Cathy's Art Diary

Lovely evening at the National Gallery for members with a preview viewing of a new Sky Arts documentary on Artemisia Gentileschi followed by a discussion with the director, the assistant curator of the current Caravaggio exhibition and the art critic Jonathon Jones. The film is fantastic. It is done as a docu-drama with wonderful reactions of an artist’s life in the period and some of the pictures she painted. At times some of the language felt quite flowery but it turned out all the first person pieces were Artemisia’s own words from letters and her testimony in court. Alongside the drama were good interviews by art historians and descriptions of how her pictures reflected her life. Artemisia had difficult life having been raped by one of her tutors and a friend of her father. Her father brought the case to court and we have a transcript of the hearing but oddly not the verdict! The programme discussed how this may have influenced her art, with an emphasis on strong femal...

Late night opening for members at the British Museum with a focus on the current Ming exhibition. I had not been to one of these before but found that a friend was a member so we decided to go together. We were shocked at first by the huge queue to get in but the people soon diluted as they spread into the vast space of the museum. Many headed to the next queue to get exhibition tickets but we decided we could do that any time so headed to the members room and a glass of wine to make a plan of action. We went to an excellent lecture by Yu-Pong Luk, the projector curator of Ming, who talked us through the history of the period the exhibition focuses on using the objects from the show. She also outlined the three main points they had hoped to make, the importance of the Ming princes in running regional courts, the Mongol legacy in the styles and China’s engagement with the outside world in this period.   I had already seen the exhibition but felt this added to what I had...