While you lot debate whether there will or won't be actual Turner paintings in Margate's proposed Turner Gallery (see Open F-All Hours below), one place that is going to get a lend of the master's splendid daubs does indeed begin with an 'M'. Unfortunately it ends with an 'oscow'.Apparently, Russian millionaire Alisher Usmanov, who owns 25% of Arsenal Football Club, has underwritten the enormous insurance costs of putting on a Turner exhibition, and now Moscow's Pushkin Museum will display 112 oils and watercolours for three months this coming November.
The Turners are currently on display in Dallas, and I detect a pattern emerging here. It would seem that, in order to get Turner's works displayed in your home town, you need to be in possession of great quantities of oil, gas and millionaires. Well, oil we might be able to scrape off the beaches. Our council can provide the gas. And Ramsgate's got the millionaires! Sorted!
Click here for full story in The Times
11 comments:
You have it sir.
The project is chickenfeed and delusion from the outset.
Look at a Northern town ?
7 million for the study to determine how to spend regeneration funds of 2.3 billion.
(Hence the work has already started on free rewires, free double glazing, free new roofs, free structural repairs, free central heating.
600 million to improve standards in local technical colleges.
7 million for canal side developments.
3 million to tackle issues of fly tipping in an area the size of Margate.
Yes they have "Cultural quarters" and a sort of cafe society feel in pedestrianised town centre with theatres etc. But that aint a central plank of regeneration.
How much is the Turner Centre reckoned to be brought in for ?
The funding envisaged is a spit in the wind for a regeneration project.
Fact is that it started life as some Thanet Councillor's hobby horse plagiarising the idea of a chap called John Croft I think.
Still when it is destroyed in a gale we will all get a laugh.
I think the problem here is that some our local officials seem to think in terms of Dallas City Hall
Moscow’s Kremlin Margate’s TDC without being able to spot the differences
Michael. You, as a local historian, know better than me that part of Margate's early tourism appeal was Health. "Doctor Margate". Royal Sea Bathing.
What I wanted to see was to repeat history.
For example the Royal Sea Bathing Building. Make Margate the alternative therapy Glastonbury.
Split into units. herbalists. Reiki. Osteopaths. Sports masseuses. etc
Link the concept in to another Thanet enterprise ... agriculture.
Locally sourced food. Farmers markets.
Link in to tourism. Gym. Swim. Dance. Nosh and Drink.
But councillors and their public sector parasite advisors think the way to attract visitors is Arty fair.
I reckon Hearty fare.
7:04 has a good point on the historical links to health and well being this area offered and this is something that could be expanded on though not in the Sea Bathing, they're apartments now! Without wishing to pigeon hole people (but I will) people interested in the arts also tend to be interested in alternative health remedies. Perhaps an opening to offer clinic space for these businesses in the old Dreamland Cinema building? I would recommend you don't shoot down the TC on the back of the above assumption!
Ha Ha Ha Ha HA.......
The lunatics have indeed taken over the spa baths.
People will come and visit the Turnip centre, if it is part of a day out!
Not if it is to visit an Art Gallery set amongst a small bunch of cafes and a High Street that is boarded up!
TDC have driven the shops out of Margate and this will not be filled by Turnip Centre visitors. They will want something more!
Only in Thanet could you have an executive staff for a facility that does not exist or has no formal inventary of pictures!
And we are paying them good wages for this non existent gallery!
Could the one person holding a brain in the Council please turn the light out when all of our money has been thrown away!
I wrote to the Tate when plans for the Turner center first emerged to tell them that if Thanet council had any involvement at all this project would fail. As a resident of Margate for many years I didn't need to be psychic to know that. Yes I remember Christina Mc Quaid and her pals from London and Seven Oaks having lots of parties to celebrate their self invented status and little empire built from funds meant for a building that would put Margate on the Map and be a great educational facility benefiting local schools , artists and regeneration. Instead we get cheap looking casinos and retirment homes (the latest get rich quick scheme for those with the money to invest who know the right people). I'd like to put all the people involved in stocks in cecil square so we can spank thier bottoms.
Buildings also need recurrent income for their maintenance, not just capital for their construction.
There appears to be a bit of a problem with this when you look around Thanet at a number of existing public buildings and parks etc.
I assume TDC *does* has a plan to set aside money for the future maintenance of the Turner Center - or is that a problem for future generation to sort out?
Fred
Far be it from me to cast asperger's (yeah, right!) but since the closure of 'Thanet's alternative newspaper', there seems to have been a sharp rise in socially inept, pedantic, statistically boring and narrow minded comments on this blog!
I'm sure that 8 out of 10 readers (not including the burble bashing commentators) would agree!
Of course, I don't have any facts and figures to back this up but hey, current trends would negate the necessity for any of that old malarky, I'm sure.
An iconic building and crowds of art lovers flocking to Margate?
Dream on, the TC run the Droit House and have enough trouble keeping the clock working, they have access to the old M&S in the High Street, and now control the "gallery space" in the refurbished scrounge centre/library.
Where are the visitors flocking to any of this? They don't exist, and as they've effectively asset stripped the art facilities we once had they've removed the audience which did exist.
Hope Pomery and co. have long arms, they can pat themselves on the back for such a self-serving endeavour.
The Turner Centre is an ill planned and costly venture for Margate, and has no decent art treasures to house.These resources were better spent revitalising the High St etc. One wonders if it all goes wrong the longer plan is to use the space as Council Office/admin space.
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