...In the face of a cacophony of disaster, works of art can have an appealing quality - they are their own contained universes, created from, but often unaffected by, our own. The finite edges of a painting, the constancy of a sculpture, or the familiar reproduction of symphonic notes, offer a fixed point against which to observe and contextualise our own moment of flux...
The National Gallery has been part of my life for a long time now, from the excitement of boyhood day trips up to London with my father to the hours spent in each room as a student, those grand halls on Trafalgar Square have been a reassuring constant all my life. So, when the Coronavirus outbreak arrived and the lamps went out in cultural institutions all over Europe, it was only a matter of time before Britain's artistic treasure trove was locked away.
Morgan Haigh 