Category: Exhibitions

In the past two decades, our most successful exhibitions have been the two Monet shows held in 1990 and 1999, which attracted 7,003 and 8,597 visitors a day respectively. The Van Gogh exhibition in 2010 drew 4,785 visitors a day; David Hockney in 2012 drew an average of 7,512 a day; and “Manet: Portraying Life” in 2013 drew 4,359 a day.  

What conclusions can one draw from a historical analysis of exhibition numbers? Statistically, exhibitions by the Impressionists have always come top, not just in Britain and the US, but most of all in Japan. The Pre-Raphaelites are also popular, as was evident when we exhibited Waterhouse in 2009, and when Tate Britain showed “Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde” in 2012. In recent years, we have demonstrated that contemporary artists can be as popular as the Impressionists. The Hockney exhibition was a mass cultural phenomenon, not only in London but also, more surprisingly, at the Guggenheim Bilbao, wh ere the show again got more than 500,000 visitors in a city with a population of only one million.

While we study our visitor numbers, and have to, this does not preclude trying to ensure a varied exhibition programme. We try to develop a portfolio of exhibitions in which the more commercial shows subsidise the loss-leaders. This year, “Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined” drew 167,906 visitors; an average of 2,332 a day. Anselm Kiefer drew 184,910; an average of 2,341 a day. What the bald numbers disguise is that both were particularly successful in drawing new visitors to the Royal Academy.

This exhibition offers a snapshot of Joshua Reynolds’s creative process, and reveals discoveries made during a four-year research project into the outstanding collection of his works at the Wallace Collection. We have selected not only significant portraits but lesser known ‘fancy pictures’ and a rare history painting, all of which will be shown side by side. Among the works on display will be famous pictures such as Nelly O’Brien, Mrs Abington as Miss Prue and Reynolds’s own Self Portrait Shading the Eyes.

By focusing on the themes of experimentation and innovation, we trace Reynolds’s working practice in two ways: on the material level, through his use of pigments and media; and on a conceptual level, through his development of composition and narrative.  What emerges is a vision of Reynolds as a pioneering painter, highly original in his approaches to pictorial composition. This drive to innovation is exemplified in his ambitious allusions to the great masters of the past, such as Titian and Rembrandt and his obsessive tendency to rework and revise his images as he painted.

Quite:  when did any of our Royals last patronise ANYTHING cultural?? - honourable exception being the Duchess of Cambridge and the NPG - with many congratulations to Sandy N.  But honestly - only horses, elephants, Olympics (quite right)  but never a concert, exhibition, play anything of what most would call "culture" - alas.   Although I do like the Freud portrait!

I’m not sure that the Queen ever “opens” exhibitions; rather she “views ”them either officially or unofficially.

I did see the Duke of Edinburgh at an early morning “view” of the Leonardo ex in the N.G .He’s rather shorter than one would imagine.

Anyhow the King of Holland can easily park his bike outside the Rijksmuseum. Try doing that in Trafalgar Sq.

By the way; just where are you in the line of succession?

We reflect on artists' self-portraits from Sir Anthony van Dyck's last Self-portrait of 1640-1, recently saved for the nation, to Louise Bourgeois. Over 100 works, most of which are from the National Portrait Gallery London, are brought together for an expansive look at the artists’ self. 

Historical and contemporary artists sit side by side, including Sir Anthony van Dyck, Mary Beale, Louise Bourgeois, John Constable, Tracey Emin, Jason Evans, Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Angelica Kauffmann, Sarah Lucas, Gillian Wearing, Yinka Shonibare MBE, JMW Turner and Andy Warhol.

• Turner Contemporary, Margate: 24 January – 10 May 2015
• Manchester Art Gallery: 21 May – 31 August 2015
• National Portrait Gallery, London: 4 September 2015 – 3 January 2016
• Dulwich Picture Gallery, London: 12 January – 24 April 2016
• Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: May – August 2016
• National Portrait Gallery, London: September – December 2016/January 2017
• Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle: January – May 2017
• Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh: June – August 2017
• National Portrait Gallery, London: September – December 2017/January 2018

Rubens and His Legacy applies a simplistic theory and smashes as much evidence as it can into its rigid, short-sighted argument that Rubens is the fons et origo of almost everything painters have ever done. And not just painters: in an incredibly desperate extra room of the exhibition, curated by mediocre Royal Academician Jenny Saville, there are sculptures by Sarah Lucas and Rebecca Warren, whose carnality is roped in as “Rubens-like”. Come on. Two fried eggs and a baroque kebab?

