National Gallery goes Netflix
Plus: Tate taken to court
Hello! Tomorrow we’ll be able to say that museums in England (and now Wales) will be opening this month. It has been a real slog over the past five months but we are finally now just weeks away from being able to see the nation’s most important treasures once more. It can’t come too soon.
To my readers in Scotland, I hope you’ve either already visited one of your newly-reopened museums, or are planning to do so soon. This weekend’s bank holiday seems like as good a time as any, so take some inspiration from the Scotsman’s round up of 10 Scottish art galleries and museums that will be open.
As ever, below is this week’s biggest art, museum and gallery news. I hope everyone reading this from the UK has a wonderful bank holiday - and don’t forget to vote this Thursday.
Love museums? Then you’ll love my newsletter. I send a round up of museum news every Friday, and every two weeks a jam-packed edition of original features including interviews. Subscribe to get the next edition.
This week’s biggest story
The National Gallery has published a new five year strategic plan. Titled the National Gallery at 200, For the Nation – For the World, it sets out very ambitious aims taking them up to their bicentenary in 2024 and beyond. The most eye-catching pledge is to transform them into a “digital media organisation” with a “radically bigger digital audience.” There’s even the suggestion they could reach 1 billion people by 2025 (hmmmm). The Telegraph
Why it matters
Grandiose targets aside, the National Gallery clearly recognise the direction the travel. The future of museums is multi-platform content creation i.e. digital content that makes money. Films, podcasts, and newsletters will become as prevalent as exhibitions, books and shop products; there will be just as many online events as in person. Consumers will be charged for this, either on-demand or via subscription. The Netflix model of digital content is coming (and incidentally, I don’t think we’re far off the first major collaboration between a museum and Netflix). The National Gallery are ahead of the curve in terms of the major museums, and have put their ambitions in black and white. Other museums would do well to follow suit.
This week’s other news
Residents of luxury flats on London’s South Bank with massive floor-to-ceiling windows continue to be shocked to discover that glass is two-way. They’re now taking their property-value-raising neighbours Tate Modern to the Supreme Court because visitors can see through said two-way glass floor-to-ceiling windows. The Art Newspaper
The Triumph of Silenus was one of the first paintings to enter the National Gallery in 1824, but it’s long been plagued by questions of authenticity. For over 70 years it’s been considered a copy, but new conservation work reveals it IS an original by French painter Nicolas Poussin. Evening Standard
A fragment of Thomas Becket’s skull will be the grand finale of the British Museum’s major exhibition on the murder of the former Archbishop of Canterbury. The skull fragment is one of the most important surviving Becket relics, and will be “a last moment of connection with the real man at the heart of the story.” The Observer
Remember that Jack the Ripper Museum that opened in London a few years ago? Well it clearly wasn’t a roaring success as it’s been found to be up for the sale. £685,000 for 6 floors near Aldgate seems like an absolute bargain to me! MyLondon
You know you’re getting old when you start to have meme nostalgia. ‘Disaster girl’ - the iconic smirking child’s face while a house burns down - has just become the latest meme to be sold as an NFT artwork. Thankfully it was sold by the Disaster Girl herself, who said she’d use the HALF A MILLION DOLLARS (!) to pay off her student loans. The Verge
An astonishing 23,000 artworks, including pieces by Picasso and Dalí, are to be donated to Korean Museums. The works come from the Samsung estate and are donated to settle an $11bn tax bill. The Art Newspaper
School climate strikers are urging a boycott of a free Science Museum exhibition on technologies to remove excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because one of the sponsors is Shell. The Guardian
Love museums? Then you’ll love my newsletter. I send a round up of museum news every Friday, and every two weeks a jam-packed edition of original features including interviews. Subscribe to get the next edition.