I realise you may tire of my posts about Burlington Gardens, but I like the idea of being able to record its slow transformation as I walk people round trying to raise the last £3 million. I can’t pretend that much has changed, just that I notice different details.
The view of the Lecture Theatre now that the floor has been removed:-
The drainpipes on the side of Albany:-
Each time I visit our building project in Burlington Gardens, it looks more heroic: the scale of the demolition, the size of the building, the numbers of people working on site. Today, I went nearly to the top and was able to see the sculptures on the façade newly cleaned and close up.
This is Francis Bacon:-
John Locke:-
It’s a while since I’ve been on a tour of our building project in Burlington Gardens. A lot has happened in the intervening two months.
The scaffolding is up:-
At lunchtime, we had a lecture in which I learned much that I didn’t know about Monet: that he tricked the authorities into allowing him to construct a large lily pond by pretending that it was going to be a swimming pool; and that he had a state funeral in which Clemenceau whipped the black awning off his coffin outside the Madeleine on the grounds that black was an inappropriate colour for him. Then tonight I went to what may be a last visit to Painting the Modern Garden. The party included at least two ardent and knowledgeable horticulturalists, so the discussion was not so much about the quality of the art as the particular species of rose depicted, the extent of the influence of Gertrude Jekyll, and the glories of Emil Nolde’s garden in Seebüll, in Schleswig-Holstein just south of the German border. I found it curiously refreshing – and in the spirit of the exhibition – to look at Monet not for his handling of paint, but how accurately he painted lilies.
I have just had what was probably the most stressful morning I have spent at the RA. I was working in the cloakroom on a wet Saturday morning during one of the busiest exhibitions we have ever had. I had forgotten how completely cack handed I am. Also, I had never experienced how many coats people expect to leave – coats, jackets, bags, rucksacks, newspapers, gloves, scarves, umbrellas and hats (what to do with the hat ?). It’s nearly impossible to find the sleeves on the more elaborate coats, which most of them are, in a jungle of fake fur. Then, the bags go in lockers while the coats go on hangers. After a bit, the place fills up so it’s hard to find a hanger. As one takes the hanger out, the coat next door falls off. Someone asked me if I was looking for diamonds in the pockets. On the contrary, I was just trying to find a way to hang her coat up. It made me full of admiration for the calm and sang froid with which the others – artists – behind the counter operated.
I spent the morning working behind the till in the RA Shop. It was slightly scary learning the mysteries of the till system, remembering to ask if customers are Friends (they get a 10% discount), putting in my pass number, watching the amount of time people spend browsing, seeing the huge pile of catalogues gradually go down, cack-handedly trying to put postcards into a paperbag, and enjoying the camaraderie of the other shop staff under the eagle eye of Ramon. Someone asked me if I was a regular. They could probably spot that I wasn’t. In fact, the last time I served behind a till was driving an ice cream van across the South Downs.
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