Portrait Gallery reopening date revealed
£35 million overhaul will be unveiled on 22 June 2023
Also in this edition
Ancient luxury exhibition coming to British Museum
Met Museum’s early Christmas present
Why is Van Gogh under attack?
Hello. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Especially here in London where five days on from a heavy snow fall, it is inexplicably still everywhere. It’s also -5 degrees most nights. And +5 times I’ve slipped on compacted ice and almost cracked my head open. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
BUT it actually can be a wonderful time of year to visit London’s museums and galleries. Not only is it a good opportunity to catch up on the autumn blockbusters you may have missed, there’s a sweet spot around the 22nd December where the tourists stop coming, Londoners all flock back to their families outside the capital, and some of the very biggest institutions become blissfully peaceful. Relatively anyway. I shall be taking advantage of the festive peace by FINALLY seeing Lucian Freud at the National Gallery and Magdalena Abakanowicz at Tate Modern. (Yes, I don’t know why I haven’t seen them either. I call myself an expert).
Let me know what you’re planning on seeing this coming Christmas week by hitting reply to this email. And as an extra treat, on Wednesday I’ll be sending you a special festive 2022 round-up interview edition of this newsletter. Five experts from the worlds of museums and art will be giving you their highs and lows of the past year. So keep an eye out.
For now, let’s read this week’s news!
Maxwell
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News from the UK
There are just nine more sleeps until you can open your Christmas presents, but there are 188 until the opening of the newly overhauled National Portrait Gallery in London, which arguably I am much more excited about. It’s been shut for three years to carry out the most extensive redevelopment in the gallery’s 166-year history, at a cost of £35.5m. But on 22 June 2023 it will reopen its doors, including to its new Blavatnik Wing and Ross Place entrance. Mark your diaries now. It’s going to be the biggest British museum event of the year.
The National Portrait Gallery will also reopen with new work on display from an art project with England and Chelsea footballer Raheem Sterling. The winger has launched a new creative youth engagement programme, entitled Making of Me, in partnership with the NPG and his Raheem Sterling Foundation. It will give “30 young people from London the chance to learn a variety of skills and the knowledge needed to progress into future creative careers”, with participants producing photographic and portraiture pieces inspired by works from the NPG collection that will be shown publicly from June.
After announcing its intention to return its collection of Benin Bronzes to Nigeria earlier this year, the University of Cambridge has formally been granted permission to hand over the items by the Charity Commission. The legal ownership of the 116 items will now be transferred to the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments. A spokesperson for the university said some of the artefacts would remain in Cambridge on "extended loan, ensuring that this West African civilisation continues to be represented in the museum's displays, and in teaching for school groups."
A forthcoming British Museum exhibition will transport visitors back 2,500 years to show how luxury objects were used to wield power in one of the world's most influential ancient empires. Luxury and power: Persia to Greece will open in May 2023 and promises to display a "dazzling array"of objects of exquisite luxury, highlighting how the First Persian Empire used them as markers of authority. One of the most exciting aspects of the exhibition will be the exceptional loan of the extraordinary Panagyurishte Treasure from Bulgaria.
The British police no longer pay a visit if your house has been burgled, but they did find time to break into a Soho art gallery because they saw a woman slumped over a table. Except they didn’t — it was an art installation. The gallery assistant was even on site at the time. She returned from making a cup of tea to find two bewildered coppers had unhinged the door. I mean, from these photos it does like very life-like, but how many of us haven’t sat at our desks like this during Christmas party season?
News from around the world
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is to become the largest repository of works by the American artist Philip Guston, thanks to a gift from his daughter. More than 200 works will be donated to the Met from the personal collection of the artist’s daughter, Musa Mayer. The almost 80-year-old Mayer was prompted to donate them after seeing that the Met had received a lead donation of $125 million for its planned Modern and contemporary wing. Under the terms of the gift, the museum has agreed to always keep about a dozen of the works on view at any one time.
The Venice Biennale has announced that Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa will oversee the 60th edition of the art jamboree, in 2024. In a pair of firsts, Pedrosa is both the first Latin American and the first from the Southern Hemisphere to curate the event.
There are 33 museums fighting it out for the title of European Museum of the Year 2023. The award, organised by the European Museum Forum, will be given out in May in Barcelona. The Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, which reopened in May 2021 following a £4m redevelopment, is the sole UK nominee. Switzerland has seven (seven!) shortlisted museums, with Germany represented with the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion and Reconciliation in Berlin; and Türkiye with the Police Museum.
And finally
Why is Van Gogh under attack by climate protesters asks the Art Newspaper?
A Guardian panel of experts pick their design favourites of the year - including the Surrealism exhibition Objects of Desire at the Design Museum, and the Body Vessel Clay exhibition at Two Temple Place.
The man behind the Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton museum in Paris is now the world’s richest man. Bye bye El*n.
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