V&A moves 600,000 objects
PLUS: First female director of National Portrait Gallery
This edition also features: Who will transform British Museum? | Fears over museum collection sales | Celebrating Scotland’s national photo collection
Happy Friday.
And just like that, it’s autumn (unless you’re one of my growing number of readers based in the southern hemisphere in which case, congratulations, you made it through winter!)
By my reckoning there’s only one reason to celebrate the passing of summer, and that’s that autumn is blockbuster art season. All the big hitters — hyped for months — finally open their doors. So let me hype them some more for you: here’s the shows I think you need to see this September.
If you see only one, it has to be Van Gogh at the National Gallery. Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers is being dubbed a “once-in-a-lifetime” exhibition — and it really is. Many of his greatest hits are coming on loan, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Sunflowers which has not left the United States since 1935.
He’s not the only Master in town though. Down the road at the Courtauld Gallery, a hugely significant Monet show will open. For the first time ever, Monet’s wonderful London paintings will be reunited in the city they depict.
Also opening, the British Museum will be hosting a groundbreaking exhibition looking at the pivotal 500-year period where the Silk Road was at its height across Asia. The Imperial War Museum will examine the psychological dimensions of warfare, and the Royal Academy welcomes the multi-coloured works of Michael Craig-Martin. And speaking of colour, Kusama is back with a new show at Victoria Miro.
And the Turner Prize is back too, if that’s your kind of thing.
Outside London, I’ll be making a beeline for the always spectacular Chila Kumari Singh Burman as a big new light installation arrives at Bath’s Holburne Museum. Norwich’s Sainsbury Centre will be asking Why Do We Take Drugs? in a series of new con-current shows, while Hastings Contemporary will be hosting work by Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Michael Craig-Martin (him again), Henry Moore and Sarah Lucas in a show uniting two of the UK’s most significant art collections.
Off this island, the year-long commemorations of 75 years since the death of the great James Ensor continue with In Your Wildest Dreams. Ensor Beyond Impressionism at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) in Belgium, which will offer a comprehensive view of James Ensor as a groundbreaking artist with loans from around the world. In the Hague in the Netherlands there’s a big Joan Miro show opening at the seaside, while the first ever show in Norway by Edmund de Waal opens in the brand new Kunstsilo in Kristiansand. And a huge comprehensive exhibition will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Surrealism at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Phew. Do you think that’s enough to be getting on with?
— maxwell
I bring you news and opinion from the world of museums, galleries, art and heritage each and every week. You can support this work by making a donation here.
Need To Know
Siddall selected
The National Portrait Gallery has appointed its first ever female director in its near 170-year history. Victoria Siddall takes up the role in the autumn.
Siddall’s career has nearly all been in the commercial art world. She's most well known as having been the Global Director of major art fair Frieze, leading its four huge fairs across London, New York and Los Angeles for 18 years in total.
Most recently, she co-founded charity Gallery Climate Coalition which aims to radically reduce the environmental footprint of commercial art, and to end links with fossil fuels. The Coalition has called for organisations to axe their banking, pension or investment funds if these take business from big oil.
Helping to announce the appointment, Britain's culture secretary Lisa Nandy said she was delighted that the Gallery was "making history" by appointing the first woman to its top job.
The thing to watch is how the new director adjusts to the scrutiny that comes with leading a national, publicly-funded body. A very different beast to the cloak and dagger art world. (Read more)
Five in British Museum running
The architect who transformed Berlin’s Neues Museum into one of Europe’s greatest cultural venues is on the shortlist to overhaul the British Museum.
David Chipperfield — who also designed the Hepworth Wakefield, the Turner Contemporary and revamped the Royal Academy — is on the five-strong list to carry out the British Museum’s plan to revamp a third of its building.
The project will cost hundreds of millions of pounds and Chair George Osborne called it “one of the biggest projects of our time” when announcing the shortlisted teams.
Also in contention are the architects who carried out the National Portrait Gallery’s reinvention, and the team behind Manchester’s Aviva Studios.
Director Nicholas Cullinan said this was “a career-defining opportunity for the final team” and a “once-in-a-lifetime brief.”
The shortlisted candidates' ideas will be exhibited in the Museum’s Round Reading Room later this year, before a ten-strong jury — led by Cullinan and Osborne but also featuring Tracey Emin — select the winner. (Read more)
Fire sale fears grow
Ten of the biggest sector organisations have joined together to state they are “seriously concerned” that collections and objects will be sold off by museums to raise money.
Coordinated by Arts Council England and signed by organisations including the Museums Association, Art Fund and the National Archives, the statement warns that “financially motivated [sales] from collections is only ethical in rare and exceptional circumstances” and that attempting to do so “would cause irreversible damage to the UK’s cultural inheritance” as well as “erode long-held and hard-won trust that the public have in museums.”
