Design Museum – Kensington High Street. I think you can be forgiven for not knowing who Enzo Mari is. When I visited a press view at the Design Museum, I will hold up my hand and say I had never heard of Enzo Mari before. Born in 1932 in Novara, Italy, Mari went on to become one of the greatest Italian designers of the 20th century. It is hard to sum up Mari’s work as he created a huge number of designs and worked on a huge number of projects in a huge range of materials. Not only is there furniture, ceramics and glass on display but also, graphic design, games and books. Dense exhibition tex ..read more

Till Sunday 2nd June 2024. In a recent episode of ‘Secrets of the Museum‘ on the BBC I was watching a conservator from the V&A condition-checking a Constable painting before it was due to go on loan for an exhibition in the Netherlands. The museum professional was fretting over the paintings fixtures and deciding whether a larger bracket was needed to keep the canvas in place before it was packed up and shipped off. The complexity of transporting treasures thousands of miles is rarely something you consider when visiting an exhibition so imagine doing it 300 years ago! Clock with travellin ..read more

Open Mon-Fri and late night Thursday. I remember taking 20p to the newsagents on the High Street early on a Sunday morning when I was a kid. Whilst my Dad bought a paper I debated over 2p and 1p sweets, popping them in a little white paper bag – pink shrimps, yellow bananas and fizzy cola bottles. I remember my first bank account at NatWest, getting Woody the piggy bank. Saving and saving to get Annabel, Maxwell, Lady Hilary and Sir Nathaniel. Trying to prise the stopper out of the base of Woody with a pair of scissors. I remember Dad’s glass jar of coins that always came out when we playe ..read more

Queen’s Gallery (although not for long). There is definitely still time to get to ‘Holbein at the Tudor Court’ at the Queen’s Gallery before it closes in April and also before the Queen’s Gallery become the King’s Gallery, although I think it will take me a while to get used to using the new name. Their exhibition on Holbein features more than 50 works and it is the largest UK exhibition of Holbein’s work in 15 years. So straight away there are two reasons for visiting but why else go to see an exhibition on this 16th century artist? To begin with, you really don’t have to be an expert to enj ..read more

I realise I have been in and out of the orbit of Abram Games for a long time now. This famous graphic designer who is now best remembered for his Second World War and Transport for London posters. If you don’t know the name, you most certainly will know the work. Perhaps his most iconic design is for the Festival of Britain in 1951. Abram Games – Wellcome Collection, https://www.europeana.eu/item/9200579/y8hvvnwq© IWM Art.IWM PST 2974. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/10361 To begin with I simply admired the work, at the Wellcome Collection’s ‘Can Graphic Design Save Your Life ..read more

The National Archives – KewGreat Escapes: Remarkable Second World War Captives With so many classic war films telling the story of plucky soldiers escaping German prisons in World War II you can sometimes feel you know these stories of derring-do, but with an exhibition at the National Archives you can guarantee you will see original artefacts that show you these events in new and often surprising ways. Prototype playing cards with concealed maps, 1941.Example of military battledress with secret pockets and compartments for concealing escape aids, 1943.Concealed letter, sandwiched in the middl ..read more

Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing.The gallery space was once Ealing public library. I never tire of a visit to Sir John Soane’s home in Ealing, I have visited Pitzhanger Manor so many times it is like returning to an old friend. I wonder how Soane felt when he left the busy streets of London behind to seek sanctuary in his suburban home. Alice Irwin: Chinwag The gorgeous Art Deco gallery space, which used to be Ealing public library, is playing host to the bright colourful prints, sculptures and drawings of Alice Irwin. On a dull wet day between two storms, Isha and Jocelyn, Irwin’s work lights up th ..read more

20 Maresfield Gardens – Freud’s home.Thinking warm thoughts.Freud and Latin America 17 Jan – 14 July 2024. I’m formally kicking the blogging year off on a bitterly cold January at the Freud Museum in London. Luckily I can banish thoughts of the cold with an exhibition on Latin America and just think warm thoughts, you never know it might work. Volume 6 – ‘Los Origenes del Sexo’ – sometimes language isn’t a barrier.Part of a ten volume collection published between 1935 and 1946 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ‘Freud and Latin America’ explores the impact Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytical theor ..read more

Blavatnik Art, Film and Photograph Galleries, IWM. The new galleries at the Imperial War Museum in London have been barely been open a few months and yet I am back for a second visit. This time I am privileged to be joined by Iris Veysey, Senior Curator, who is giving me a tour and insight into the stories that have been selected for display. The galleries feel like a very different experience to my previous visits to IWM, it perhaps makes sense as Iris explains how they have taken a new approach to displaying their collection in this space. There are over 500 works on display from a collectio ..read more

Margate 2024 By the sea, moody grey scenes that soothe my soul. The light quickly leaves but the warm glow from windows, curtains still open in the early afternoon keep the gloom at bay. My tea, cocooned in my hands, it begs me to sit and wait… By the sea, I watch the dying of the day whilst the waves eternally wave me a welcome, the day shifts and the night rises. In the last moments the seagulls swirl, desperately looking for tourists. Where have they gone, with their brightly coloured clothes and salty chip dinners? They are hiding in steamed-up coffee shops, windows as misty grey as the ..read more