We decided to visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Department of Culture Media and Sport, Royal Society of Arts and the Wellington in this order on the Sunday. We found that the first two were easily the best, doubtless because they were Government funded.
The bit of the FCO we saw was originally part of the old India Office and was full of boastful statues and paintings of the time when we ruled India. No doubt we had rich plunder from there. The rooms were beautifully decorated despite the fact that they had fallen into decay during the early twentieth century. One of the main rooms had been boarded over and used as a furniture store. This was because of the excessive cots of upkeep. The boarding was removed in the 1990s and when the quality of the underlying decoration was recognised a decision was taken to renovate it. This was at the trifling cost of £100 million. The results are astonishing as the photos on the link hopefully show. ( http://www.flickr.com/brainwave/ )
The DCMS is a small Department and occupies a building near to Trafalgar Square. Their office was renovated for them before they occupied it. We were only shown round the Ministers' roomswhichh were furnished with top quality furniture and pictures from the Governments art collection. As you can imagine the DCMS has to showcase the best of British art and craft, but for cost reasons this has to be the work of young artists who are expected to be the best. Nevertheless the collectors have missed the works of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, to name but two. And no photography was allowed.
We liked the office of David Lammy best: he is black and chose the works of Black British artists with the effect that there are as many models as pictures in his office. Richard Caborn is the Minister of Sport and he had numerous sporting pictures including a few based on the London Olympic bid.
One slightly jarring note was that Ministers all had PCs but none of their desks had been designed to conceal the wiring, so that these elegant pieces of furniture in made of rare woods each had a messy trail of wires dangling down their visible backs.
The photo of the statue is of the new one in Trafalgar Square portraying Alison Lapper, an artist who is a thalidomide victim, when she was pregnant. We thought it was fine despite the controversy over it's siting.
1 comment:
Looks like you had a good day in London, although I'm shocked that you didn't pay a visit to the historic Custom House on Lower Thames Street. Completed in 1817, part of it collapsed into the Thames mud and had to be rebuilt in 1825. Then the Luftwaffe did some damage which wasn't repaired until 1966. I know all this because I have a 'Souvenir Guidebook' in front of me! OK, to tell the truth you didn't miss much (FCO get all the decent artwork) but you will remember next time, won't you!!
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