The move comes as fears increase that the selling of artworks will become more common as financial pressures are anticipated to grow. But the signatories highlight that organisations that choose to act outside of these ethical standards will face heavy sanctions, including being barred from accessing grants and blocked from working with national museums. (Read more)
News from the UK
New home 🏡 | 600,000 items have now fully been moved to the V&A’s new storehouse facility in East London in what was the museum’s biggest move since the evacuation of objects in WWII. The project took five years, but each piece is now safely housed at V&A East Storehouse in the Olympic Park ready for opening next year. Final objects to move included the largest of 127 19th century paintings documenting cave art in India. (Read more)
(Not) bleak spouse 🪶 | Newly unearthed letters reveal that Charles Dickens lied about his wife Catherine being an uncaring mother who neglected their children. He made the claims to smear her after leaving her for a teenage actress in 1858. The letters have just been acquired by the Charles Dickens Museum and are now on display. Curator Emma Harper said “this fascinating collection destroys the image that Charles Dickens tried to create.” (Read more)
Scotland’s photos 🏴 | The 40th anniversary of the establishment of Scotland’s national photography collection will be celebrated in a major autumn exhibition at the National Galleries Scotland: Portrait. Over 100 images from the 1840s to the present day will be shown. Highlights include portraits of famous Scots Andy Murray, The Proclaimers, and David Tennant. Director-General Anne Lyden, said: "Photography is a cornerstone of the National Galleries of Scotland, accounting for almost half of the entire collection.” (Read more)
Concerning column 🏛 | Builders knocking down a column at the National Gallery unearthed a buried letter from the billionaire philanthropist who paid for its construction. The 1990 note said that its discovery must mean the column was being demolished, and that it made him “absolutely delighted.” Lord Sainsbury said he had originally objected to the column — which was purely for decoration — and that its inclusion would be regretted. (Read more)
News from around the world
Israel 🇮🇱 | A 3,500 year-old jar has been accidentally smashed by a 4 year-old boy at a museum in Haifa. But far from chastising the boy and his family, the Hecht Museum are inviting them back after concluding “things like this happen.” The museum’s head Inbal Rivlin told local news that “the museum is not a mausoleum but a living place, open to families (and) accessible.” The item will be restored. “We will fix (the jar) and put it back” Rivlin said, albeit with new ‘do not touch’ signs. (Read more)
Serbia 🇷🇸 | After winning Olympic Gold in Paris — the only title that had eluded him — the Serbian president said the country would build a museum in Novak Djokovic’s honour. It will be constructed in the tennis star’s home city of Belgrade. “We will strive to showcase what Djokovic has done for our country in accordance with his merits and at the same time attract tourists" President Aleksandar Vucic said. (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸 | Props and costumes from the GOAT sitcom Friends are being sold off in a special 30th anniversary auction in LA and online. The sale’s big-ticket item is a studio reproduction of the orange Central Perk sofa, with an estimated price of up to $3,000 (£2,266). There’s also pieces of clothing worn by all six of the main cast members up for grabs. Over 100 items are available to bid on in total. (Read more)
Japan 🇯🇵 | The long-awaited Nintendo Museum in Kyoto finally has an opening date: and it’s soon. On October 2, die-hard fans can discover and experience the history of the Japanese video game company, including an entire floor devoted to Nintendo products that have been released to date such as the famous hardware and consoles. The gift shop will also sell exclusive products. (Read more)
Best of the rest
Signed off | A sign from iconic London nightclub fabric has been donated to its next-door neighbour, the London Museum. Created for the club’s 20th anniversary, it’ll form part of the museum’s permanent display when it opens. (More)
Restoration axed | Bankrupt Birmingham continues to axe heritage spending. It’s withdrawn a £3.5 million grant to restore the Grade II-listed Highbury Hall. Vital £12m restoration works are now on hold indefinitely. (More)
Convicted today | A man’s been jailed after an off-duty police officer caught him upskirting a woman at the British Museum. Similar videos were found on his phone — police think he filmed other women visiting that day. (More)
Home hunt | Buxton Museum in Derbyshire was forced to close last year after dry rot was found in its building. Now the local council has revealed it could take up to five years to find the museum a new home. (More)
Fine Line | A 183-year-old Grade II-listed viaduct has had its protection increased after Harry Styles fans flocked to it. It’s thought the superstar had his first kiss there, and "well-meaning damage" has seen fans scratch their names over the Victorian brickwork. (More)
👀 Last week’s most clicked news story | Window cleaner discovers ‘first ever portrait’ of William Shakespeare – and it could be worth £200m
📊 Last week’s poll results | Do you think the Salvator Mundi painting is REALLY by Leonardo da Vinci?
👍 👍 Yes, 100% 13%
👍 Yes, but others helped 30%
👎 No, but maybe he had a hand 30%
👎👎 No. Not at all 27%
— Still time to treat me to a summer beer. 🍻 Donate to me and this newsletter here.