New Burlington editor announced
December 3 2016
Picture: The Burlington Magazine
The Burlington Magazine has a new editor; Michael Hall. Here's a statement on the magazine's website:
Michael Hall was editor of Apollo from 2004 to 2010, during which time he oversaw the editorial transformation of the magazine. A former architectural editor and deputy editor of Country Life, he is an art historian who is known in particular for his work on the Gothic revival. His book George Frederick Bodley and the Later Gothic Revival in Britain and America was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain for the best book of architectural history published in 2014. Since leaving Apollo he has been a freelance author and editor, writing, among other books, Treasures of the Portland Collection, published in March this year to accompany the opening of a new gallery for the collection at Welbeck Abbey. He is currently working on a history of the Royal Collection, due be published in December 2017. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, he is chair of trustees of the Emery Walker Trust, which opens to the public Walker’s Arts and Crafts house in Hammersmith. He is also a trustee of the Marc Fitch Fund and the William Morris Society.
As is often the way these days I know Michael a bit, but only online; for example, he recently commissioned an article from me for Country Life magazine. I have no doubt he'll do a great job at the Burlington.
It will be vitally important, however, for the trustees of the magazine to allow him time and space to do what he thinks best. The previous editor, Frances Spalding, left after only a year in the post, according to The Times, which reported that long-standing staff at the magazine didn't take kindly to Pro. Spalding's attempts to change things. She had wanted, for example, to eradicate 'dry Burlington prose' and said, 'I wasn't someone who was going to encourage high theory of an abstruse kind with jargon-ridden language'. (Quite so - there are too many articles in The Burlington that are just unreadable.) She also added that the previous editor, Richard Shone, had let things atrophy for too long; 'There had been no change among the senior editorial team for almost 20 years. There had been no new voice, no fresh ideas. The existing team were entrenched in their way of doing things, and some of the editorial practices were highly eccentric'.
From other conversations I've had about the magazine, it sounded as if the trustees were and are very reluctant to bring in the sort of changes needed to make sure this great art historical institution flourishes in the 21st Century. One change needed soon is to make the magazine more responsive to art historical developments as they happen. For example, I was interested to see that The Times said of the magazine that it 'has a reputation for scoops'. In the current edition there is an article headed 'A rediscovered portrait by Joshua Reynolds', and very good it is too. But the picture surfaced at auction at Christie's four years ago, in 2012.
AHN wishes Michael well!
