OMG, we had a nice afternoon on Sunday at the National Portrait Gallery. No, it really is a case of oh my God, because I've written so often about my fear and loathing of this apparently innocuous central London museum. But how could anyone get angry at the National Portrait Gallery? How did I?
It started when I did a series in the Guardian about great portraits. I'd never thought especially hard about the portrait before that, but the series made me believe passionately in the portrait's seriousness. This had the side effect of making me hate the National Portrait Gallery for its diminishment of artists – it is a gallery of people, and the artistic merit of their portraits has always been a secondary issue.
I still think the National's modern galleries are hopelessly addled with celebrity nonsense. But I have got to honestly record that seeing it with a child on Sunday was great fun – and more than fun. It was a brilliant educational experience that let us race through five centuries of history. If you want your kids to meet Henry VIII – through no less a window than Holbein's cartoon for the lost Whitehall Mural – and Charles II and Charles Darwin, this is the place to come. In fact, the gallery makes history accessible without any of the heritage costumery and jousting actors required elsewhere, just because the portrait is the most direct access we can have to people of the past.
So, yes – the National Portrait Gallery is a great asset to our nation's historical memory. There, I've said it.