I'm just back from the RA Rubens exhibition. I'm with the 'stinker' reviewer. I found the quality very varied, mostly poor, the hanging very strange, and the headings of the various sections, not nessesarily ageeing with the paintings shown. I think the main problem being that the great paintings that inspired other artists weren't available for loan.

The Burrell has always been able to make loans within the UK: the Rembrandt was at the National’s exhibition of self-portraits a few years ago and a substantial group was shown at The Hayward in the 1970s.

What’s new is being able to loan abroad, which was not permitted under the terms of the original gift.  Maybe in future, if it needs the money, the Wallace might consider breaking the will of its donor?

As the market has endorsed and enriched him, Koons has swollen, in his two latest series “Antiquity” and “Gazing Ball”, into the most tedious self-imitation. “Balloon Venus” blends his own inflatables lexicon with the archaic forms of the Venus of Willendorf. Outsize plaster replicas of classical figures – “Farnese Hercules”, “Ariadne” – bearing bright balloon-like glass spheres are destined, no more and no less than the garden ornaments they incorporate, for manicured suburban lawns.

“He says, if you’re critical, you’re already out of the game,” announced Koons’s dealer David Zwirner when these repetitive follies launched last year. Dollar power goes some way to explaining why Koons’s smooth sales-speak – “when people make judgments, they close all the possibility around them” – is not seen for what it is: a reversal of the spirit of intellectual openness that has allowed art to flourish since the Enlightenment. And of course it is obvious why Koons, like any entrepreneur boasting a luxury monopoly, directs his factory to produce a controlled stream of high-end, high-tech baubles. Less obvious is why this trading currency for the super-rich should interest the rest of us, or why museums and critics are endorsing it.

The Cumberland Art Gallery – named after the Georgian prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, for whom in the 1730s William Kent created the suite of palace rooms where the superbly lit and sensitively selected new gallery has now been installed – is the Royal Collection’s latest attempt to display its art to us, the public. It is like looking into the Queen’s jewel box. This is a much more convincing royal art space than the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, which always feels like a liveried adjunct to the royal tourist industry and has never succeeded in competing with London’s big museums – its exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings a few years ago, for instance, drew nothing like the attention the National Gallery’s Leonardo show got. [...]

Curator Brett Dolman says the thinking behind the new gallery was precisely to free the art from “heritage”. Paintings by artists as lofty as Rubens can be seen all over this palace, as part of its decor or even as props in tableaux of royal splendour.

“We’re aware that when you hang paintings in that way you sometimes can’t get near to the art,” he concedes. So the new gallery “is where art speaks for itself”.

It does so absorbingly in what amounts to a permanent gallery of some of the Queen’s very best paintings. The Rembrandt is stupendous. Admittedly the Queen has some other mighty Rembrandts that are not on view here, as well as a drop-dead Vermeer. But there are enough splendours of Renaissance and Baroque painting to satisfy anyone. Two Caravaggios reveal the opposing sides of his vision – a boy peels fruit in one of his early sensual works while Jesus calls his disciples to him in a sombre Christian scene. I was more moved however by a painting of St Jerome looking downward with deep introspective eyes by the 17th-century French master of light Georges de la Tour.

This Gallery sounds magnificent. I can't wait to go and am especially pleased to see Watts's Lady Holland on view (it was cleaned for my exhibition Watts Portraits at the NPG  in 2004).

But, and this is a big but, it costs an eye-watering £17.05 to go (more if you pay on the door--£18.20) because it is included in admission to all of Hampton Court Palace.

Doesn't this raise the issue of the status of the paintings in the Royal Collection and just whose paintings they are?   I relish the masterpieces in the Royal Collection, admire its publications and value the expertise of its staff, so I certainly don't have an answer to this one. But many people might think twice about paying that much to go and see those wonderful paintings.

Just a thought on the Royal Collection hanging some of its gems at Hampton Court. Whilst this is good news, it does (as Jonathan Jones alludes) throw light on what is absent.

Ever since seeing Tim's Vermeer earlier in the year (silly concept but a decent film) I've wanted to see Vermeer's Music Lesson and yet because it usually hangs in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace I'm faced with having to await an honour or pay £20.50 to visit the state rooms in the summer. Why is this painting not on regular public show?

