Ran Dian Magazine

28/10/2025

A nice Wang Keping tai-chi master outside IMP tower in Guangzhou. But it is also just deco: weighty, pleasant, anodyne, nostalgic – such like synonyms. Not political. No opinion. Elevated safely from dog p*e.

26/10/2025

Just because we post an artwork does not mean we likes it.

26/10/2025

We agree it is stupid. This is about director ego, not what's needed.

Gabriele Finaldi, the director of the National Gallery, likes to think big. Just months after unveiling the gallery’s new entrance he announced plans for a new wing. Normally these announcements launch ambitious funding targets, but Finaldi has already raised £375m. If we add on the £95m raised for the NG200 development and various picture acquisitions, then in ten years as director he has raised over half a billion pounds.

This alone is an astonishing achievement. No other cultural leader in the UK or Europe has come close. Finaldi will rival Neil MacGregor as Britain’s most consequential museum director of modern times. In fact, they will be a fitting double act; it was MacGregor who had the foresight to acquire the site on which the new wing will be built.

Finaldi, however, wants more. For he is also radically changing the National Gallery’s collecting criteria. Previously, the gallery has displayed paintings up to around 1900. Finaldi now wants to go up to the present day. The National Gallery, for two centuries devoted to historic art, will become within a decade a museum of both Modern and contemporary art.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/10/24/comment-uk-national-gallery-new-remit-competition-tate

Diary of an art historian is a monthly blog by the British art historian, writer and broadcaster Bendor Grosvenor discussing the pressing issues facing the arts today

25/10/2025

XU HONGFEI 許鴻飛, Flying Piano 飛琴

25/10/2025

25/10/2025

Outside Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera

23/10/2025

Thomas Houseago’s Striding Figure hanging out at the Rosewood Guangzhou

23/10/2025

Striding Figure by Thomas Houseago

08/10/2024

ouch

Hayward Gallery, London This busy retrospective of the Korean artist’s collage-heavy work uses terms like ‘displacement’ and ‘interconnectivity’ but you’d be better off just taking a walk to the shops

10/09/2024

Revealing BBC interview with rising star Vietnamese-US artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen (in Vietnam you will need a VPN to access the interview). https://wspartners.bbc.com/episode/w3ct5tl3

09/09/2024

Rebecca Horn 1944-2024 —a rare artist of change and influence as well as enormous imagination.

18/05/2024

great review!

1.9M likes, 32.3K comments. “Cost of living really taking its toll on marnie🤣”