Dave Kean

I’m a sucker for great museums, there are few better ways to kill an afternoon. I have some favorites, both esoteric and mainstream.  The Design Museum and National Portrait Gallery in London, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Udvar-Hazy Center in Washington,  the awesome Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Milan and so on.

Clearly it’s not a short list and this week it got a little longer when the Getty Center got added.

A great museum is more than just what’s inside, the setting should enhance the collection. My favorite example is the Tate modern, enter by walking down the ramp into what used to be the turbine hall of the Bankside power station. This is reuse on a huge scale and the industrial setting complements the collection perfectly.

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Today I went to London to meet some friends for lunch. I did this last year and arrangements were similar: downstairs bar the Hard rock Café sometime around one.  Lunch was good , stories told, laughs shared and beer drunk.

In addition to lunch I spent a couple of hours in the Tate Modern and Tate Britain. Every time I visit I find a new artist whose work I like, and today it was Lynn Leeson. there were a couple of interesting pieces. Once again I sure many people know who she and are shaking thatir head at my lack of knowledge, I really don’t think I’m that much of a philistine, but it’s just how it is.

This is just about my favorite piece of art anywhere, Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein. It’s part of the permanent collection of the Tate Modern, it’s a gallery I can spend many hours wandering around. There was an Gerhard Richter exhibit going on, it’s art on a large scale and rather good.

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Related articles

• The best exhibitions of 2012 (telegraph.co.uk)
• Slick art sponsorship: BP and the Tate (guardian.co.uk)