Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting small exhibition at the Garden Museum highlighting the “Why Women Grow” podcast by Alice Vincent. On the podcast Vincent interviews inspiring women about their relationship with their gardens and the land. It grew out of a book she developed in lock down of the same title The display consisted of photographs by Shiobham Watts of the women Vincent had interviewed in their garden or a garden space which means a lot to them alongside a commentary on their interview. I was pleased to see one, Jamaica Kincaid, had been photographed in the gardens at Charleston. Have a photo of the section on Salley Vickers, one of my favourite authors, in Kew Gardens. Closed 30 June 2024    

Fun new weekly podcast from the Art Fund each episode focusing on specific objects from different museums and galleries purchased with the help of the fund. Introduced by Ben Miller, the series so far, and at the time of writing we are on episode 6, have covered an eclectic collection of items from collaged screen by Joe Orton’s partner Kenneth Halliwell, through an 18th century organ, taking in the picture of the Spanish Armada shown here and a portrait of Charles Dickens. Each episode brings together a variety of experts and artists to comment on the piece and discuss themes that arise from it. For example an episode on the Great Bed of Ware looks a the history of sleep, travel and marketing as well as describing the object and it’s place in cultural history. My only criticism of this well produced series would be that it would be nice to have a webpage of images for each one so you can see the object in more detail and some of the other pieces mentioned particularly any conte...

Fun new art podcast from the Sunday Times featuring two of my favourite TV art historians, Waldemar Januszczak and Bendor Grosvenor. From its jaunty opening music I was hooked and I found their good humoured discussion easy and interesting to list to. They seem to be planning to divide the show into four sections which is about right for one listening, They started with an opinion piece on a topic in the art world, in this case the decommissioning of works from collections. They talked about why galleries and museums to this and the pros and cons. Waldy, as I feel I should now call him, then talked about how good Gauguin was at painting children while mourning the cancellation of the Royal Academy’s Gauguin and Impressionism show. Next came a fun section called Art in Isolation where they reviewed what some of the galleries are doing online while they can’t open. This week they looked at a tour of a Raphael exhibition in Rome to make 500 years since his death ...