The joy of socially distanced gallery-going

Not long after the pubs, big galleries have all started to reopen, like flowers unfolding, one by one. The timing reminded me of an anecdote that Lucian Freud used to tell about a Soho painter friend he took into the National Gallery after it had shut (as some senior artists are entitled to do). They arrived after closing time in the drinking holes of Soho, and the painter friend was staggering and swaying so much that Lucian — who was not easily rattled — became alarmed that he was going to put one of his flailing arms through a Rembrandt.

I wonder how those art-lovers of yesteryear would have coped with socially distanced visits. I think they may be an improvement, at least in some respects. The one-way system by which we must now go round museums sounds like a brake on spontaneity (one of the pleasures of picture-viewing is wandering on impulse from painting to painting and room to room). On the other hand, the reduction in visitor numbers to allow social distancing strikes me as a distinct plus.

Viewing art is not a group activity, so in a gallery solitude is never a problem. But crowds definitely are. I once spent a memorable hour or two in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel, a collection rich in masterpieces which that day had attracted no other customers at all. The attendants, presumably short of company, followed me around. In contrast, before the era of coronavirus seeing art in certain great museums — the Hermitage, the Louvre — was becoming impossible.

The pressure for museums to increase attendance figures is a political one: it’s a demonstration that the public, who pay the bills, are getting their money’s worth. For each individual, however, a rush-hour crush around a famous work is a distinct disadvantage.