April 3, 2004
Rubens in Lille; Freud and museum access in London
Several features on the Rubens show in Lille, the centerpiece of the visual arts events organized for that city's turn as European Capital of Culture this year, have popped up in British papers. The Guardian, a consistently strong source of art features and reviews (and one of the few freely available in their entirety on the web) rings in with this feature, while the LRB's Peter Campbell covers the show there. Both have me yearning for my days spent wandering the great European encyclopedic museums last July and August. So too does this profile of Lucian Freud, timed to coincide with an exhibition of new paintings at the Wallace Collection--a place I didn't visit on that trip--which offers this nugget:
Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, has known Freud since, when in charge of the National Gallery, he gave an elite of British painters passes "so they could come in at any time of the day or night. You'd find Lucian in the galleries at one in the morning, two in the morning."
"One of the most instructive experiences of my life was going around with Lucian choosing the pictures for his Artist's Eye exhibition - always between 1 and 3am."
My envy could not be greater. Imagine wandering the Met at all hours. I have a new five-year-plan-type goal: unfettered access to that museum by age thirty. Wish me luck.