Cathy's Art Diary

Moving exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery of seven portraits of Holocaust survivors commission by Prince Charles. The pictures were beautifully hung with the three men on the wall opposite where you came and the four women in pairs to either side. They were hung at eye level and all were about life sized so you could look them in the eye. There were excellent commentaries on their sitters and the artists. There was an interesting array of styles as each picture was by a different artist but they were all quite realistic. I have since watched the wonderful documentary on the commission was impressed by the relationships which emerged between the sitters and artists and heard their moving stories in more detail. Most people at the show seemed to have already seen the programme and were telling each other the stories. How difficult to pick a favourite as I loved them all but I did love this hyper real portrait of Arek Hersh by Massimiliano Pironti particularly his painting of a bla...

Excellent refurbishment of two sets of galleries at the Imperial War Museum, the Second World War galleries and the Holocaust Galleries . Both galleries were beautifully designed leading you chronically through the period with sections on themes such as The Home Front. The narrative was told simply but was not dumbed down and used objects to help tell the story. The objects were often linked to people and there were no object labels as the narrative described them. I thought a change in the Second World War galleries was that they were now aimed at people born since the war. I think the previous version was as much a stimulator of memories and conversations and I remember going around with my own parents who were children of the Liverpool Blitz. The ARP uniform shown here is in honour of my grandfather who was a member. The Holocaust galleries were sympathetically described. They didn’t shy away from the horrors but did broaden the topic to look at its origins and effects. I lov...

Moving exhibition at the Imperial War Museum of new portrait photographs of Holocaust survivors. Organised with the Royal Photographic Society this show simply showed the photographs with a short biography of the sitter. Many of the survivors were shown with their family and the labels often listed how many children and grandchildren they had which seemed to emphasis their survival but also to point to family they had lost. The stories were all so monumental, to look at a dignified old lady and to read “By the aged of nine she was a slave labourer”. It was touching to realise how many of them had been very small children often brought out of Nazi occupied countries via the Kindertransport anyone who had experienced the camps are now very old.   It won’t be long before there are no direct survivors left. The pictures were arranged by photographer and a lot of the press coverage has centred around the fact that the Duchess of Cambridge has two pictures in the show which are Ve...