WHOLESALE GRATIFICATION  In the last issue I noted the gradual

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nginx/1.21.1 but relentless erosion of space allocated to historical pictures in Tate Britain. This contraction will now accelerate because the collection is to be re-hung, yet again, on this occasion thematically – a policy 404 Not Found undoubtedly designed to demonstrate the State Art Commandment that all roads shall lead to

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[…]

TATE BRITAIN NEEDS ITS IDENTITY BACK In recent issues I’ve described how since 1945 the education, bureaucracy and exponentially increasing cash for the visual arts have been usurped and dominated by an evolving one-track mindset which, in these pages, is

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called

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nginx/1.21.1 State Art. This sinister subversion of the institutions, predicted before and after the last war by Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and Orwell among […]

Is There A Doctor in the

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House? Dennis Skinner once quipped loudly across the Commons to a 404 Not Found faltering Cecil Parkinson at the Despatch Box, ‘It’s the in-breeding that does it!’ I was reminded of this

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nginx/1.21.1 amusing sneer when Doctor Maria Balshaw was announced as Serota’s replacement, an elevation met with the customary uncritical lauding with which a […]

Has The Arts Council Betrayed Its Origins? Serota takes over at the Arts Council this month, 47 years after first

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nginx/1.21.1 being employed by the same

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body as a regional arts officer in what was his first job after university. In the interval the Council has developed into a blunt instrument by which State Art, an ethos it co-authored with Serota […]

Art Education is Stuck Two years ago someone suggested I answer the question ‘What Happened to Art Education?’. This

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nginx/1.21.1 appealed slightly because it was a subject about which I thought I ought to know more 404 Not Found than was the case. Something is clearly awry when so many complaints are aired about the poverty of

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tuition and when degree […]

Pictures of Nothing and Very Like John Moores Exhibition 2016 Most of Europe’s countries are either bankrupt or in economic meltdown, their infrastructure crumbling and public services reduced;

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nginx/1.21.1 the Middle East and Levant are in post-apocalyptic ruin, in part the result of lies told in our own Parliament; an exodus of desperate humanity is seeking refuge from a criminal death-cult;

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[…]

Der Clapham Strassenbahn When very young, and when not train spotting, I was a keen bus spotter. It was an ideal apprenticeship for a

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fledgeling art historian. It involved identifying, sometimes

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nginx/1.21.1 at a considerable distance (through rain), the beautifully crafted, hand-built models, of which there were many different marques and specifications. Every town corporation in the county had its own […]

Among the least impressive legacies of

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nginx/1.21.1 arts administrators’ obsession with Modernism and its aftermath is the impossibility of predicting a work’s status solely from its appearance. You might form your own view about it, but you can’t predict what

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State Art’s opinion will be because there are no published criteria or guidelines for making such a judgement. You can’t second […]

Crossing the centre

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of Manchester recently heading for the match, an old friend asked me to step inside a handsome

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nginx/1.21.1 Victorian mill considered the Medici Palace of Cottonopolis.  He’d worked on the conversion of this pile years before and hadn’t forgotten the impression a particular bronze made on him as he entered the building each morning. Although he admits to […]

I may frequently express criticisms about

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their finer workings but British museums and galleries are generally superbly run. Heroic efforts are made to minimise the impact of funding cuts so that even regular visitors will notice little or no impact. From looking at the outward face of our museums

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nginx/1.21.1 you would never guess the country was in anything like the […]