I recently had the amazing experience of taking part in a meeting, for the London Cultural Strategy Group (which I joined in November 2008), in front of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. The setting forms an installation, The Nature of the Beast, by Goshka Macuga at the Whitechapel Gallery (pictured above), which reopened in April. It turns out that anyone can book the round table between now and April 2010.

There are several sobering facts that are worth knowing before you decide to hold your meeting here:

Picasso’s Guernica commorates the bombing of the town of the Basque town of Guernica, by German and Italian forces at the behest of Spanish Nationalists in 1937. The painting first visited the Whitechapel in 1939, as part of a tour to raise consciousness about the Spanish Civil War. The local Whitechapel communist party arranged the exhibition as part of a fundraising drive to support Republicans and the entrance fee was a pair of boots. The donated boots were lined up in front of the painting.

The tapestry of Guernica, which is on show now, was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller in 1955, and around 30 years later it was loaned to the UN Headquarters in New York where it was hung outside the security council as a deterrent against war. 

In 2003, Colin Powell hung a blue curtain in front of the tapestry and announced the invasion of Iraq. In Macuga’s installation, the curtain forms a significant backdrop. The tapestry has been removed from the UN while the building, (by Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and others), undergoes extensive refurbishment.

There is no charge for booking the round table in the Nature of the Beast, and up to 16 people can sit around it. If the historical significance of the setting does not make it a serious meeting, the fact that the public is free to walk through the gallery and listen to the proceedings, probably will!

Practical information:

The room has been designed to accommodate meetings, discussions and debates around a central table, with Guernica once again as a backdrop. Groups are invited to organise these events free of charge during opening hours.  
For advanced booking email guernica@whitechapelgallery.org