Speed

Tomorrow the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, USA, opens an interesting "concept" exhibition: Speed, which looks at how artists from different cultures depict speed. One of the exhibits is Stephen Fox's beautiful painting Roadside (1990). The artist seems more concerned with capturing reflections and the quality of failing light at dusk than he does with speed. A long photographic exposure showing streaking tail lights would convey speed more effectively. Nevertheless, a masterly painting and a novel concept for an exhibition. And it's free! Next time the curators should broaden their horizons and include some of the great comics illustrators, sci-fi artists and video games designers, who really know how to depict speed, especially as this is an "outreach" show. UK museums, galleries and libraries have also been lumbered with this notion of "outreach". They're supposed to drag in punters from the ghettos, as though a whiff of culture will stop gang members from trading "skunk" and knifing and shooting one another! What wacko thinks up this twaddle?