Tim Worstall

What nobody seems to think worth mentioning is how corporate sponsorship changes the very meaning of these palaces of culture. The British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, in particular, are meant to stand for who we are as a people, as a democracy. They are the cathedrals of democracy. He really does seem to [...]

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What is your favourite smell? New shoes. Fair enough. Bit pandering to the female stereotype perhaps and requiring of a system that produces new shoes cheaply and efficiently so we can all have them. But still, fair enough. What makes you unhappy? Misogyny and capitalism. Oh well, fortunately we look to actresses for ability at [...]

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So, Portugal closes down the Ministry of Culture, tells artists to go fend for themselves. Art thrives. So, when do we close the Arts Council?

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The current cuts to the arts and humanities spell out the end of the British people’s emancipation through culture. For me, it’s like ripping up the Magna Carta. The government spending less money on luvvies is exactly like abolition of the right to trial by jury, eh?

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€30 of steel scrap or €800,000 of artwork? It is thought that one of the pieces the thieves were trying to offload for scrap was a steel sculpture by Basque artist Chillida titled “Topos IV”, valued at 800,000 euros (£675,000). Detectives at the time said the robbery had the hallmarks of “an inside job” and [...]

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Tomorrow morning Somerset county council will decide whether it will cut 100% of its direct grants to the arts, amounting to roughly half its total cultural spend. Mustn’t allow them to do that now, must we? You know, democratically elected politicians deliberating over how to spend the taxpayers’ money? No, of course not, that would [...]

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Amusing little theory here: Over a seven-year period, the US market share of box-office takings in British cinemas was between 63% and 80%. The UK share, which was mainly for American co-productions, was between 15% and 30%; films from Europe and the rest of the world took only 2% to 3%. So for most people [...]

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This was a great and really fun article, people going out and beautifying (well, OK, to taste) the world through individual and communal action. No, really. Then the beginning of para 9 This might explain the increasing desire of councils and art institutions to commission yarn bombers to create official works of art. Yup, it [...]

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I was once asked to look at a portfolio of pencil drawings by an ex-prisoner; they were trite, unaccomplished, cliched, clumsy and painful to look at. They were without a scintilla of merit. When I said so than man’s astonished representative said “But the prison art visitor said he has a rare talent”. “What was [...]

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And here we have it explained to us. How excellent, a better road map for what we should be cutting. You want it, you pay for it.

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When Williams made this argument for what he called moral luck, it provoked huge controversy. Wasn’t an act either moral or immoral, regardless of the consequences? Would Gauguin’s abandonment of his family have been justifiable if he’d drowned on the way to Tahiti? Or if he’d been simply a bad watercolourist? The argument is being [...]

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Playwright says that arts subsidies should be spent on playwrights not the marketing department! Surprise, eh?

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On the horrors of having to do a day job while trying to be an artist: What a day job inevitably means, of course, is spending the majority of your waking hours not doing the thing you love: Just like everyone else then, eh?

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James Cameron, the director of the 3D blockbuster Avatar, has been accused of ripping off ideas from two popular Soviet Union science fiction writers. Well, yes, there do seem to be similarities. But then he’s also ripped off Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas and any number of other trite fables.

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The Times disclosed in April that a sculpture bought by the Royal Festival Hall from the trust had been made by Colin Pitchfork, who was serving life for killing two teenage girls. The centre withdrew the item, publicly apologised and said that it would “have a conversation with the Koestler Trust about future policy”. Kath [...]

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The chief executive of the Royal Opera House writes….well, don’t bother to read it, I’ll give you a precis. We’re special, the arts, so we deserve more tax money. That’s pretty much it. No mention of the way in which the entire State arts budget is simply a subsidy from the non-metropolitan poor to the [...]

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And once you’ve accepted that Tracey is the art world’s Chantelle or Jade Goody, Mark Hudson.

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Neither is John Veals, the odious hedge-fund manager created by Sebastian Faulks, who masterminds a cynical short-selling scheme that will make him millions but hasten the ruin of the Allied Royal Bank, a thinly disguised Royal Bank of Scotland. OK, but could those artists try and find out about the crisis before they start writing? [...]

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THE artist Grayson Perry has woven the 21st-century answer to the Bayeux Tapestry. Instead of the Norman invasion, the Walthamstow Tapestry, which is 49ft long, tells the story of modern Britain’s conquest by the ideology of consumerism. … Three copies of the Walthamstow Tapestry have been made — one will hang at the Victoria Miro [...]

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