No. 76 Dean Street: a restoration drama

In the wake of the Prince of Wales’ ‘censorship row’, Barendina Smedley calls for the resignation of the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and asks SPAB members to reconisder their involvement.

Dilapidated or just complicated? ‘The Roman Forum’ by David Watkin

A few sentences into David Watkin’s The Roman Forum, notice is served that this will be no ordinary guidebook. The first paragraph establishes a tone that will persist throughout:
“The Roman Forum is one of the most famous of all historic sites, the heart of the ancient city, the hub of the Roman empire, the goal [...]

Ancient and Modern: Palladio at the Royal Academy

Architectural exhibitions are, by default, flawed exercises. Few curators would have the nerve to stage, say, a Titian blockbuster without a single Titian painting on view, a marble-free Bernini show, a Schiaparelli crowd-pleaser offering the curious not a single faded frock or frill. And yet the celebration of a lacuna — a high-profile Hamlet minus [...]

Saving the King: George III and Queen Charlotte at the Queen’s Gallery

Archive: 6 April, 2004
ART: Saving the King
George III & Queen Charlotte at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
Let’s cut straight to the point. George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, currently showing at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, is that rare thing — an excellent concept brought to fruition with intelligence, visual aplomb, [...]

Ahead of the curve: the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2003

[The following article originally appeared on the Electric Review website.]
How often does it happen that London’s summer weather outshines its art? June 2003 started out by giving us plenty of brilliant sun — plus the hyper-depressive ‘realism’ of Tate Modern’s Cruel and Tender, some predictably boring snaps by Wolfgang Tillmans at Tate Britain, and possibly [...]

Mies van der Rohe at the Whitechapel Gallery

[This article originally appeared on the Electric Review website.]
There’s something to be said for exhibitions that position themselves less as didactic accounts of their subject than as star-struck cheerleaders on their subject’s behalf — or for those that display not only literal artefactual evidence of their subject’s career but also adopt his own prejudices and [...]