Why the National Portrait Gallery was right to close for a fashion show
The NPG has come under fire for hosting this week’s Erdem extravaganza – unfairly so, says Hannah Betts
This week, for the first time in its 162-year history, the National Portrait Gallery shut its doors on an outraged public to transform itself into a venue for the few. On Monday, an institution created to unite rich and poor in an appreciation of the arts hosted a fashion show by designer Erdem Moralioğlu. His label, Erdem, is a favourite of the Duchess of Cambridge, the gallery’s patron, prompting the predictable conspiracy theories.
Those of us confined to Instagram for our viewing of the occasion can confirm that it looked incredibly lovely: Erdem’s exquisite embellishment is a terrific fit for a venue in which the great and the good can be seen getting their swag on.
However, it occurred at a time when visitor numbers have been revealed to be down 42 per cent, and at their lowest for more than a decade. And it’s not just the NPG – the National Gallery has also recorded its lowest figures in years, with 2017’s May-december visits down 20 per cent. Cue siren voices declaring the end of Trafalgar Square, doom for our national collections, and the NPG’S fashion dalliance a rather Marie Antoinette-ish PR fail.
Various reasons have been posited for this decline, including the lingering menaces that are terrorism, Brexit and Southern Rail. Has art become something that the rich deploy as an excuse for a party, leaving the rest of us getting our visual kicks on Instagram; over-stimulated, yet under-nourished? Has television become so good that we are glued to our screens? Are we facing a new philistinism in which these great behemoths of the visual arts will be swallowed into some cultural abyss?
Happily, we shouldn’t read too much into these statistics. The current practice in which galleries lurch from one bums-on-seats blockbuster to another creates a similar lurching in figures. Last year’s Vogue exhibition at the NPG proved one of its greatest hits, after which a dip is only to be expected. Two others – Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends and The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt – failed to attract such queues, but that doesn’t make them any less successful.
To be sure, the Victoria & Albert Museum was up 29 per cent because of its Pink Floyd moment, Tate Britain up 53 per cent up thanks to David Hockney, but serious venues cannot always be chasing pop culture over the riches of their permanent collections. Besides, blockbusters can themselves prove off-putting to those of us who actually like looking at pictures rather than scrumming through of a mob of phone-brandishing selfie artistes.
While sounding like the old duffer I am, what pressingly needs attention is the ghastly bomb-site-cum-obstacle course that is the museums’ frontage. Trafalgar Square’s motley assembly of mime artists, buskers and floating Yodas – plus the occasional lamentable rock concert – is a national disgrace. It is grubby, difficult to navigate, and utterly dispiriting compared with the approaches to the British Museum or Tate Modern that fill one’s heart with pride. We got rid of the pigeons, now let’s tackle the feral buskers.
For this is a moment not for despair, but to reflect upon how we handle our national treasure troves. Last week it was the country’s museums, this week it’s our galleries. In this context, the NPG’S experimentalism is to be applauded. Its fashion collaboration is exactly the sort of thing it should be getting up to, and precisely the sort of activity its continental rivals routinely engage in. Given that it only receives a third of its income from government, hiring itself out provides vital income. Moreover, while visitor numbers may have been restricted in the short term, the publicity can only prove beneficial.
Let’s see more, not less radicalism. More late-night openings for childphobic night owls, more buggyfriendly mornings for art-deprived parents. Let’s have singles’ evenings to unite culture vultures tired of Tinder, and breed more future art lovers. The Wallace Collection hosts an annual LGBTQ+ bash that I’m told is a blast and both educational and recreational.
Nicholas Cullinan, the NPG’S director, is already a joy on Instagram, not least when highlighting jewels from the permanent collection. Let’s have more encouragement for punters not merely to elbow their way around the big boys, but seek out one extraordinary, life-transforming image. (I say this as someone for whom the NPG Tudor Gallery is their favourite place on earth.) And, if public interest comes in waves, then so be it: that makes these institutions all the more vital to keep the fine-art flag flying when we find ourselves distracted by pop stars, musical or artistic.
‘Let’s see more, not less radicalism. More late-nights, more buggy-friendly mornings’