Jubilations from Cassone!

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I  have often thought we British take our Queen for granted. She has reigned over us for 60 years and she and her husband, she in her 80s and he in his 90s, are still working and serving our nation. But the Diamond Jubilee celebrations this month are proving just how much we appreciate the tireless work of the Queen who came to the throne as a young woman of only 25. On Cassone we are trying to give you a flavour of just what is going on across Britain as we are gripped by Jubilee fever. The city of Norwich, my nearest commercial centre, is positively festooned with flags, bunting, cut out corgis, and anything else perceived as remotely ‘Royal’. The Royal estate at Sandringham is in Norfolk, so the county feels quite possessive of the Royal family. Do check out our Jubilee articles, and also look at the free Art News to see the varied celebrations nationwide.

In this month’s edition we have Jenny Kingsley visiting the Museum of Brands to see ‘the artful packaging with Jubilee images of the household products most people use regularly’. Rosalind Ormiston went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the exhibition ‘The Queen: Art and Image’, which Cassone covered when it opened in Edinburgh in August 2011.  She reports on the new show at Kensington Palace celebrating the previous Diamond Jubiliee in 1897. There are some fabulous treasures from the Royal Collection on show in Edinburgh, as Patricia Andrew describes this month. Even London Zoo has got in on the act, with some charming photographs of the Queen visiting the Zoo as a child, and other memorabilia. We have recently covered a number of events that are still running, e.g The Crown Jewels and touring exhibitions such as ‘Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton: A Diamond Jubilee’ in our March issue. See our list in Art News.

Our free article this month is a review of Bridget Riley's new show, split across two galleries in central London, Karsten Schubert and Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, by Frances Follin. This is a show that takes you back to the exciting, even revolutionary, spirit of the 1960s.

I visited the V&A for their exhibition ‘Ballgowns: British Glamour since the 1950s’. We have some images of these amazing ballroom creations. Peter Jones went to the Barbican Centre’s exhibition in London, ‘Bauhaus: Art as Life’ which he simply describes as ‘superb’.

Victoria Keller reports on the Vuillard exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York – if you think art should be colourful, this one is for you. Meanwhile, Robert Radford has reviewed the catalogue for another exhibition  In Wonderland: the Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States which was shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art before travelling to Quebec and Mexico City.

Our interview this month is with Dr David Anfam, who talks to Mark Rawlinson about the newly opened Clyfford Still Museum in Denver in the US and why ‘Quite simply, Clyfford Still was one of the two or three key figures of the movement that we call – for want of a better word, I guess – Abstract Expressionism’.

Our book reviews this month are very varied and include books on Bernini, photography of Venice, Pre-Raphaelite Drawing, William
Blake and William Morris, a wonderful American art collection, a Dutch interpretation of country house style, and glass at the British Museum.

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If you are in Britain I hope you enjoy the Jubilee mood of the month, and if you elsewhere in the world I hope you will forgive us a bit of indulgence in our national pride.