The Wallace Collection

I thought the labels in the Wallace Collection made sense as most of the pieces were the personal possessions of the owners and presumably decorated their home. As such, the subtle black labels set directly onto the bottoms of most of the opulent gold frames seemed to fit. However, now that the collection is a museum-type display, I would personally have preferred just a little more information. I would also have liked to see a standard, uniform way of displaying the information. Because the labels on the frames were probably created at different times in history, by many different owners, many of them are very different. In a museum, I really like seeing consistency in the labels. It conveys the information, even if the information is just artist, date, and title, so much more clearly.

For this collection, I chose as my "object of appreciation" the painting "Still Life With A Monkey" attributed to Jan Jansz de Heem. The painting is just rather hilarious. It depicts a pretty standard still life scene, with lots of opulent fruit and fertile greenery and a few vases, bowls and sheets thrown about for artistic effect. But, that's where the conventional still life effects end, as there is a monkey in the corner. Perhaps surprisingly, the monkey isn't event the weirdest thing in this painting. Dead-center, the artist painted a few bright red lobsters, just between the lush-looking lemons and the swollen grapes. I understand that the painting is a display of absolute wealth and delicious items and such...but why did the artist have to add the lobsters?! They just look silly today! I'm sure at the time they were just another indicator of wealth and such, and the monkey was probably a reminder of the exotic, but wow. I have to admit, I giggled when I saw this painting. In spite of my comedic reaction to the piece, I did thoroughly enjoy it.

I thought this vase/ewer was a good example of the incredibly opulent, over the top objects that fill the Wallace Collection. First off, it's hardly a usable object. It's only purpose is to look pretty on display. The materials it's made of seem to be smushed together to create a furthered sense of richness that just doesn't seem quite "natural." I love the giant gold bird perched on the handle. It's my favorite part of the piece, not only because I just love birds, but because it's got to be one of the strangest looking birds I've ever seen! I have no clue what the artist thought he was depicting. My best guess is that it's a cross between a crane, a parrot, and that goofy-looking giant bird from the Pixar short who gets picked on by the little mean birds on a telephone wire. The paintings on the side of the object are of people in landscape scenes, and also seem to have nothing to do with any other part of the object. This pitcher was really quite fun to look at, with all of its strange pieces. Reading the label, I discovered that it really was something that was smushed together at different times for different tastes.

I have far too many favorite museum experiences to count, but if I had to choose one museum that I really enjoyed visiting this semester, I'd choose the John Soane's Museum. It's not that it was "better" or more interesting that any of the other places we visited for this class, but it's one that I am 100% sure I would not have discovered on my own. The day we were asked to visit this museum, my family was in town, so I took my antique-loving, artistic mother along with me. We had a wonderful time roaming the packed rooms together! It was just so fun to be able to share that experience, especially since my mother has travelled Europe extensively and has spent a lot of time in London before, so there's really not a lot she hasn't seen. We especially enjoyed seeing the sarcophagus of Seti I. My sister will soon be studying her passion, Egyptology, at the UW, and she has spent her young adult life studying ancient Egypt. Just being around her, my family knows a whole lot more about ancient Egypt than I would have ever expected. Because of her influence, I know a lot about Seti I and I was so surprised to see his sarcophagus turn up in this hidden little London museum! I'd seen his mummy in a previous trip to Egypt (it's in the Cairo Museum), and I'd walked by his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, so now I feel that I've really been able to do the "grand world tour" of good old Seti I.

I think this course has given me the "courage" to go into museums that I would otherwise pass by. I can say with absolute conviction that I would not have gone into the Tate Modern on my own, and I very much enjoyed that visit. I don't think I would have made the Tate Britain a priority either, but after seeing it for class I brought my family there when they visited and we all had a lovely time. I'm very glad we were able to go to smaller collections, too, like the John Soane Museum and the Wallace Collection, since I know I never would have discovered them on my own. This course has also given me the tools to evaluate a museum on it's display and branding prowess, not just its objects. I think that this is a valuable tool to have for someone like me, who love museums and tries to visit as many as possible.

Dear Steven: Thank you. Thank you so, so much for making this semester even more wonderful. This class and Travel Journal were really, truly perfect. I can't express how thankful I am that you were the Madison professor who accompanied us on this adventure.

The Design Museum

Brit Insurance Design Awards: My Vote!

-Architecture: Magdeberg Open Air Library
The idea behind the Open Air Library seems to me to be almost as innovative as the structure itself, which was constructed of panels from an old warehouse. The library runs on the honor system, and I cannot think of anything quite so inspiring as a trust-based library. Honor and books have not gone the way of the dinosaur after all! (At least in Germany.)

