Editing Kenneth Clark (section)

====Wartime====
The approach of war with Germany in 1939 obliged Clark and his colleagues to consider how to protect the National Gallery's collection from bombing raids. It was agreed that all the works of art must be moved out of central London, where they were acutely vulnerable. One suggestion was to send them to Canada for safekeeping, but by this time the war had started and Clark was worried about the possibility of submarine attacks on the ships taking the collection across the Atlantic; he was not displeased when the prime minister, [[Winston Churchill]], vetoed the idea: "Hide them in caves and cellars, but not one picture shall leave this island."<ref name=war2>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-gallery-in-wartime/the-gallery-in-wartime?viewPage=2 "The Gallery in wartime"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205185058/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-gallery-in-wartime/the-gallery-in-wartime?viewPage=2 |date=5 February 2018 }}, The National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> A [[Bwlch y Slaters quarry|disused slate mine]] near [[Blaenau Ffestiniog]] in north Wales was chosen as the store. To protect the paintings special storage compartments were constructed, and from careful monitoring of the collection discoveries were made about control of temperature and humidity that benefited its care and display when back in London after the war.<ref name=war2/>

[[File:Myra Hess.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.05|[[Myra Hess]], inspiration and mainstay of the National Gallery's wartime concerts]]
With an empty gallery to preside over, Clark contemplated volunteering for the [[Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve]], but was recruited, at Lord Lee's instigation, into the newly formed [[Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Information]], where he was put in charge of the film division, and was later promoted to be controller of home publicity.<ref>Stourton, pp. 178–179 and 184</ref> He set up the [[War Artists' Advisory Committee]], and persuaded the government to employ official [[war artists]] in considerable numbers.  There were up to two hundred engaged under Clark's initiative. Those designated "official war artists" included [[Edward Ardizzone]], [[Paul Nash (artist)|Paul]] and [[John Nash (artist)|John Nash]], [[Mervyn Peake]], [[John Piper (artist)|John Piper]] and [[Graham Sutherland]].<ref>Foss, pp. 196–201</ref> Artists employed on short-term contracts included [[Jacob Epstein]], [[Laura Knight]], [[L. S. Lowry]], [[Henry Moore]] and [[Stanley Spencer]].<ref>Foss, p. 202</ref>

Although the pictures were in storage, Clark kept the National Gallery open to the public during the war, hosting a celebrated series of lunchtime and early evening concerts. They were the inspiration of the pianist [[Myra Hess]], whose idea Clark greeted with delight, as a suitable way for the building to be "used again for its true purposes, the enjoyment of beauty."<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started "The Myra Hess Concerts: How the concerts started (1)"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170330103506/http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started |date=30 March 2017 }}, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> There was no advance booking, and audience members were free to eat their sandwiches and walk in or out during breaks in the performance.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started?viewPage=3 "The Myra Hess Concerts: How the concerts started (2)"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205184821/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/how-the-concerts-started?viewPage=3 |date=5 February 2018 }}, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> The concerts were an immediate and enormous success. ''[[The Musical Times]]'' commented, "Countless Londoners and visitors to London, civilian and service alike, came to look on the concerts as a haven of sanity in a distraught world."<ref>Ferguson, Howard. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/953712 "Dame Myra Hess"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227090636/https://www.jstor.org/stable/953712 |date=27 February 2018 }},   ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 107, No. 1475 (January 1966), p. 59 {{subscription required}}</ref> 1,698 concerts were given to an aggregate audience of more than 750,000 people.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/the-music?viewPage=3 "The Myra Hess Concerts: The Music"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205185025/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/the-myra-hess-concerts/the-music?viewPage=3 |date=5 February 2018 }}, National Gallery, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref> Clark instituted an additional public attraction of a monthly featured picture brought from storage and exhibited along with explanatory material. The institution of a "picture of the month" was retained after the war, and, at 2025, has continued to the present day.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/picture-of-the-month/picture-of-the-month-december-2024 "Picture of the month"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241230132726/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/picture-of-the-month/picture-of-the-month-december-2024 |date=30 December 2024 }}, National Gallery, December 2024</ref>

In 1945, after overseeing the return of the collections to the National Gallery, Clark resigned as director, intending to devote himself to writing. During the war years he had published little. For the gallery he wrote a slim volume about Constable's ''[[The Hay Wain]]'' (1944); from a lecture he gave in 1944 he published a short treatise on [[Leon Battista Alberti]]'s ''[[De pictura|On Painting]]'' (1944). The following year he contributed an introduction and notes to a volume on Florentine paintings in a series of art books published by [[Faber and Faber]]. The three publications totalled fewer than eighty pages between them.<ref>[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13051015 "The Hay Wain"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205191920/http://www.worldcat.org/title/hay-wain-in-the-national-gallery-london/oclc/13051015%26referer%3Dbrief_results |date=5 February 2018 }}, [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/217132247 "Leon Battista Albert On Painting"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205184848/http://www.worldcat.org/title/leon-battista-alberti-on-painting/oclc/217132247?ht=edition&referer=di |date=5 February 2018 }}, and [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/940292484 "Florentine Paintings"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205184819/http://www.worldcat.org/title/florentine-paintings-fifteenth-century/oclc/940292484?referer=di&ht=edition |date=5 February 2018 }}, WorldCat, retrieved 18 June 2017</ref>