£100k museum prize
Plus: Museum of London plans 'epic leaving do'
Happy Friday
I begin with offering huge congratulations to the Horniman Museum which last night was named Art Fund Museum of the Year 2022. It’s the world biggest museum prize and it comes with a cool £100k reward, and plenty of free publicity. The south London-based insitution was described by Art Fund Director Jenny Waldman as “in many ways…the perfect museum” which I think is as ringing an endorsement you could possibly get. Make sure you go and visit when you are next south of the river.
Seeing the Horniman awarded the honour reminded me of when I was lucky enough to work at a nominated museum. I was the comms-team-of-one at Sir John Soane’s Museum when it made the shortlist in 2017 (alas it lost out to the Hepworth Wakefield). My advice to any museum considering applying for the award in 2023: DO IT! Working on the campaign is a total blast, and it invigorates every level of an organisation like few projects can. It’s brilliant.
Now I’m off to get in the freezer, so why don’t you read on to get this week’s news.
Maxwell
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This week’s top stories
A previously unknown self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh has been discovered. The National Galleries of Scotland made the find when a canvas of one of his paintings was x-rayed in preparation for display in a major exhibition. One of the museum’s curators described the discovery as "an incredible gift for Scotland." Art news really doesn’t get more exciting than this, or much bigger. This story has made headlines around the world. BBC News
Except……Edinburgh wasn’t the only city this week to discover hidden artworks under the x-ray gun (is it a gun? let’s say it’s a gun). Curators at Haifa’s Hecht Museum in Israel have discovered three previously unknown sketches by celebrated 20th-century artist Amedeo Modigliani hiding beneath the surface of one of his paintings. The unfinished works came to light after the canvas of “Nude with a Hat” was examined as part of a sweeping forensic study of his work for an upcoming exhibit in Philadelphia. Quick, get checking those canvases! ABC News
What 10 Downing Street can do, the Museum of London can do better. The museum announced this week that it’s planning an “epic leaving party” - potentially lasting all night - ahead of its move to a new site. The doors will close for the last time on its old home on 4 December, and Director Sharon Ament has said “if there is demand, we will stay open 24 hours.” No suitcases of booze allowed I suspect. The Guardian
Comedian Joe Lycett (AKA Hugo Boss) is to present a documentary on BBC Two on the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Ingeniously titled Summer Exhibitionist, it’s billed as ‘a celebration of why people love making and creating art of all kinds’, and it’ll air on Saturday July 23 at 8pm. Lycett has history with the exhibition: in 2018 he entered a small bust called Chris made from clay and a Pringles tube, that he put a £12.5 million price tag on. It went unsold. Chortle
The Institute of Digital Archaeology continue their “guerrilla” campaign to repatriate the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum’s collection to Athens. A robot has begun carving prototype copies made from iPhone scans of the marbles in London, and they’ll apparently go on show in London at an ‘undisclosed location’ and at some point soon (why so vague??). But the lack of support for this project from Greece has troubled some according to the New York Times.
Hundreds of teachers have signed an open letter to the Science Museum saying they will boycott the planned major new gallery on energy - due to open next year - because of its sponsorship by a company with links to the coalminer Adani. The letter says they have a legal duty to ensure students have a fair and balanced education, and so will stop them going. Nothing like NOT seeing something to provide ‘balance’. The Guardian
The future of Cornwall’s main museum hangs in the balance as its main funder, Cornwall Council, decided to pull the plug on its funding. The Royal Cornwall Museum announced to its supporters that it might have to close its doors after being turned down for funding from the Conservative-controlled local authority. The executive director of the Museum said he was “shocked, bewildered and stunned” that its cash had been cut halfway through the financial year. Let’s hope they can be saved. The Guardian
And finally
Two heavyweight names have joined the board of trustees of the Science Museum Group: former UK Secretary of State for Culture Baroness Morgan, and former Editor of Radio 4’s Today programme Sarah Sands.
Mystery surrounds how Demi Moore was able to take the world’s ugliest and most terrified-looking dog into the Louvre, where animals are strictly banned.
Tristram Hunt, the director of the V&A Museum, says Paris is “hungry to eat London’s lunch”. He might be right, as the Times looks at the glittering new museums to discover in the French capital this summer.
All the content in this newsletter is provided to you for free. Why not buy me a digital coffee if you enjoyed it?