-Furniture: Drop Table
I love how this elegant table can be so playful while avoiding obnoxious stock "playful" furniture attributes like bright color or odd shape. It reminds me of the glass table in my home that my grandmother bought in the '60s, but with a fun new twist. I love our glass table because my wonderfully intelligent bird is terrified of it (she thinks she'll fall into space if she strays from the wicker circle that supports the glass), and I can't help but giggle thinking of how my little bird would react to this psychadelic piece of furniture!

-Transport: Barclays Cycle Hire

I have not used this system of transport, but I see others utilizing these bikes all the time and they seem like a wonderful, green, efficient idea. In a city probably best know for its iconic (and dirty) tube system, the bicycles for rent seem like a fresh new take on public transport.

-Graphics: Homemade is Best

I'll confess, I'm still not entirely positive I understand the purpose of these images, but I just really like them. They make me want to look and look again, at the colors, at the patterns, and at the subject matter.

Fashion:

I'm going to kind of cheat and name Corrie Nielsen's garment my fashion design award winner. This garment won the museum's "Fashion Fringe" contest and was displayed at the foot of the main staircase. I loved it. I thought the style was evocative of the old Elizabethan garments we saw in our visit to the National Portrait Gallery, and the total effect of the garment was striking. I loved that it fit perfectly into London, as both a historically inspired piece as well as a modern, innovative design. I also really liked the way it was displayed, with utilitarian hooks and wire and gold and red mosaic panels in the background.

I like Wim Crouwel. I think his work is fun and eye-catching and different, and I truly admire the reputation he has cultivated. I will admit that I did not always "understand" his works, but I still appreciate them. I especially liked the phone book he did and the calendars. I thought his vision of using lower-case letters for the phone book was silly at first, but after seeing it, I was won over. It really was a lot easier and simpler to read that way. I absolutely loved his calendars. My favorite was the one that had the days of the week listed down the left hand side of the top panel, with the numbers of the days of the month to the right, in vertical lines, and the name of the month split in half across the spiral binding.

The Saatchi Gallery

I think the layout of the Saatchi Gallery encourages the viewer to look at the different pieces of art from different angles. The wide open spaces used for display really allow you to see all sides of the works on display, especially those that are three-dimensional. Examples of pieces that really needed to be looked at from different views are Juliana Cerqueira Leite's sculptures "Up" and "Down," Graham Hudson's "All my exes live in Tesco's" (which does but should not have an apostrophe between the o and the s in the title), and Tessa Farmer's "Swarm." All these pieces can be explored from every angle, which makes them just so much more interesting than if they had been stuck inside a glass case or roped off.

Leite's "Up" and "Down"

Mostly, I liked the sparse information given on the pieces in the gallery. I like that I was sort of able to interpret them however I felt. However, with some of the works, I did wish for just a little background. For example, without our guide's explanation of the "Up" and "Down" pieces, I never would have fully appreciated the process, and with those two, they seemed to be more about the process than the product. So in that case I was very glad I had the background. I think it's a thin line between too much information and the need for background, so in this case, I'm quite happy with the minimal explanations.

Certainly, I didn't personally enjoy everything in the collection, but I never expect to when I go to a museum or a gallery. This gallery, especially, is a little different because it represents the personal tastes of the patron. I do have to wonder what the heck is Mr. Saatchi really like, since his collection is so eclectic, but hey, it's his art so he can collect it however he wishes. On a personal level, there were some things that intrigued and fascinated me, like the "Swarm" piece by Farmer, some that I thought were nice ideas but I really did not want to look at, like Stephen Bishop's "Mountain Goat," some that I absolutely loved, like Richard Wilson's oil room, some that I actively didn't like, like the posters of spam mail, and some that I just really didn't understand at all, like the Spartacus Chetywnd's humanoid-ish sculptures. All in all, I think it does a pretty good job as a gallery, presenting pieces that at least provoke some sort of reaction out of most people.

Stephen Bishop, "Mountain Goat"

Graham Hudson's "All my exes live in Tesco's"

Dan Perfect, "Village"

Spartacus Chetywnd, "The Lizard" and "The Stick Insect"

My interpretation: Loch Ness monster meets KKK wacko on the left, and orange Stormtrooper meets platypus on the right. I really didn't know what to think of these.

Close-up of Farmer's "Swarm"

Wilson's oil room

Street Art

This street art is located just outside the Spitalfields Market area, kind of to the back in a parking lot. When I first saw this, I had to debate whether I actually thought it "enhanced the space" or not. I was kind of leaning toward "not," just because it's so chaotic and rather strange, but then I really thought about where I was. The Spitalfields Market is a fun, "young" area, with lots of art and antiques and vintage fashion and other crazy objects for sale, perused by young, artistic and fashion-forward type people. It's gone a long way from being the city's vegetable market. When I consider the context, the winged wrecking ball smushing a white car on top of a Dumpster with a cactus nearby seems to just kind of fit. And I'm pretty sure that's one of "Space Invader"'s installations in black and white above it.