We're told that the Queen does not own the Royal Collection, she merely holds it in trust for the nation (and her successors). Well that's potentially a benign technicality as long as we have access to its treasures. But this is one of the world's great paintings (so I'm told) and it is hidden from most people, most of the time. Imagine if the National Gallery had a Vermeer that was in an upstairs room which you could only see when the Director invited you to or you had to pay £20 whilst he was on his summer holiday, what would the reaction be?

Yet with the Royal Collection this is accepted. The Music Lesson is not of a royal, it was not painted for a royal or to be hung in Buckingham Palace and as such there is no particular significance for it being there.

So if the Queen only holds it in trust for us, as she maintains, then could we see it please?

Amid all the glamorous Old Masters, nice to see Frank Holl’s grave and lovely picture prominently hung  - a seriously under-rated painter.

May I take up the baton and run ( or totter in my case) with it a while ?

It seems to me that your recent correspondents may have missed the fact that the Royal Collection is indeed a private collection and is funded entirely by admission charges ,and other revenue raising enterprises, and from time to time I dare say the Queen opens her handbag to help fund an acquisition as indeed, she has done on many occasions in the past. So far as I know, there is no public funding whatever.

The works of art on display are changed about and loaned to exhibitions all over the world  viz the Watts of Lady Holland; and I am told such loan requests are sanctioned by the Queen personally.

I am certain that the vast majority of the works of art ( let’s not forget the furniture, sculpture and applied arts) is on view at most times of the year, throughout the royal residences, with only a small percentage displayed in the private apartments. All such places are staffed and maintained all of which has to be paid for.

All of these factors make it a fairly pricey visit, and short of hanging “Sponsored by Honda “ flags outside Buckingham Palace; I can’t see how else they can continue to delight us.

In my opinion the British royal collection is better 'visible' and better studied than many museums in Your country or abroad.

I think to the wonderful catalogues of Castiglione drawings , 2013, or Italian Renaissance and Baroque pictures, 2007 for example...

And it's true they often loan very important pieces to scientific exhibitions.

I live in Italy, and I could see wonderful royal paintings loaned to the Carracci exhibition in Bologna, 2006, a beautiful Cagnacci in Forlì,  2008, a supposed Raphael portrait in Urbino, 2009, and also in 2003 the Duccio tryptich in Siena at the monographic show (the NG or the American museums didn't loan anything). I remember also a Mantegna 'triumph' in Paris in the 2008 big  exhbition.

So the RC has to be congratulated for the care but also for sharing the Queen treasures (and look at the web site!). Sure, it's expensive to visit the Residences, but also if you visit the Louvre or the Vatican museums....in Florence and Siena now we have to pay for visit churches! 

Philip Mould & Co. is delighted to announce the forthcoming exhibition ‘John Smart (1741-1811), A Genius Magnified’. The exhibition will feature forty-five portrait miniatures from a European private collection with examples spanning Smart’s whole career. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue detailing hitherto unknown information on Smart’s life and career, and will be the first publication dedicated to his life and work since 1964, when Daphne Foskett published her seminal monograph ‘John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures.’

The crowds at the first afternoon of the Rembrandt exhibition were modest with rarely more than five or so people in front of each painting and fewer in front of the paper works.

The National Gallery’s ‘blockbuster’ new Rembrandt exhibition has been hailed a triumph by the critics, but visitors might be advised to keep a close eye on the masterpieces.

Some experienced security guards were replaced earlier this year by agency staff and sources claim the change is proving a disaster.

‘Five of them didn’t bother to turn up for training, while another has been sacked over a foul prank in a toilet,’ claims an insider.

‘When others were given a tour of the gallery, some showed little interest, texting away on their phones.

‘They have been spotted touching paintings and even caught on camera in the Rembrandt exhibition stroking works loaned to the gallery. They have apparently received warnings to stop, but this is really shocking.’

The gallery declines to discuss the claims. ‘We would never comment on matters relating to individual staff members as these are confidential between those involved and the National Gallery,’ a spokeswoman says.

However, she adds: ‘Safety and security are of paramount concern. CIS Security employees are vetted to the same level as existing staff; they will also undertake similar levels of training and assume identical responsibilities.’

[...] reunites several of Rubens's exuberant preparatory oil sketches for this commission with four of the corresponding tapestries from the Madrid church for which they were made. Vivid and dynamic, the Eucharist series reveals the enormous powers of invention of a brilliant artist who helped define the Baroque.

[...] explore the artist as a painter at the forefront of contemporary movements in the arts, music, literature and theatre, revealing the depth of his appreciation of culture and his close friendships with many of the leading artists, actors and writers of the time.