BIG National Gallery news
Major rehang expected at London gallery to mark bicentenary
Happy Friday!
Did you mark the Summer Solstice this week? Maybe you were one of the thousands who traveled to Stonehenge to mark the longest day of the year. It did look fantastic! It’s the first time in three years people have been officially allowed back to the World Heritage Site to celebrate the occasion. Seeing the revellers reminded me to remind you that if you haven’t seen the absolutely brilliant the world of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum yet, then you only have three weeks left! The mesmirising objects on show will likely never be under the same roof again in our lifetime. So GO! Stonehenge will always be there…
And did you read my interview in your inbox all about the arts and culture programme running alongside next month’s UEFA Women's EURO 2022? If you missed it, you can catch up here!
Maxwell
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This week’s top story
A stonking news announcement from the National Gallery in London this week as they revealed full details of how they will celebrate their 200th anniversary in 2024. There’s a hell of a lot planned, so let’s go through it.
The most significant thing will undoubtedly be an entire rehang of the collection. An entire rehang has never been done before. Out will go chronology and in will come thematic displays and “new juxtapositions.” For a gallery steeped in tradition, this will be a big change. Not everyone has welcomed the idea though: the Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak said he hates the plan and that thematic displays are “a game of snap though the ages”. He implores the Gallery’s Director Gabriele Finaldi to “stop thinking like an anti-vaxxer.”
The Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing will also be revamped. Now it’s become the main entrance for visitors, it can’t cope with the millions that come annually (it’s around six million, but Finaldi has said they are starting to think about seven or eight). The restaurant will go, and a Members House and Research Centre will come in. In an interview in the Telegraph today, Finaldi confirmed that this work will mean the Wing will close at the end of this year until Spring 2025. That also means half the Gallery’s collection will off display for quite some time.
Hugely ambitious plans were also revealed for the Gallery’s actual birthday - 10 May 2024. On that day, 12 simultaneous exhibitions will open at 12 institutions across 12 different regions of the four nations of the UK. Each show will be based around one masterpiece from the collection, including Constable's The Hay Wain and Botticelli's Venus and Mars. These shows will put more than half of the population within an hour of one of these masterpieces.
Back in London, 2024 will also see a blockbuster exhibition on Van Gogh, the first major Van Gogh show in the UK since 2010. The Art Newspaper got the scoop on details. It will focus on the artist’s period in Provence, where he produced his greatest work. There will be at least 50 works, mainly paintings, and it is provisionally entitled Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers. One of the most important international loans will be the version of The Bedroom (September 1889) from the Art Institute of Chicago. When does it open? September 2024. That must be some sort of record for advance announcement??!
There’s a tonne of other exciting stuff (and some slightly unexciting digital stuff). In total, it’s costing £95 million. £50 million has already been raised, and last night marked the beginning of a big fundraising campaign to get the rest. The Alchemist’s Feast was the inaugural summer party and fundraiser for the bicentenary, and it was a big swanky affair attended by Damian Lewis, Sienna Miller, Lara Stone and Princess Beatrice.
Tbh I think the NG team probably deserved a drink.
This week’s other news
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge unveiled their first official joint portrait yesterday at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum. The portrait - by British artist Jamie Coreth - was commissioned by the Cambridgeshire Royal Portrait Fund as a gift for the county in 2021, the year the couple marked 10 years of marriage and and their Cambridge titles. The Fitzwilliam will show it for three years, after which it will be taken on a tour of community spaces and galleries in Cambridgeshire. It will also be loaned to the National Portrait Gallery, the Duchess’ patronage, in 2023 for the gallery’s reopening. The Telegraph
Head of the V&A Tristram Hunt has said Paris is “hungry to eat London’s lunch,” and that he fears that France is creeping ahead in the battle for European cultural supremacy. In a new podcast, he said there was a “confidence and brio” in Paris galleries that was giving the city a competitive edge over London. His comments come as a recent report highlights that Britain’s art dealers and auction houses had lost $1 billion of trade in the past two years. The Times
Speaking of Tristram Hunt, he took to Twitter to defend the V&A hosting a fundraising event for the Conservative Party. Members of the Museum’s PCS union branch joined a picket outside the event, to demand a higher pay rise than the 2-3% proposed by the UK Government for public culture sector workers. Inside, prizes were auctioned off including a £30,000 wine tasting, a £37,000 shooting weekend and a £120,000 dinner with David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson (wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall for the that!). But Hunt said that “Private venue hire is an important income stream to ensure the V&A stays free and open for everyone, and the collections cared for. Political parties are very welcome to rent out spaces on commercial terms. Personally, I hope the Labour Party might one day be in a position to do so.” Museums Journal
Two new artworks dedicated to the Windrush generation were unveiled this week. Basil Watson’s new national monument to the Windrush pioneers who arrived in Britain after the Second World War was unveiled at Waterloo station in London on Wednesday. HM The Queen sent a message to mark the occasion, saying “It is my hope that the memorial will serve to inspire present and future generations.” On the same day, Warm Shores by Thomas J Price, a 9ft (2.75 metres) bronze of a man and a woman standing outside Hackney town tall and commemorating the Windrush generation, was also inaugurated.
How did you celebrate/commiserate (delete as appropriate) the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum yesterday? The Museum of London marked it by purchasing Jeremy Deller’s film about the Brexit campaigners that set up shop outside Parliament Square during negotiations with the EU in 2019. It’s title? Putin’s Happy. Evening Standard
Eight people have been convicted of theft or handling stolen goods after an artwork by graffiti artist Banksy was stolen from a door at the Bataclan music hall in Paris. The mural "sad girl" was stencilled as a tribute to the 90 people murdered in a 2015 terror attack on the venue, but a hooded gang removed it from an emergency door with angle grinders in January 2019. Classy. BBC News
Just a month ago this newsletter reported on massive plans to totally rebuild the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Canada, at a cost of £500 million. On Wednesday, the plans were totally scrapped. Premier John Horgan said he “made the wrong call.” It came as 69% of people opposed the plans, with accusations that the money would be better spent elsewhere. Global News
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