West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Published: 6 February 2009
Saving our art heritage
• CONGRATULATIONS on the central role your newspaper played in preventing our NHS from sending the Frederick Cayley Robinson works of art to auction (Hospital paintings stay on display, January 30). Know that a helpful letter secured from Westminster City Council by Councillor Rebecca Hossack has given assurances that the Grade II-listed Middlesex Chapel, with its ravishing Byzantine marbles, will not be allowed to suffer in its, extant, at-much-risk situation.
For everyone who fought to honour this gift to our medical history, profound thanks.
AJ Budden
Fitzroy Square, W1
q Your report on the successful acquisition of the Frederick Cayley Robinson works, formerly in the Middlesex Hospital by the Wellcome Foundation, is to be warmly welcomed (Hospital paintings stay on display, January 30).
A pity that they couldn’t have been displayed in the new University College Hospital where large areas of white blank wall, for example in reception, are crying out for the colour of the CAYLEY ROBINSONS
Martin Andrews
Guilford Street
WC1
• IT is good news that the Cayley Robinson paintings have found a home and are to be on public display in the Wellcome Trust Library, but sadly not in the University College Hospital. You deserve credit for playing a part in the campaign to save these pictures, but how churlish not to acknowledge the key role played by the Charlotte Street Association, who campaigned for over five years to stop these paintings being sold off by UCH. Indeed the paintings were destined for America until the trust’s intervention.
It was the Charlotte Street Association who first alerted the public to the importance of these paintings and particular connection with the hospital. JIM MONAHAN
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