Grumpy Art Historian

Frieze Masters tries to make old pictures fashionable by mixing them with the moderns. I like my old masters unfashionable and splendidly...

Picture: Amazon Diane Fortunberry et al Body of Art Phaidon 2015 £39.95 The term is meant as a put-down, but I love coffee table ar...

Picture: Wales Online Two big Rembrandt deals have been announced recently. Both reveal wastefulness and foolishness in public art acqu...

The National Gallery has outsourced its security; the guards' strike was an abject failure, as AHN explains . The Union had a weak ha...

Reading bad books is miserable, but it's fun to review them. Good books are the opposite. I read more of them, but review fewer. I feel...

This summer I learned to swim, and it prompted reflection on the similarities between swimming pools and art galleries. No, really ... be...

I'm truly saddened by the death of Brian Sewell, saddened to a degree I've never before felt for some one I never met. He was a g...