Stonehenge’s UNESCO reprieve
PLUS: London Museum's baffling pigeon logo
This edition also features: Met Museum’s mixed results | Buckingham Palace restoration overspend | Lost Henry VIII painting was in plain sight
Joyeux vendredi!
Happy Olympics opening to all who celebrate. And travel commiserations to anyone actually going to Paris today.
Here in the 2012 Olympics host city, the Museum of London has rebranded.
Ahead of its huge move to a new venue in Smithfield Market — which is massively over schedule and over budget — it’s officially taken on a new name: London Museum. Fair.
But controversially, it’s also got a new logo. And it’s a pigeon taking a sh*t. Yes really.
According to the museum’s Director, “The pigeon and splat speak to a historic place full of dualities.” It represents the city’s ancient blend of “grit and glitter”. Eh?
The museum also claims “the pigeon is a symbol which unites our city.” Is it?! I’ve lived here 15 years (this week is my anniversary in fact!) and I can tell you no one ever thinks, feels or speaks about pigeons. They’re also one of the least unique things about London. Paris 2024 has been flogging pigeon badges for their Olympics. What were the rejected logo ideas? Clouds, moss, oxygen, Deliveroo bikes, Tuesdays?
But the most bizarre thing for me is that the London Museum exists to tell the stories of the humans that have shaped the city for over 2,000 years. It’s baffling how a museum filled with thousands of extraordinary objects telling the extraordinary lives of Londoners should think nah, let’s go with a pooing pigeon.
The London Museum says it engaged with 500 Londoners and tourists in focus groups, workshops and surveys to come up with this. If you read the blog post explaining the choice — that seems to anticipate scepticism from its opening sentence of “There’s a good reason we have a pigeon as our icon” — it feels a bit like reasoning had to be retrospectively applied to a focus group decision. Despite hundreds of words of reasoning, it doesn’t make much sense.
Publicly and privately I’ve heard from people that, shall we say, are not fans.
London is a remarkable place. Yet the London Museum has has managed to avoid representing anything remarkable about it in this rebrand. Which is in itself remarkable.
— maxwell
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Need To Know
Stonehenge’s UNESCO reprieve
Stonehenge will not be added to Unesco's World Heritage in Danger list.
The international heritage body voted in favour of a motion that stated the hugely controversial planned road tunnel under the ancient site did not pose a danger and so it should not be listed as at risk.
Opponents of the new tunnel said they were “shocked” by the vote, and called it “a dark day for Stonehenge.“
The news comes as the new chief executive of English Heritage — which manages Stonehenge — threw his full support behind the planned tunnel, calling it “the last opportunity” to sort Stonehenge’s problems out “for a generation.”
Speaking to the Times, Nick Merriman said “This [current, above ground] very ugly road would be removed, the prehistoric landscape round the stones would be restored and there would be big economic benefits.” (Read more)
🗞 FULL INTERVIEW | English Heritage boss Nick Merriman — ‘It’s our last chance to save Stonehenge | The Times
Mixed fortunes at Met Museum
“We are clearly back,” Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum of Art director said this week, despite revealing sluggish international visitor numbers.
Hollein’s confidence was based on the number of domestic visitors. Local NYC visitor figures are now higher than pre-pandemic, while those from across the USA have nearly fully rebounded.
Yet in the year up to the end of June, the Met was still only attracting about half the international visitors that it did before the pandemic. Hollein blamed the slow recovery of international tourism, which has been hurt by the strong dollar and decreased travel from Asian countries. But he said he was still pleased with their recovery. “We have a total attendance that is on the level we would like to see” he said.
Overall nearly 5.5 million visits were made to the Met’s two venues. That’s short of 2019, when it attracted seven million but it did at that point operate a third site. (Read more)
Guilty verdict for Sunflowers attack
Two Just Stop Oil activists have been found guilty of criminal damage after they threw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery in 2022.
The painting was unharmed but it’s thought £10,000 worth of damage was caused to the 17th century frame. In a statement read to the jury, Isabella Kocum, a frame conservator, said she was “shocked and dismayed by the extent of corrosion this tomato soup” caused to the “exquisite antique frame”.
The court was told that the pair had visited the museum a day before the incident to carry out reconnaissance and bought the tins of soup from a supermarket. Their bail conditions stipulate they must not carry glue, paint or any adhesive substance in a public place and must not visit any galleries or museums.
