London's first charitable home for "exposed and deserted" children was also the capital's first proper art gallery. The Foundling Museum still houses a collection of British art that is unique, in that the works - paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, Richard -Wilson, Samuel Scott and -others, sculpture by John Michael -Rysbrack - have never moved from the place for which they were created. -William Hogarth, an early patron of the Foundling Hospital, -presented his magnificent full-length portrait of its founder, Thomas Coram, in 1740; it still dominates the exhibition rooms today. Hogarth persuaded artist friends to make their own appropriate contributions. A visit to the hospital's elegant high-ceilinged rooms became a modish outing for wealthy visitors and patrons; for the benefit of these same patrons, George Frideric Handel put on a series of concerts in 1749, and in 1750 he conducted the Messiah in the hospital's chapel.
Last Tuesday night this quiet corner of Bloomsbury was bright with light and champagne again. Here, in what from the outside appears a modest 1930s building, tucked behind a dark park, the journalist Kate Adie, Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, and Alex Poots, director of the Manchester International Festival, announced three new and unusual fellowships.
