Is There A Doctor in the House?
Dennis Skinner once quipped loudly across the Commons to a faltering Cecil Parkinson at the Despatch Box, ‘It’s the in-breeding that does it!’ I was reminded of this amusing sneer when Doctor Maria Balshaw was announced as Serota’s replacement, an elevation met with the customary uncritical lauding with which a fawning Fourth Estate now greets all State Art appointments.
Balshaw comes with all the genetic defects of the State Art clone. She’s boyishly “enthusiastic”, has “energy and excitement”, does daily yoga and charity triathlons and has even won a ‘Personality of the Year’ award. She has mounted “exhibitions of international significance” i.e. of the usual suspects. She has taught ‘art theory’, albeit at a pretend university. She is also adept at “campaigning” and beyond reproach at self-congratulation and the exaggeration of what she understands as her achievements. And she knows the State Art Political Correctness scriptures, all sixteen