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sisyphusshrugged I was in London the week after 9/11/91. I didn't want to cancel a long-scheduled trip because once I got my family squared away, I was ready for a good hearty breakdown away from the eyes of anyone who might have been disturbed by seeing it. Manhattan was not a good place to be that day.
This was my second time in London. [dorothy]...parts of it were terrible but most of it was _just beautiful_...[/dorothy]. As soon as I opened my mouth and they realized I was american and maybe even a New Yorker, the natives were racing to reassure me or sympathize or tell me how much they loved NY or just that they were glad I was there. (I think it's pretty astonishing how quickly the nice folks in the White House threw away the international good will we had back then).
Anyway, the British Museum, where I spent most of my time, is magnificent. Building, collection, the whole thing, leaving aside the issue of cultural imperialism (and I was amused to notice that while they seem to have cleared out the countries they had colonial relationships with, the americans stole a march on them in the Sack of the European Antiquities - the medieval collection at the Cloisters, a division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, ices the one at the British Museum), apparently someone in their custodial department has a sense of humor. A bust of a rather put-upon young man who is identified as an emperor's lover is displayed next to a dyspeptic-looking bust of the same emperor's imperial(-ous) mother-in-law, who appears to be glaring at him (sorry can't find a picture online) - the Rosetta Stone is displayed in its historical period, which means it's next to a back stairwell - and of course, there's my own true love, the tall dark and handsome gentleman in the upper left hand corner of this very page, Hoa Hakananai'a. He's in the vast lobby, with his ass benignly overlooking the "Great Court Cafe (concessions stand) that sells the sandwiches, and his explanatory plaque points out that he joined the collection of the British Museum in 1868, and that his name, which is thought to mean "stolen or hidden friend," was given to him by his previous owners when he was collected.
Their current, tragically timely, dammit, main exhibit is called A Museum of the Mind - Art and Memory in World Cultures. Their children's site is exceptionally cool too.
Anyway, by the time it was time for me to go home, I was good and jumpy and not as decompressed as I would have liked or at all and flat-out desperate to be anywhere but where I was, and I went tearing ass out to the airport as fast as my little (ahem) feet would carry me first thing in the morning, only to discover that there was no line at all and I had about seven hours to kill (at some point I need to completely absorb the concept that headlong flight from unpleasantness doesn't work unless you've given some thought to where you're going to end up - maybe in time to explain it to my grandchildren).
So, I checked my bags and went museum hopping. Natural History was kind of lame, I'm afraid, to my jaded palate, at least compared to the one in NY, and Science and Industry could have been more diverting (although their exhibits would have been fascinating to someone without my tragically abbreviated attention span) but the Victoria and Albert just flat-out rocked. They had a huge exhibit of costumes full of (the exhibit, not the costumes) earnest-looking design students sketching (I hope they had a chance to go back and actually look at the clothes, because they didn't seem to be having a very good time) and some terrific Islamic stuff and a shameless, inexcusable and incredibly satisfying Dale Chihuly exhibit (Chihuly is sort of the Jeff Koons of glassblowing, only without the anal sex - note that you pretty much have to have a deep, as it were, need to know what Jeff Koons looks like having anal sex to click on this one).
All of which is a roundabout way of getting to a link to the new Art Deco exhibit at the V&A (via I'm sorry but I can't track back to whose blog but if you let me know I'll credit you - edit: Eureka! it was Junius, who has something clever to say about it all) which looks very cool indeed and has a rocking project for kids to download en pdf.
So go take a look.
Tomorrow, if the wombat doesn't fall into the butterchurn and spoil breakfast (no whey! erm, sorry) I'll tell you the story of Uncle Wiggily and the long walk in the sun (which is to say, HM is at grandma's and I'm off to not be a grownup for a while. Ice cream is almost certain to figure in this somewhere...)
wavewave.
This was my second time in London. [dorothy]...parts of it were terrible but most of it was _just beautiful_...[/dorothy]. As soon as I opened my mouth and they realized I was american and maybe even a New Yorker, the natives were racing to reassure me or sympathize or tell me how much they loved NY or just that they were glad I was there. (I think it's pretty astonishing how quickly the nice folks in the White House threw away the international good will we had back then).
Anyway, the British Museum, where I spent most of my time, is magnificent. Building, collection, the whole thing, leaving aside the issue of cultural imperialism (and I was amused to notice that while they seem to have cleared out the countries they had colonial relationships with, the americans stole a march on them in the Sack of the European Antiquities - the medieval collection at the Cloisters, a division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, ices the one at the British Museum), apparently someone in their custodial department has a sense of humor. A bust of a rather put-upon young man who is identified as an emperor's lover is displayed next to a dyspeptic-looking bust of the same emperor's imperial(-ous) mother-in-law, who appears to be glaring at him (sorry can't find a picture online) - the Rosetta Stone is displayed in its historical period, which means it's next to a back stairwell - and of course, there's my own true love, the tall dark and handsome gentleman in the upper left hand corner of this very page, Hoa Hakananai'a. He's in the vast lobby, with his ass benignly overlooking the "Great Court Cafe (concessions stand) that sells the sandwiches, and his explanatory plaque points out that he joined the collection of the British Museum in 1868, and that his name, which is thought to mean "stolen or hidden friend," was given to him by his previous owners when he was collected.
Their current, tragically timely, dammit, main exhibit is called A Museum of the Mind - Art and Memory in World Cultures. Their children's site is exceptionally cool too.
Anyway, by the time it was time for me to go home, I was good and jumpy and not as decompressed as I would have liked or at all and flat-out desperate to be anywhere but where I was, and I went tearing ass out to the airport as fast as my little (ahem) feet would carry me first thing in the morning, only to discover that there was no line at all and I had about seven hours to kill (at some point I need to completely absorb the concept that headlong flight from unpleasantness doesn't work unless you've given some thought to where you're going to end up - maybe in time to explain it to my grandchildren).
So, I checked my bags and went museum hopping. Natural History was kind of lame, I'm afraid, to my jaded palate, at least compared to the one in NY, and Science and Industry could have been more diverting (although their exhibits would have been fascinating to someone without my tragically abbreviated attention span) but the Victoria and Albert just flat-out rocked. They had a huge exhibit of costumes full of (the exhibit, not the costumes) earnest-looking design students sketching (I hope they had a chance to go back and actually look at the clothes, because they didn't seem to be having a very good time) and some terrific Islamic stuff and a shameless, inexcusable and incredibly satisfying Dale Chihuly exhibit (Chihuly is sort of the Jeff Koons of glassblowing, only without the anal sex - note that you pretty much have to have a deep, as it were, need to know what Jeff Koons looks like having anal sex to click on this one).
All of which is a roundabout way of getting to a link to the new Art Deco exhibit at the V&A (via I'm sorry but I can't track back to whose blog but if you let me know I'll credit you - edit: Eureka! it was Junius, who has something clever to say about it all) which looks very cool indeed and has a rocking project for kids to download en pdf.
So go take a look.
Tomorrow, if the wombat doesn't fall into the butterchurn and spoil breakfast (no whey! erm, sorry) I'll tell you the story of Uncle Wiggily and the long walk in the sun (which is to say, HM is at grandma's and I'm off to not be a grownup for a while. Ice cream is almost certain to figure in this somewhere...)
wavewave.
