Love at the Laing

The Laing Art gallery in Newcastle is showing another of its themed exhibitions. There have been several in the series and all feature heterogenous  works , mostly from the National Gallery. This allows the organisers to throw in anything they have available. The exhibits are shown in the Laing's wretched galleries with their thoroughly unpleasant and inadequate lighting. At the National Gallery these works have better visibility: here they are drained of life.Its not a matter of conservation.

There was a time when the Laing was co-host to major exhibitions on Claude and on Cezanne drawings. Such were the days....(The  elitist days of the past-I don't think!). Now we have NewcastleGateshead peddling the unsustainable vision of a major cultural capital. Never was hype and fashion so ill founded. In this The Baltic features but it is an institution which has lost its way .Though it seems to me that it never had a way in the first place. From the fashion for foreign directors- just like Tate Modern and  just the same in not staying long- there doesn't seem  to have been much   direction or coherence.