I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory merging the practical with the academic.

In the end the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning rather than protesting that like some poor relation they don't cost much to be housed.

The 1990s after the reign of terror of academic vandalism will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning value beauty pleasure and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.

My parents started with very little and were the only ones in their families to graduate from college. As parents they focused on education but did not stop at academics - they made sure that we knew music saw art and theatre and traveled - even though it meant budgeting like crazy.

Of course art world ethics are important. But museums are no purer than any other institution or business. Academics aren't necessarily more high-minded than gallerists.

I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahn's work. That is I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade Grotjahn isn't simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable curator-approved 'isms' and twists.