There is perhaps just one of the many ‘achievements’ of Tony Blair’s New Labour administration that has proved uncontroversial and universally popular.  It also happens to be the only one that directly relates to this blog: the 2001 decision to abolish entry fees to a number of the UK’s major museums and art galleries.

How wonderful then to see the Times living up to its reputation and asking for us plebs to be charged again to ‘encourage quality’ in a recent article their web editors have signposted under “Intellect R.I.P.”:

***Read the article here***

I jest of course.  Despite the provocative headings used, the excellent Waldemar Januszczak is far too smart to make such a bizarrely regressive argument.  Instead he makes some very valid points about cultural relativism, commodification of the arts, and the funding imperative that can lead directly to lowest-common-denominator exhibitions.

In the light of my recent visit to a gallery in Mayfair I had already planned to address some of these issues myself in the weeks to come, but with a change of administration likely to be in the offing within the next two years these are questions that are unlikely to go away any time soon.  Watch this space for more.

Why is the Imperial War Museum celebrating James Bond?