NY in awe of London's art
London is eclipsing New York as the world capital for art - according to The New York Times art critic.
Michael Kimmelman says the new Saatchi Gallery and hit shows at the Tate and National Gallery are evidence that London is "besotted" with art. He says "mobs" congregate each morning for the "stupendous" Titian exhibition at the National Gallery.
"It's just possible that for now even New York doesn't even rival London's appetite for new art," says Kimmelman, after spending several days "jostling fellow art tourists" and "trying to gaze between scrums of
visitors". His verdict follows a whistle-stop tour of Tate Britain, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and "Tracey Emin's unmade bed, Chris Ofili's glittery Madonna with elephant dung and Damien Hirst's pickled shark" at the new Saatchi gallery.
Kimmelman is full of praise for the way London collections display new artists alongside Old Masters, as with sculptures of Ron Mueck at the National Gallery.
He takes to task New York's famous Metropolitan Museum of Art, saying it "would do well to cultivate similar connections with artists, to remind people that old art is germane to art made now and vice versa".
New York has always prided itself as being on the cutting edge of modern art, from the days of Jackson Pollock after the Second World War.
The supremacy continued with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in the Sixties, when private galleries sprang up alongside the Museum of Modern Art.
But the rise of Emin, Hirst and Rachel Whiteread have brought a new vibrancy to the London scene.
