Whitechapel Gallery

Stan and Silver at the Whitechappel gallery in the East End, which is worth a note. WC a public art gallery, designed by famous architect Charles Harrison Townsend, and founded in 1901 - it was one of the first publicly-funded galleries for temporary exhibitions in London. (Nikolaus Pevsner described the original Whitechapel as "a wonderfully original and epoch-making building" in a part of London whose social diversity began in the 17th century, when it became the destination for incoming Huguenots, Portuguese, and Spanish Jews. By the end of the 19th century, it was a ghetto for poor East European Jews and Russians). Today it is known for its local outreach programs and supporting neighborhood artists, up-and-comers and the good and the great. Pablo Picasso's 'Guernica' in '38 here to protest the Spanish Civil War, for instance; "This is Tomorrow" in '56 brought Pop Art to the Brit and influenced the Swinging Sixties baby. The gallery recently re-opened following a year's renovation expanding space >70% and I am stunned to see early works by Lucian Freud, Peter Doig, Sarah Lucas and Chris Ofili - cow dung! Also Paul Nash and Ben Nicholson; rare early carvings by Henry Moore who recently had >20 works at Kew Gardens. A room is dedicated to the "Whitechapel Boys," a group of Jewish writers and artists from the East End who made substantial contributions to British Modernism from the 1920s.. Silver discusses this with an elderly Jewish women who is moved that Silver should know her history. Me, I am never surprised.