Just for the record, this is another Piet Oudolf garden, in its winter mode, all brown, with the pavilion by Smiljan Radic:-

We went to the opening of Catherine Goodman’s exhibition Eve at Hauser & Worth in Somerset last night. I took photographs rather randomly and now, the morning after, am unable to identify them, having failed to pick up a list of works and being somewhat distracted by the throng.

This is Eve:-

And this is Beekeeper, based on the wonderful film ‘The Spirit of the Beehive’:-

They are rich and exuberant painterly paintings.

Having spent nearly the entire day at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I can only say that it is as good a museum as a museum can be: logically and coherently displayed; a wonderful, rich and diverse collection; extremely well labelled; full of school groups; very helpful staff; and, interestingly, highly attractive to the ethnically diverse millennials who are reinhabiting the centre of the city. It’s got very ambitious plans for the future, but I’m glad that they retain the logic of the original beaux arts plan. There’s a lesson here:-

I had forgotten what a wonderful display of works by Thomas Eakins the Philadelphia Museum has, bequeathed by his widow, Susan McDowell Eakins in 1929, and Mary Adeline Williams in 1930.

The Pair-Oared Shell (1872):-

Mending the Net (1881):-

This is what he looked like, in the portrait by his wife:-

Not to forget The Agnew Clinic (1889):-

I spent so much time last time I was in Philadelphia looking at the medieval collections, I thought that this time I would start on the other side of the great Grecian Entrance Hall.

I admired a fifteenth-century Florentine head:-

N early sixteenth-century French Virgin and Child:-

The Queen of Palmyra:-

One of Kändler’s Billy Goats (I remember Robert Charleston saying that if the V&A burned down, this was the object he would save):-

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, opened in 1928 on the site of an old reservoir, has acquired some unfamiliar statues at the top of its steps:-

Before leaving New York, I am posting some pictures taken on the High Line.

I like the way you can see over rooftops :-

The Statue of Liberty is visible in the far distance:-

And I like the sense of trees in the centre of the city:-

I had to drive out of New York part way up the lower parts of the Hudson Valley and stopped to take a picture of the wintry trees clinging to the side of the valley:-

I will be accused again of ripping off Walker Evans, which is entirely possible, but am nonetheless posting some photographs of the streets and houses of Soho and, now better, Tribeca, round the New York Academy, where I went to see its gallery space:-

And some details:-

It is strange being on the other side of the Atlantic and trying to explain what is happening to the British political system. Whatever happened to the British ability to compromise, to seek pragmatic and effective solutions to difficult situations ? We seem to have been driven up against a brick wall with a determination which sometimes seemed admirable, but now seems merely obstinate, unwilling and unable to back down, having lost the ability to listen to other people’s point of view and so without any obvious or possible way forward. Plan A in ruins and no Plan B.