Cathy's Art Diary

Thin exhibition at the Visitors’ Centre at the Old Royal Naval College marking visits by the Queen to the college over the years to mark the Platinum Jubilee. Information boards described a series of visits, illustrated with good photographs and visitors books. They were also showing the Pathe newsreel of the dinner to mark 150th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in the Painted Hall in 1955. They made good use of what they had and it brought back memories. I had a vague feeling I remembered watching the knighting of Sir Francis Chichester on tv but turns out I was only 5 so I suspect I don’t. Closes 29 August 2022

Excellent exhibition at Buckingham Palace showing clothes from throughout the Queen’s life. The Palace need to rethink their exhibition space and how they manage flow through it. Because all visitors go to the show as well as seeing the house they are dealing with very big numbers with mixed levels of interest in the items on show. There is a lovely big room to start but it gets full quickly and most of the people in it are unable to get a good view of the display or read the labels. If you really want to see the exhibits you have to queue up at each one which gets very tedious. Anyway moan over! I loved the fact the show started with an outfit from nearly every decade of the Queen’s life including her christening gown and the beautiful dresses she and her sister wore to their father’s Coronation. As with most of the displays each outfit was shown with a photo of her in it and in all cases they looked much better on her and animated. There was a nice section on her un...

Nice exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at how images of the Queen have developed throughout her reign. It began with the familiar coronation images such as the Cecil Beaton photo but then came up to date with the wonderful photo of the Queen and Prince Philip to sitting together on a sofa to mark Phillips 90 th birthday. I particularly liked the way images referred back to earlier ones with 3 of her in a military cloak staring with the great Annigoni portrait and ending with a recent photo by Annie Liebovitz. I would have liked the exhibition to be have had a bit more depth and been a bit bigger. For a Jubilee event it was a shame it was only 3 rooms worth.