The Mayor has belatedly realised that dabbling in statues and street names does nothing to grow the economy, improve air quality or fight a cost of living crisis.
Norfolk Council owns 162,378 pieces of art, with just 735, or 0.5 per cent, on display; Cambridgeshire owns 68,557 and has just 17 on display.
The British Museum has rightly been challenged. But many local authorities also have cultural treasures in storage. It’s hidden away from the public. Yet there is a refusal to release any items for sale.
We have Rugby’s Lego Trail, a pop-up beach in Stoke, and Wigan splashing out £125,000 on social media campaigning.
Too often councillors are cheerleaders-in-chief for incongruous cultural blots on our landscapes.
For too long the space has played host to ugly and vacuous ‘public art’. This is a much, much better use for it.
Thousands have signed rival petitions to save, or remove, an early 19th century, Grade II* listed, pub sign in a Derbyshire town.
The average value of collections for each council is around £7 million.
If artists are so unwilling to accept the support of industrial companies, perhaps they should be prepared to live off box office receipts alone.
If you believe in this idea of conservatism; if you want new faces at the table; if you share these ambitions, then please say so.
The noise that he picks up, with an almost clairvoyant sense, is not that of a queue waiting to vote but of a mob pitching the mighty from their seats.
‘The Fallen’ has become synonymous with the act of remembrance, but the origins of the poem are less well-known.
Unlike statues of Confederates in the US, the memorials to these icons of British history should stay.
The art treasures must be put on display.
It has a constructive role to play, supporting artistic creativity without interfering with content.