The private view
Thursday 1 March had been months in the planning: since summer 2017, the date had been earmarked for the private view and party to celebrate the opening of The Classical Now exhibition at Bush House and Somerset House.
The invitations for the event were sent out in January: while we all hurried to bring the various parts of the exhibition together, we had 1 March as our fixed deadline. Working with the brilliant Cultural Programming team at King’s, we had contingency plans for most eventualities. But it’s fair to say that the final week of February threw up a number of challenges. Two stand out in particular. The first was the UCU strike. Thankfully, we had received most of the deliveries before picket lines formed at King’s. But one object – a wonderful British Museum statue of Venus – had in the end to be hand-carried across the King’s campus before being installed in Somerset House. The second challenge was the weather – ‘Storm Emma’, as it came to be known . As snow brought Britain to a standstill (‘Emmageddon’), there was much anxiety about what to do with our opening. At one stage, there was even talk of postponing the event…
We are very glad that we didn’t. Although train cancellations and general travel chaos meant that some people were unable to join us, we were able to celebrate the private view with nearly 300 people. The brilliant team at King’s Venues did us proud, with drinks receptions both in Bush House Arcade and Somerset House. There were speeches in Bush House by Evelyn Welch (Provost for Arts and Sciences at King’s), Christian Levett (Founder of MACM [Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins]) and Michael Squire (project lead of ‘Modern Classicisms’). For those closely involved in the exhibition, the celebrations continued with an after-party dinner at Fernandez and Wells in Somerset House – and truth be told, an after-after-party that extended into the early hours of the following day… As the snowstorms continued, nothing chilled our spirits. And we were delighted to celebrate the culmination of all our hard work with so many friends, partners and artists.
