himself as an internationalist instead of a Trump worshipper.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/08/joe-biden-us-world-stage-britain-brexit-coronavirus-climate?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

What a relief ! Some have said that Biden didn’t fight a very powerful campaign, but it shows that someone honorable, decent and extremely experienced can defeat a noisy, arrogant, inflammatory, duplicitous, opinionated bigot, a good lesson for us all.

While we have all been glued to the news reports of the American election, Christopher Woodward, the director of the Garden Museum, has been swimming in the cold Atlantic from Newlyn to the Scilly Isles to raise money for the Garden Museum. He has just sent a clip of what it’s like out in the Atlantic:-

In a short intermission from never-ending Zoom meetings, I walked out into the back yard and witnessed this unusual and beautiful cloud formation, which seemed suitably expressive of the uncertainty of the world:-

A little while ago, we went round the British Museum and were impressed by the work which had been done during the first lockdown to address the battleground of provenance, with new labelling and some new displays, including taking the bust of Hans Sloane off its pedestal and putting it in a prominent cabinet, surrounded by information about his tacit complicity in slavery. Far from being shocked by this, as some critics have been, I thought it was an entirely sensible, and probably long overdue, acknowledgment of the deep public interest in how, when and where historic artefacts and antiquities were acquired:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2020/opening-up-the-british-museum/

As we approach a second lockdown, I realise that an increasing amount of our life and intellectual stimulus is migrating back online, not necessarily unpleasantly, because tonight we were able to watch Sue Stuart-Smith talking to Edmund de Waal about her book, The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature which is an appropriate topic for lockdown: the therapeutic characteristics of gardens, their sense of psychological enclosure, which she is able to convey very effectively as a highly empathetic psychiatrist and psychotherapist.