This article in today’s paper really wound me up. (No link. For some reason the link on their website isn’t working)
It is not that I necessarily disagree with Charles Saumarez Smith’s opinions about public funding for the arts, or the effect free admission has had on museum visits or anything like that.
No… what winds me up is that photo of eleven punters taking in the Velazquez exhibition. Five of them are sitting on a bench admiring the portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos on horseback from a distance of about three metres, with their view unobstructed by the two who are getting a closer view from the sides.
When I was there last week there were more people than that in front of every single painting. The only thing you would have seen from that bench would have been the backs of twenty other people, and to get as close as the others are took a lot of time, patience and determination. Just about the only accurate thing about the photo is the complete absence of any ethnic minorities in the ‘crowd’.
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