I went to the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition of London skeletons, mostly found during rebuilding and renovation works, on Euston Road. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s a rather sobering experience. Nearly two thousand years of life and death in the capital are displayed, from the probably overweight, bon-vivant William Wood (84) to an unborn child, its bones still [...]

Chris ‘Stumbling and Mumbling’ Dillow asks five questions. Here are my answers; number two is the best. I’ve put Chris’s questions in italics.
1. The government wants children to learn about the slave trade. But in 18th century England, how much different were the living conditions of the average slave from those of the average unskilled [...]

The next two installations for the Fourth Plinth have been announced; they are Antony Gormley’s One and Other and Yinka Shonibare MBE’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle. I’m delighted than Shonibare’s entry was chosen - I wrote about it here. As I said then, I think a model of HMS Victory would be particularly appropriate [...]

Air Vice Marshal Sir Keith Park, later Air Chief Marshal, commanded No. 11 Group RAF from April to December 1940. No. 11 Group had responsibility for air defence of the south-east of England, including London, and so Park was in charge of the group that bore the brunt of Hitler’s attacks in the Battle of [...]

Since time immemorial, the White Cliffs at Dover have welcomed peregrines and knights errant back to the British Isles. It is fitting, then, that a landmark is to be built at Ebbsfleet, within sight of the western end of the Eurostar station and on the modern gateway to London, the South East and beyond. The [...]

The shortlist for the new installation on the Fourth Plinth have been announced. They are The Spoils of War (Memorial for an unknown civilian) by Jeremy Deller; Something for the Future by Tracey Emin; One and Other by Antony Gormley; Sky Plinth by Anish Kapoor; Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare; and Faîtes [...]

Kew is remarkably beautiful in the autumn, when the leaves turn a hundred shades of fire. Despite it being the fourth of November, it was warm enough to stop for an ice-cream. There is also an exhibition of Henry Moore sculptures; unfortunately, there were rather too many people in immediate proximity to the statues to [...]

My love-hate relationship with Tate Modern continues with the new large-scale work in the Turbine Hall, Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo.

The Turbine Hall is a fantastic space that allows for some large-scale works that couldn’t happen anywhere else. The excellent second work in the Unilever series, Double Bind by Juan Muñoz, was sadly underrated, but [...]

The advertised part of Antony Gormley’s Blind Light exhibition at the Hayward is a room full of very dense fog. It is a remarkable installation, but of that more later. There are other parts to it which are worth seeing by themselves.
I’ve seen a lot of exhibitions that seek to use the viewer as part [...]