Category: Articles

The UK boasts the only professor of animal architecture in the world, Mike Hansell, lately of Glasgow University. He has studied from early in his career the habitat constructions of beavers, birds, rats, wood lice, shrimps and even dinosaurs. The…

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra recently received one of the nation’s most important collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait art. Staff will make a stage by stage transfer of the collection, which is extensive. They have avoided allowing…

The dramatic crack created in the floor of the Tate Modern Turbine Hall by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo is, in places, waist deep. The exhibit was opened in early October. Perhaps it should also have run up (or down) the…

The revelation that the collection of 20th century western art built up during the reign of the last shah of Iran is still languishing in museum cellars within Iran is no surprise to the art world, nor to dealers. Included…

It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good. Just as the Conservative Party had earlier this year done a U-turn on museums and galleries admission charges, coming out against reimposing them, came bad portents. Tessa Jowell’s grim news…

Author, academic and television commentator Germaine Greer has come up with a very intelligent suggestion on the subject of graffiti. She has recommended that good ‘aerosol art’ be listed and protected on a points system highlighting the work that is…

The new debate about the ancient, enlightened city of Bath has been precipitated strongly and positively by design critic and author Stephen Bayley, and none too soon. The city fathers have turned down an excellent building project for a new…

The director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor, champion of the Museum’s ongoing exchanges overseas, notably with China and with India recently, has gone out of his way to make a point about this historic institution dating from the Enlightenment…

It’s Lee Miller on the line (overseas call)

Whatever happened to the £400,000 Olympic Games logo flashed around by the London 2012 Organising Committee in June? It went down like a lead balloon, as they say in Australia. Ken Livingstone had a total aversion to it, although Sebastian…

This December, a hitherto unknown work by the painter LS Lowry will be sold at auction by Sotheby (London). Entitled ‘A Fairground’ it had been lost (but not buried) in a private collection. The painting appears to relate to a…

The new statue of Nelson Mandela now installed in Parliament Square, London greatly enhances this key location for tributes to the great and good, and marks the fresh growth of democracy on the African continent in the 21st century. The…

Godfrey Pilkington, who died aged 88 on 8 July 2007, was the doyen of Cork St gallery directors through the 1970s and 1980s. Supported by his wife Eve, had continued long after reaching an age when most successful art dealers…

The Serpentine Gallery, in London’s Hyde Park has pulled it off again with this year’s Summer Pavilion. Designed by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson and Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen (he of Alexandra Library fame) the Pavilion is a remarkable bringing together…

The exhibition ‘The First Emperor’ opens on 13 September at the British Museum. This emperor so celebrated in Chinese history was Qin Shichuangdi, famous for unifying China in the third century AD, and for laying the foundations there for future…