Arts & Culture

BBC Online has reinstated its arts section. It abandoned it a few years ago and any art stories were subsumed under "Entertainment", which mainly featured pop charts and occasionally female pop singers whose boobs had fallen out of their outfits. I complained (not about the errant boobs), but the BBC mandarins took no notice. Suddenly a new Arts & Culture webpage has sprung up (CLICK), subheaded Knowledge & Learning Beta (CLICK). The most interesting article is The Royal Academy and the Hangmen, a brief history of the Royal Academy of Arts and its Summer Exhibition. Shown is Johan Zoffany's The Portraits of the Academicians of the Royal Academy (1771-72). Ostensibly this is a painting of a life study class with two nude male models, but it depicts all 34 founding members of the RA, including Zoffany. The top right corner shows framed paintings of two ladies: Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman. They were also founding members, but were shown as paintings on the wall because it was thought indelicate to have them gawking at nude male models!