Museums
In defence of decommissioning
There’s more than a grain of truth in the popular caricature of a curator as a mother hen clucking frantically…
Is the tide turning on restitution?
When passions are aroused, all of us are liable to overstate our case. Dan Hicks, a curator at Oxford’s extraordinary…
How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution
The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over…
Tate’s finances are on the skids and I think I know why
Among the many destructive after-effects of the pandemic, the impact of two years of lockdowns has had serious consequences for…
How did we ever come to accept the inhumane excesses of capitalism?
What was neoliberalism? In its most recent iteration, we think of the market seeping into every minute corner of human…
An extraordinary woman: The Art of Lucy Kemp-Welch, at Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, reviewed
In March 1913 two horse painters met at the Lyceum Club to discuss the establishment of a Society of Animal…
Are surgical museums such the Hunterian doomed?
Margaret Mitchell on the ethics of museums of anatomical specimens
Will The Parthenon Project seize the Elgin Marbles?
Will The Parthenon Project seize the Elgin Marbles?
Paris's glittering new museums
The refurbishment of Paris’s galleries and museums continues apace, with money no object, finds Rupert Christiansen
Why I’ve spent £68,500 on a tank
Why I’ve spent £68,500 on a tank
The supreme pictures of the Courtauld finally have a home of equal magnificence
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
Small but perfectly formed: the Royal College of Music Museum reopening reviewed
Haydn is looking well — in fact, he’s positively glowing. The dignified pose; the modest, intelligent smile: it’s only when…
At last, a dose of up-close culture in London
In London for the first time in 18 months, I was as excited as a child on a birthday outing.…
The West’s moralising over climate change will cost India
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia,…
The misguided plan to ‘retain and explain’ statues
The misguided plan to ‘retain and explain’ statues
Our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
Dan Hitchens on our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
After three centuries, we need a museum of British premiership
Why we need a museum of British premiership
Ignore the activists – Humboldt’s Enlightenment project deserves celebrating
Ignore the activists, says Tristram Hunt, Alexander von Humboldt’s Enlightenment project, embodied in a flash new Berlin museum, deserves celebrating
Are our churches safe from Justin Welby?
‘Frost & Lewis’. It sounds like a programme amalgamating two of the most famous TV detectives. The former diplomat, Lord…
Museums need wonder, not wokery
The British Museum’s aim is to use its collection ‘for the benefit and education of humanity’. If that manifests itself…
The joy of short stories in these taxing times
From time to time, usually when things are quiet, the government brings on the dancing girls. David Cameron made Carol…
The online museums you’ll never want to leave
‘We don’t talk about the war.’ Yet those of my generation and older reference it daily. The coronavirus is an…
Letters: How to make a cup of tea
No defence Sir: Jon Stone (Letters, 15 February) recalls the horrors and miseries of being subjected to bombing from the…
The rise and rise of the museum cafe
The rise of the museum café