For my second space-enhancing bit of street art, I had to look a lot harder. I just wasn't finding anything that I actually liked. There were a few things I thought of writing about just because they seemed to be more intricate than the usual sort of vandalism, but my heart really wasn't in it. Then yesterday, as I was coming home on the Tube after a lovely day at Kew Gardens, I saw it. There was a brick wall near the Tube tracks, covered with graffiti and tags and all sorts of meaningless vandalism. The spray paint was all different colors, especially red, black, and yellow, but on top of the squiggly tags was a true work of art. Some enterprising individual had painted a perfect pink Foxglove plant over the chaos. The plant was executed with perfect precision, with every detail being true to life. Whoever had done that had either had extensive botanical knowledge or a very accurate picture to follow. I didn't see any other words painted, but I wonder if the artist knew about the plant's hidden attributes. If he had gone to the trouble of painting a perfectly realistic Digitalis, I would assume he did. Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), has been used for ages as a poison. In small doses, it will speed up the heart's beats, making it a valuable medicine, but in a larger dose, it speeds up the heart till it gives out. It is an extremely deadly poison, capable of killing with just a little leaf. I really enjoyed seeing this beautiful piece of street art, especially coming home from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Whoever the artist was, they obviously put thought and care into this piece. Because I was on the Tube, not expecting to need my camera, I unfortunately did not get a picture of this beautiful artwork. The posted picture is of one of my own Foxglove plants at home, the same type and color of the one painted on the wall.

Walking with Professor Mackey through the East End, I happened upon this sticker on a stop sign. I decided I really don't actually like Shepard Fairy's Andre the Giant image. It just seems sort of silly that this one artist took another man's iconic image and stuck this cartoonish face up everywhere. It feels more like a branding scheme than a true art movement. Because the image is never significantly altered, its purpose seems to be more about promoting Shepard Fairy than promoting some artistic idea. Obviously Fairy has artistic talent (his Obama-Hope portrait proves this) but this particualr campaign seems to me to be more about the artist than the art.

Sticker somewhere around the Brick Lane area

I saw the image again on the way to and from our trip to Bath

I saw this piece on the side of a wall in Brick Lane. Obviously, the artist put some serious work into it, and I would definitely say that it is a step above graffiti or vandalism, but I just don't think it does anything productive. To me, it just seems too busy and too chaotic. Something about it just makes me not like it. I also don't get it. "After Lives"? What do those words have to do with the little green sketchy men with bad teeth and checkerboards? The artist apparently was proud of this work, though, since he signed it. Sorry, Nathan Bowen, but I just don't get "Movement."

Creative Writing Inspired by the British Museum

As an English major, I read a LOT. I read Shakespeare, Tennyson, Austen, Milton, all of the immortal authors, but in my spare time I have made a resolution: I will only read children's books. Not little picture books or anything, but young adult fiction, where there is no sex, no perversion, no truly heinous violence and the story always ends happily one way or another. In these books, I find worlds that don't have that sharp, poisonous edge found within the pages of the "great writers" or really any book meant for adults. Young adult books create worlds that are accessible, worlds that can take me away from reality for an hour or two, worlds I want to visit. The most recent book I've read is called "The Red Pyramid" by wildly popular young adult fantasy author Rick Riordan (of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" fame). Riordan is a master at creating worlds I want to get lost in, and this latest of his books has a particularly interesting early setting: the British Museum.

In the first action-packed scene of the story, the young heroes find themselves in the room where the famed Rosetta Stone is kept, a room I have now visited three times. The dark forces of ancient evil are rising and the stone explodes, releasing five of the old Egyptian gods, including Set, who will be the ultimate villain in this tale. The two teenaged protagonists must now learn to master the ancient power they have just discovered exists right below the surface of the everyday world. This introduction into this book (the first in a series) is incredibly compelling. Riordan manages to link his story to two things that I find incredibly important: 1) a familiar place, and 2) a well-known and secretly magical artifact. There is something amazing about imagining that such a famous object as the Rosetta Stone, a feature in countless grade-school history books, as a magical catalyst. Young imagination instantly turns the stone into an object of wonder and mystery, and yet it is something that anyone visiting London can walk in front of and take pictures with for free. It suddenly can become so much more than just a rock with writing.

There seems to be something universally fascinating about fictional properties of objects in museums. When I was a child, one of my favorite movies was one where the dinosaurs in New York's Museum of Natural History come to life. The wonderful "Librarian" movies with Noah Wyle have many scenes that take place in museums. Later in "The Red Pyramid," the characters use the reassembled Egyptian temple in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a magical object. In Riordan's "Percy Jackson" series, the first pivotal action scene takes place in the Greek artifact area of the Met. The films "A Night in the Museum" revolve completely around the concept of museum objects being rather livelier than would be expected of them.

