Interfered with in the park
The Arts and the Department of the Environment are in conflict in Hyde Park, of all places, and the modest endeavours of the Serpentine Gallery to establish a showplace for art in the park are being tiresomely frustrated. There was, to begin with, the affair of the windmills: forty of them, colourfully designed in red, white and blue by Ann Gattward to be mounted around the roof to identify the building amid the greenery. No sooner were they up than they were down — on the instructions of the department, prodded in turn by a Question in the House.
The anonymity of the gallery is further preserved by the environmentally all right nannies who use its front lawn as a rendezvous and playground for their aristocratic wards, and who keep the gate closed so the tots can't stray into the traffic outside while the nannies are chatting. To passers-by the gallery looks like a private day nursery. Even sculptress Wendy Taylor probably gets that idea, too — to judge by the trouble she was having the other day in keeping the kiddies out of the way while her works were being set up.
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