Some principles

Recently I read that the Tate group of British art galleries, which includes the prestigious Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, will no longer be accepting any gifts from one of its wealthiest sponsors, the Sackler family in the USA, because their money comes from the sale of the contested prescription painkiller, OxyContin. This is a remarkable decision which gave me a new slant in my thinking about dependencies in the arts sector in general and sponsorship of the arts in particular.

When I was recently in Paris walking down the rue de Rivoli on my way to the Louvre, there was a group of three people in front of me – they could have been a mother with her two teenage kids. And each of them was holding up a selfie stick and filming themselves as they made their way down the street. I had never seen anything of the sort before. Now in a city like Paris you can see the excesses of the current selfie mania on every street corner. It’s only outsiders who seem able to enjoy the many wonderful views the city offers without resorting to the smartphone for a selfie that immortalises them in the scene.

When I booked my trip to New York where I hadn’t been for quite a few years, I had no idea that I would be there on exactly the weekend the UN Climate Action Summit was taking place where Greta Thunberg delivered her impassioned angry speech. Yet I was thinking about the state of the Earth and the way we are living on it when I visited the exhibition on American Native Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And some of these thoughts I'd like to share with you today.