Tim Cornwell's Diary: Local Hogel given Prince's arts medal

Published on Thursday 27 November 2008 21:03

SHE has given more than £20 million to the arts in Britain. Her Dunard Fund is a financial mainstay of Scottish orchestras and galleries. The Edinburgh International Festival would struggle to stay above the waterline without her, it is said.

Yesterday Dr Carol Hogel CBE, the American former concert pianist, became one of the first five recipients of the Prince of Wales's medal for arts philanthropy.

Fellow honourees were Roger De Haan, of the Saga group, for using the arts and culture in a regeneration drive for Folkestone, and Dr Martin and Carol Naughton, who gave the single biggest gift to the arts in Northern Ireland, to the Lyric Theatre.

Others were Lord and Lady Sainsbury, with gifts of more than 20 million over ten years; and Dame Vivien Duffield, of the Clore Duffield Foundation, who raised huge sums for the Royal Opera House and the Royal Festival Hall.

In a bitter public row, Hogel, who works through her Dunard Fund, said this April she was leaving Scotland for America in protest over a new levy on "non doms", who do not pay tax on earnings overseas. Two weeks after this and other protests the Chancellor watered down the proposals, dropping onerous requirements for detailed information on off-shore trusts.

Hogel is still resident in Edinburgh, the Dunard Fund confirmed this week – 30 years after she first performed here as a pianist. It will bring relief all round in the arts world.

The EIF, Scottish Opera, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra jointly nominated her for the medal, presented yesterday.

"She's passionate about the performing arts and a pianist in her own right, but also in that American traditional of philanthropy, she really wants to do good by the communities she's chosen to live in," said Scottish Opera's Alex Reedijk.

Richter's small scale

There have been mutters on the gallery circuit over visitor numbers at Gerhard Richter exhibition on the Mound in Edinburgh. He may be one of the world's greatest painters, the complaint goes, but is not a household name. So is this spectacularly reviewed show actually pulling the punters in? It depends how you look at it, says a National Galleries of Scotland spokeswoman. "From the opening weekend (8 November] we have had really good visitor numbers, with 4,000 so far." That's a good way to the target for the two-month show, closing on 4 January, of 12,500 visitors, she says.

That target's not exactly high, though. A big summer show can pull in more than 100,000. The numbers compare more closely to the Douglas Gordon show, by Scotland's Turner Prize-winner, which filled the same time-slot but also struggled for name recognition and pulled in barely 10,000 people.

It's a shame. Richter's artwork is magnificent, and the galleries have staged a major publicity campaign for the show. There have been troubles with the banners on the front door of the building being ripped up by high winds. That may have hit the walk-in trade.

"There was a problem with the gales but that's being resolved now, and on the opening weekend there were tramworks right in front of the gallery," says the spokeswoman.

Art of conversation

PERHAPS the galleries could take a leaf out of this book. Fresh in from New York; Overheard at the Museum, a nifty little title that carries real-life snippets of conversation caught in the corridors of great art institutions.

First, the obvious: "Let's go to the giftshop first," or "You can do the show. I'll wait in the lobby." Then, the predictable: "Do you think it's genuine?"

On the wild side the author, Judith Henry, also caught this one: "I don't care for the haystacks and I've seen them all." Alternatively, as someone muses over a classic painting: "Where did you get those little prints you have in the bathroom?"

There's clearly a case for setting up a secret recorder beside those 50 million Titians…