Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music

when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

On tonight's program, two rather forthright interviewees.

In a world where orthodoxy has it that art has to be accessible, open to everyone. A major London museum director says that great art should intimidate us,

should find us out. And the owner of an important private museum in Shanghai says that

museum education is not for everyone, not for those who want the museum

aircon to shelter them from Shanghai's broiling summer heat.

Later an extended interview with Nicholas Penny,

the outgoing director of the National Gallery,

on the absolute standards that Tishan sets, the overblown value we put

on contemporary art, and why he's a patrician Democrat. This collection represents the canonical,

that which you, if you don't like it, you should perhaps try harder, that which if you don't

like it, you can at least kind of apologise and say there's something wrong with me, but I actually never really did like this.

Nicholas Penny. But first, BudiTech, a collector, philanthropist and museum owner who last

year opened up a major private contemporary art museum in Shanghai, one of at least six private

museums of contemporary art founded there in the last two years.

The Uz Museum in a renovated aircraft hangar stands on the waterfront in Shanghai's West Bund,

where Spielberg's dream works will land, and which the Chinese government has decided

will also host Shanghai's Broadway district.

When I first went to China 20 years ago, there were in effect no galleries or museums devoted to contemporary art.

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