The judge told the activists that they should come to court for sentencing in September “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison on that date.” (Read more)
News from the UK
Brum’s back 🏫 | October will see the next phase of reopening of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Its gradual reopening from a four-year closure began this spring. Now work to the heating, electrics, lifts and roofing was completed on schedule for several more spaces which will soon welcome visitors again. It’ll include the famous Round Room Gallery, where the museum confirmed Jacob Epstein’s bronze sculpture Lucifer will still be the centrepiece. (Read more)
Golden exhibition 🎨 | Dame Sonia Boyce is getting a big Whitechapel Gallery exhibition later this year. The Venice Golden Lion winner will open An Awkward Relation in October. Interestingly, it’s been specially conceived to be in dialogue with a show of work of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, which will run at the same time. Pivotal and rarely seen works by Boyce will be on display. (Read more)
Royal return 👑 | A portrait of King Henry VIII — long considered lost — has been found after being spotted by an historian in a photo on Twitter. The painting from the 1590s has been hanging in plain sight in a West Midlands council hall. Adam Busiakiewicz saw the barely-visible work in a photo of a drinks reception in the hall. Warwickshire County Council has now moved the painting to its museum service for further research. (Read more)
More Bucks 💷 | Buckingham Palace has just opened its East Wing to visitors for the very first time after a major restoration. Yet a new report reveals the revamp was beset by problems, and the £369 million project was 78% over budget. Frustration at the design team behind the works led to them being overlooked for a subsequent contract to work on the palace’s west wing. (Read more)
News from around the world
Ireland 🇮🇪 | Dublin’s National Wax Museum has pulled its wax figure of Sinéad O'Connor from display — less than 24 hours after unveiling it due a public backlash. The museum said it was launching a new project to "create a more accurate representation" of the singer and that they "can do better". O'Connor’s brother told a radio station the work “was hideous.” (Read more)
Israel 🇮🇱 | Following the attacks on October 7, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is asking that its name not be printed on labels of loaned works, including on a Modigliani portrait sent to Potsdam’s Museum Barberini. Israel Museum Director Suzanne Landau said it was in response to mounting “demonstrations and hostility toward Israel.” She also said an Australian museum “refused” to cite them on its wall texts exhibition catalogue. (Read more)
Ireland 🇮🇪 | The mystery of two 4,000-year-old axe heads posted to the National Museum of Ireland has been solved. The museum put out an appeal as the objects were “significant” and “exciting”, but experts needed to know more about their find location. A farmer has now come forward saying he found them by chance on his silage field. But the museum has also reminded the public that unregulated use of detection devices causes serious damage to Ireland’s archaeological heritage.” (Read more)
Best of the rest
Lost gardens | The fascinating story of the thousands of gardens that have vanished across London over the past 500 years will be examined in a new exhibition at the Garden Museum this autumn. (More)
Cultural tastes | Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has opted for Lowry paintings in her ministerial office. She admitted she shuddered on a trip to the Government Art Collection when first offered abstract works. (More)
Cash needed | An urgent £50,000 fundraising appeal has been launched to save two huge steam pump engines in the London Museum of Water and Steam. Unless repairs are made within two years, they could be lost. (More)
Reopening revealed | Bradford’s National Science and Media Museum will reopen in January. It had previously pushed back its planned 2024 opening to next year, but the month has now been finalised. (More)
They’re enchanted | Is the new Taylor Swift exhibition a love story? Or did the V&A do something bad? Well critics seem to love the Songbook Trail which opens tomorrow. (More)
Angels assemble | Fans were delighted to see Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North lit up to support the first solo single by Jade Thirlwall, as the Little Mix star took over the sculpture. (More)
👀 Last week’s most clicked news story | The London Transport Museum has revealed a new logo, and a new vision but it’s scant in detail
📊 Last week’s poll results | Do you support or oppose the Science Museum's decision to cut ties with Equinor
Support 👍 74% | Oppose 👎 15% | No opinion either way ⚖️ 12%
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I think your survey should have a fifth option: Perplexed, but where can I buy the branded tote bag? 🐦
I landed here today after seeing “London Museum to display Fabric nightclub sign” in BBC news. I was somewhat perplexed whether this was just a museum in London, which is what it sounds like, or maybe some pretender: we know there is but one true museum of all that London is, it is a museum of London, and has (not always but for about 50 years) been so-called. Then I saw that nonsense about the pigeon. What the actual are these people thinking of - crap name, crap logo, neither of which represent it being a museum of London. . As a Londoner I feel quite angry and disappointed by this. Let’s start a campaign!
Oh, and thanks Maxwell for this awesome newsletter - hopefully if nothing else the pooing pigeon will help bring you more visitors 🙂