ON THE RADAR

What next at the Royal Academy? New brooms are sweeping through this stately organisation after the departure last year of its secretary (in effect, chief executive) Charles SaumarezSmith and president (in effect, chairman) Christopher Le Brun: they’ve been replaced respectively by the Germanborn Axel Rüger and the artist Rebecca Salter. But who will take the key post of artistic director, guiding the exhibitions programme? Tim Marlow, the most recent incumbent, is said to have applied for Rüger’s position. When he was passed over, he upped sticks and made for the top job at the Design Museum in Kensington. The gap that he leaves will be hard to fill. Runners and riders are rumoured to include Alex Farquharson, who has done a fine job at Tate Britain and may want to move on; Xavier Bray, perhaps under-challenged at the Wallace Collection; and Alistair Hudson, the affable Director of Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth. A more left-field choice would be Victoria Siddall, who has made a success of running London’s biggest international art fair, Frieze. Watch this space. Get your skates on if you want to catch Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, because the exhibition closes at 6pm this evening. Alas, its 15-week run is said to have been somewhat of a disaster, after a number of tepid reviews and, I am told, attendances running 70 per cent below budget. This figure has sent shock waves through the Barbican administration, which is already having problems convincing the Corporation of the City of London to continue its vital current level of funding. I’d been hoping to treat myself to a flit over to Paris to see the great ballet company at the Opéra national de Paris perform their exquisite production of Giselle, but it doesn’t look as though it will happen. Like so many other employees of the French state, the dancers are on strike and they’ve dug their silk slippers in deep. As their pensions start when they are 42 and are set at a rate of 45 per cent of their final salaries, I fear I’m on Macron’s side here. Perhaps the dancers – also beneficiaries of privileges dating back to Louis XIV’s patronage – need to remember the terrible consequence of the strike of 1905 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, where stars such as Pavlova and Karsavina petitioned for a day off and more money for shoes. The Tsar was having none of it, and the leader of the insurrection, Sergei Legat, killed himself in despair.