Norm ‘Normblog’ Geras is running a posterity collection poll. The story is that, civilization approaching its possible doom (not really, but it’s the premise of the poll), the normblog readership has been assigned the task of assembling for posterity a representative collection of the Arts of Humankind, to be preserved in a sealed container so [...]

The design for the Ebbsfleet Landmark, aka the Angel of the South, will be Mark Wallinger’s fifty metre tall horse. As I mentioned a while back, my preference was for Christopher le Brun’s wing-disc design. All they have to do now is, er, find the money they need to build it. I hope that it [...]

I went to the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition of London skeletons, mostly found during rebuilding and renovation works, on Euston Road. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s a rather sobering experience. Nearly two thousand years of life and death in the capital are displayed, from the probably overweight, bon-vivant William Wood (84) to an unborn child, its bones still [...]

Chris ‘Stumbling and Mumbling’ Dillow asks five questions. Here are my answers; number two is the best. I’ve put Chris’s questions in italics. 1. The government wants children to learn about the slave trade. But in 18th century England, how much different were the living conditions of the average slave from those of the average [...]

The next two installations for the Fourth Plinth have been announced; they are Antony Gormley’s One and Other and Yinka Shonibare MBE’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle. I’m delighted than Shonibare’s entry was chosen – I wrote about it here. As I said then, I think a model of HMS Victory would be particularly appropriate [...]

Air Vice Marshal Sir Keith Park, later Air Chief Marshal, commanded No. 11 Group RAF from April to December 1940. No. 11 Group had responsibility for air defence of the south-east of England, including London, and so Park was in charge of the group that bore the brunt of Hitler’s attacks in the Battle of [...]

Since time immemorial, the White Cliffs at Dover have welcomed peregrines and knights errant back to the British Isles. It is fitting, then, that a landmark is to be built at Ebbsfleet, within sight of the western end of the Eurostar station and on the modern gateway to London, the South East and beyond. The [...]

The shortlist for the new installation on the Fourth Plinth have been announced. They are The Spoils of War (Memorial for an unknown civilian) by Jeremy Deller; Something for the Future by Tracey Emin; One and Other by Antony Gormley; Sky Plinth by Anish Kapoor; Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare; and Faîtes [...]

Kew is remarkably beautiful in the autumn, when the leaves turn a hundred shades of fire. Despite it being the fourth of November, it was warm enough to stop for an ice-cream. There is also an exhibition of Henry Moore sculptures; unfortunately, there were rather too many people in immediate proximity to the statues to [...]

My love-hate relationship with Tate Modern continues with the new large-scale work in the Turbine Hall, Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo. The Turbine Hall is a fantastic space that allows for some large-scale works that couldn’t happen anywhere else. The excellent second work in the Unilever series, Double Bind by Juan Muñoz, was sadly underrated, but [...]