Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.
With the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle around the corner and yet another royal baby on the way, museums and artists are taking it upon themselves to stage some appropriately regal events. Hampshire Cultural Trust has decided to make the most of the excitement surrounding Ms Markle’s dress by staging a travelling exhibition of wedding gowns created throughout the past three centuries. Entitled ‘I DO!’, the show will include a fair bit of royal memorabilia, including ‘samples of the fabric used for Princess Marina’s wedding to the Duke of Kent’.
Meanwhile, artist Natalie Lennard has decided to celebrate the imminent appearance of William and Kate’s third child in singular style. Her new series of photographs, ‘Birth Undisturbed’, includes an Alison Jackson-style recreation of the Queen giving birth to Prince Edward in 1964. The images have been made to highlight the rarity of home births in the Royal Family: the Queen gave birth to her fourth child in the Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace, having refused the drugs that would have made her unconscious while in labour.
The photographs feature a plastic Prince Edward. ‘We used a prosthetic silicone baby commissioned especially for this series,’ Lennard tells Mail Online. ‘I used houmous for a vernix look!’
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