London’s art world was in cacophonously good voice at the beginning of this week as teams of curators, critics, collectors, dealers and even the occasional artist all dug deep into their pockets and their repositories of knowledge at the Dover Street Arts Club’s annual Art Quiz, which this year was in aid of the Chisenhale Gallery. Last year, joint quizmasters Ollie Barker and Gregor Muir donned flamboyant scarves in honour of absent compere Chris Dercon, but this year the man himself was very much present, joining forces with Muir to head up the proceedings.
But rather than controlling the mayhem of this notorious bunfight, Tate Modern’s maestro whipped it up still further by actively inviting bribes, making last minute adjustments to the rules and inserting impromptu and somewhat perplexing questions of his own invention, such as, Q: how many children does Lucian Freud have? A: 15? Nobody knows! Q: Who is the most important—Freud or Auerbach? A: Let the room decide! (the shouts were loudest for Auerbach). But when a voice from the floor cheekily piped up with the question, “what will be the next job of Chris Dercon?” despite recent rumours about a move to the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin, the famously loquacious Mr D proved unable (or perhaps unwilling) to provide an answer.
But when all was over—even the shouting—the M2 team, headed by the collector and Tate Patron Maya Rasamny, emerged the clear victors and carried off a clutch of Mr Porter vouchers and goodie bags. Yet the real winner was the Chisenhale Gallery which, thanks to the efforts of the entire gathering—which included the artists Ryan Gander and Amelia Pica, Tate curator Mark Godfrey, Hepworth Wakefield’s Andrew Bonchina, collectors Maria Baibakova and Nicoletta Fiorucci, the Guardian art critic Adrian Searle, the Frieze Editor Jennifer Higgie, the Art Review editor Mark Rappolt, and my esteemed compadre at The Art Newspaper Melanie Gerlis—were more than £5,000 richer by the end of the evening.