Picturesque Planning

Interesting blog post about the Festival of Britain by Ben Cowell of the National Trust.  He reflects on how modern planning can incorporate sense of picturesque, of the local.  Jacquetta is mentioned because of her work on the Festival and because of the powerful sense of place evoked in A Land.  The post was prompted by Harriet Atkinson’s new book The Festival of Britain: A Land and its People (IB Taurus) , which I haven’t yet seen – will report further!

Jacquetta Hawkes and the Festival of Britain

Jacquetta Hawkes’s role in creating the Festival of Britain is one of her greatest achievements, recognised by the award of an OBE in the 1952 New Year Honours.  As archaeological advisor to the Festival, Jacquetta created exhibits which were correct in detail (as far as could be ascertained) and which captured the imagination of visitors with a “sense of mystery and drama”.  Find out more about this challenging project in Number 31 in our 100 Objects exhibition.

Henry Moore at the BBC

A collection of rarely-seen archive BBC programmes about Henry Moore is now available online, to complement the Tate Britain retrospective.  The programmes include innovative documentaries by John Read,  Monitor with Huw Wheldon, and a view of Moore’s 1972 Venice exhibition.  The Read documentaries in particular help the viewer understand Moore’s working methods and how he developed individual works such as his Festival of Britain sculpture.   There is also great emphasis on the inspiration of landscape, which is where Moore’s work meets Jacquetta’s ideas, to stunning visual effect in “A Land”.