Wednesday, January 20, 2010

National treasure

Neil Macgregor is a national treasure.

The various tv series he did while director of the National Gallery taught me a lot – I especially remember one about how technology affected art – different brushes, pigments, textures & qualities of paint & surfaces for painting on.

And now we have an ambitious radio series A History of the World in 100 Objects - a story of endless connections.

He has a gift for phrase making:

Packing for a journey starts with a toothbrush & ends with excess baggage.

If you can shape a stone you can shape a sentence.

There is a clear purpose behind all this, one which might even lead to accusations of special pleading about the right to hold, the rightness of holding all these objects in a British museum for the higher purpose of teaching us that we are all connected, people are people across time & space, not insuperably divided by ethnicity & culture; a point of view which is close to my own heart.

He may even be subtly reassuring us, get over your guilt about buying too much stuff; the things we make make us human.

Almost makes me want to go back to Toynbee, Wells & Childe to compare & contrast

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