
Diplomatic Relations
London
Waving a California driver’s license is not the way I usually gain entrance to a London art event, but on Thursday night the American Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Robert Tuttle, hosted a reception for Ellsworth Kelly at which security was particularly tight. Three rifle-toting British police officers were stationed outside; when I asked if they were performance artists, they gave me a stunned look. It was a night of colliding realities. The young black British Minister for Culture, David Lammy, exchanged pleasantries with faceless Republican cultural attachés. The gay art world turned up