National Gallery

Good. Yeah.

Beautiful colour...

Let's go...

We know, but I think

it's worth our trying to remember,

that the Middle Ages were religious,

profoundly religious,

in a way that we can't really conceive

nowadays.

I want you now to imagine, if you can,

that you are inside that church,

which you see as a model, and into which

this altarpiece was once placed.

So no big windows,

obviously no electric light,

but a space like this

with very narrow windows.

The light would be filtering in.

You're not in the National Gallery,

you're inside that church.

Low light, maybe the sound of chanting,

maybe the sound of prayers

being spoken slowly.

The smell of incense used

to carry up the prayers of the faithful

to the heavenly realm.

And, if you will, now, just imagine

that you are looking at this painting

by the light of candles.

Candles which flicker. Candles

which would shine against the gold.

And you might think - because, remember,

you can't read, you can't write,

the year is 1377, your houses are

too hot in summer, too cold in winter,

death is part of the threnody of everyday life,

people are dying all the time -

you might think to yourself,

"if I'm good, I can perhaps get up

to the kingdom everlasting,

"where all is good, great and golden

And I think another thing

might also happen.

By the flickering candlelight,

you might think that

these figures were moving.

If they were moving, they were real,

and could hear your prayer and intercede

for you with Christ and the Virgin in Heaven.

So the painting would be acting as a

sacramental channel from earth to Heaven.

And in a sense,

that's how this painting worked.

I don't mean to make this sound as crude,

perhaps, as I am,

but if you will, for a moment, just imagine

that I've brought from my pocket

a picture of a sweet grey, fluffy kitten,

and I've pinned it here,

and I've said, "Here are the darts,

aim for the eyes of the grey, fluffy kitten."

It's just a bit of paper, but in some way,

you feel that you might,

in a peculiar way you can't quite explain,

be hurting some fluffy kitten,

somehow, somewhere.

So I'm not suggesting to you that,

in the year 1377, or any time onwards,

people felt, "Oh! They're moving!

They're real! They can hear me!"

But with a same kind

of grey, fluffy kitten analogy,

I am suggesting to you that

there is a very strong attachment

between representation

and the thing itself.

So we're now in the National Gallery,

having a look quite quietly,

thinking about aesthetics and gold and

colours made from ground pigment.

But what we must remember is how

this was originally intended to be seen.

So, I've tried to sort of pull together

my first thoughts,

and I don't mean this to be a criticism...

I don't... I'm quite keen on criticism.

No, I'm just trying to be very open here.

I think what comes out of it

is that, as an organisation -

I suppose that's probably

a bit why I'm here -

our public voice is quite

weakly represented

when we have forums together

and we're talking about things.

And I kind of tried to chunk

that up this morning, of,

"How does that manifest itself?"

One is that just, quite simply,

I still find it quite amazing

that we don't kind of really talk much

about the public and the visitors.

But actually, I don't think that, when

it comes to a lot of what we talk about,

in some of our meetings

that actually are talking about

communications out to the public,

we're not necessarily focusing on those

52 million people and their needs

as much as I think we could be

and should be.

It would be good to think

that we could foster a culture

where we focus a little bit more on,

you know, "What are our public needs

and how are we meeting them?"

- Yeah.

- I was thinking... My next little diagram -

this was all three o'clock in the morning,

son of stuff -

I was thinking, if we are, you know,

the National Gallery,

and we were talking about, you know,

Old Masters at our heart,

and we are a number of things,

we're conservation, research,

preservation, heritage, all around

the collection and education of it,

we are also a visitor attraction, and I know

that word's horrid, but we are also that,

and if our mission is to make our Old

Masters more central lo modern cultural life,

then I think there needs

to be more of that dialogue

around the audience as the centre as well.

Still having art at the centre, but it's like

having another bubble that comes off,

where we're looking

at those audience needs,

and the conversations will talk about,

you know,

how are people reacting to us emotionally,

in terms of their pleasure,

in terms of intellectualism,

in terms of the academic side,

in terms of self-development, spiritually?

And those kind of conversations can help

inform the son of decision-making

that we're doing in meetings

like that titian meeting yesterday.

I thought that meeting yesterday

was fantastic,

and I think the outcome

was absolutely right.

But I think, going forward, it would be good

if we could have more conversation

about the audience that are gonna...

what their needs are,

and what our communications

need to reflect going forward.

Alongside, you know,

what we want to say about the art,

we also need to be thinking the end person

that's gonna see our communications.

- Yeah.

- What are their needs?

And I found some of the meetings

that we have,

particularly the sort of, you know,

very large meetings,

where perhaps a curator's standing up

and talking about a subject, is fantastic,

but there needs to be the other dialogue

that goes on that then carries it on

so we're not just seeing it

from "What's our perspective?"

but "What's the perspective of the people

"that are actually gonna see

what we're trying to show them

"through our exhibitions

and marketing and stuff?"

So my hope - and this is, you know,

if there's this opportunity

to talk about one's vision going forward

with the trustees in June -

my hope is that we can make that dialogue

more central to what we're doing

at exec, and in some

of our exhibition meetings.

And on my side, I'm trying to imbue,

you know, the marketing and PR side

with more of that stepping back

and actually looking at things

from the audience point of view.

So it's a question of balance. I'm trying

to get, perhaps, a more balanced view,

where our processes enable us to look

at the end user's needs, sort of thing...

- Yes.

- ...alongside the curatorial needs.

I understand all this. I would like to have

some examples of where you've felt...

we've failed, or because we hadn't...

done this...

A lot of what we do is absolutely beautiful

in terms of exhibitions,

lovely when it comes to the marketing,

beautiful imagery,

absolutely gorgeous, high quality...

But I think, because we're sometimes

not going through that process

of thinking of it

from the audience perspective,

we sometimes don't do that,

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