From the magazine

Red-letter days for Gilbert & George

After a successful show in Moscow in 1990, the odd couple went on to even greater triumph in China three years later, as the long-suffering curator of both exhibitions describes

Lynn Barber
George Passmore (far left) and Gilbert Prousch at the opening of the Gilbert & George Centre, near the couple’s London home in Fournier Street, in March 2023 Getty Images
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 18 January 2025
issue 18 January 2025

James Birch is a somewhat mysterious art dealer and curator, whose first great triumph was mounting a Francis Bacon exhibition in Moscow in 1988. He wrote a gripping book about that adventure, Bacon in Moscow, and has now written an even more gripping follow-up, about taking Gilbert and George to Moscow, Beijing and Shanghai.

Mounting the Moscow exhibition meant getting drunk every night, but Birch carried it off with aplomb

Birch was born ‘circa 1956’, according to Wikipedia, and grew up in Primrose Hill, London.

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