PREMIUM
Federica Stefani, a young Italian journalism student, at the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Galleries looking at the Salvador Dali painting Christ of Saint John of the Cross. Picture: Kirsty Anderson IT takes me almost two hours to walk 60 years into the past. The journey is unremarkable, a promenade from my garret down a footpath alongside a dual carriageway, leading me into Partick then over the Kelvin. The destination, though, is profoundly personal. The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is the birthplace of much that has enhanced my life. It may be odd to claim I owe so much to a building. But it is true.
Art behind locked doors: How galleries continue to suffer during COVID-19
Museums around the world are struggling to cope under COVID-19 lockdowns. While some have turned to online exhibits, others are doubting whether they can survive.
Located near Hamburg s famed but now shuttered fish market, the Hamburger Kunsthalle museum is in lockdown yet its walls are freshly adorned with paintings by Italian master Giorgio de Chirico (1888 to 1978). His dreamlike cityscapes painted between 1909-1919 were a forerunner to surrealism, and can now be enjoyed via a virtual online tour. The exhibition opening was also live streamed to the public.
De Chirico is the painter of empty spaces, the painter of nightmares in the midst of society, said Kunsthalle museum director Alexander Klar at the opening of the Magical Reality exhibition.
‘The present, after all, holds everything. The Wee Man knows this. The past does offer lessons but it can also be a repository of guilt and remorse’ IT’S become more than a routine, rather a highlight of the week. Every Friday we head for a walk. In times of Covid relaxation, base camp is McQue’s in Bannockburn: steak pie and fizzy water for me, macaroni and fruit juice for him. I don’t drink. He’s two years old. The itinerary has been well established. We start at Corbiewood trotting stadium where I once threw fivers about with the abandon of a sailor on shore leave. I don’t gamble now, largely for the same reason I don’t drink and don’t hit my head off walls.