I guess my point is, the things behind the glass don't just fascinate us for their historical or artistic value, but also for their imaginative value.

The National Portrait Gallery

I do not like this logo. I think it's boring and kind of strange. For some reason it reminds me of the title page of an 80s paperback, something rendered in turquoise and neon orange. As such, it seems outdated in a strange way. Though the gallery contains portraits from throughout the ages, I think the logo has to be somehow timeless. I have no idea as to how to go about that, but I think something simple and less "fad" like would be better. Maybe the logo could somehow be "framed" either literally or just figuratively, like the pieces in the collection The script that makes up the logo now seems out of style and just strange.

This is me as Catherine Parr, after "Master John's" 1545 portrait:

I've always liked Catherine Parr the best out of all old King Henry VIII's wives, probably because she's the one who lived. She seems like a smart, intelligent woman who used her intellect to literally keep her head. I admire her for the story of how Henry was all set to capture and probably execute her, but she was able to talk him out of it by reminding him of her subservient status. The fact that she was smart enough to play on his chauvanism I think tells a lot about her ability to think quickly and survive in a very nasty world. I've always felt bad about her end after Henry, though. She fell in love with a less than reliable man and died in childbirth. I take this as a well-delivered warning. In another time and place, that could be me. Thank goodness I wasn't born in 16th century England.

This is Jamie as Elizabeth of Bohemia by an unknown artist around the time of her marriage in 1613:

I just really liked the look in the eyes of the sitter of this portrait. It seemed like she was conveying intelligence, kindness, a fun-loving spirit, and just a hint of boredom, which is just the way Jamie would look if I told her she had to sit still for who knows how long to do a painting of her. The two of us were admiring the lack collar in the painting. Jamie says she'd love to have one like that, and I must say, it would look lovely on her. The collar had lions and unicorns and coats of arms worked into it. Just Jamie's style!

Leigh as Princess Charlotte of Wales by George Dawe, 1817:

This portrait was perfect for Leigh. Just a few days before, we had all been laughing that all the women around the Burberry Fashion Week tent were wearing their hair in a tight bun on the very tops of their heads and looked rather silly. Leigh had promptly given herself the same hairstyle and worn it for the rest of the day. When I saw this painting, I immediately noticed the hairstyle and thought of my stylish friend. Unfortunately, the hairstyle is where the similarities between Leigh and Princess Charlotte end. Actually, it's really not so unfortunate. Princess Charlotte was 21 years old in this picture, newly married and in love and exceedingly happy, but just a few months later she died delivering a stillborn child. I had to adjust the angle of the sitter's face because my poor sketching skills just could not capture the correct pose.

Lauryn as

The pose of this woman could not be more different than Lauryn's usual posture, but I couldn't help noticing the almost frightening similarity of their faces. The expressions are entirely different, with ____'s being sultry and seductive, and Lauryn's generally being kind and honest, but the features and coloring were spot-on. At first I wasn't going to include this juxtaposition and was going to try to find another portrait to draw, but I thought the contrast between physical resemblance and personality to be rather comedic.

Professor Steven Driscoll Hixson as Henry VIII in a sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1537:



I was having trouble choosing a final comparison so I decided I'd like to portray Professor Hixson as a very unlikely Henry VIII. This is not a comparison of likeness but of absolute dissimilarity. I don't like Henry VIII. He just was not a nice guy. By all accounts he was just about the most self-centered, generally nasty person who ever lived. When we visited Windsor, I made sure to walk on his tombstone. In contrast, Professor Hixson is friendly and helpful. The physical differences are also pretty huge (pun sort of accidentally intended). Old Henry was clearly rather rotund, while our professor is certainly a whole lot leaner. The one similarity I can possibly draw is the importance of clothing to the two men. Both seem to value clothing, though for what I assume are rather different reasons. Where Henry used rich cloth to show off his power and wealth, Professor Hixson has revealed that he chooses his own clothing to reflect mood through pattern and color. In some ways, this selection of clothing is done for similar reasons: both men use their clothes to convey a message, but that message is very different. Where Henry's rich embroideries and jewellry and massive (and unlikely) codpiece seem to declare the wearer to be immensely wealthy, powerful and self-confident (and very aware of his own standing), Professor Hixson's happy patterns and colors clothe a cheerful and kind-hearted teacher .

The National Gallery

I think the logo is boring. That being said, I'm afraid I do like it more than I like, for example, the Tate Museums' logos, which I find confusing and transient. But other than than the National Gallery's logo's consistency, blahhhh. I suppose its boring-ness could have a point. When I saw the Tate logo next to a work of art, I was distracted by the logo, but when I see the National Gallery's logo near a work of art, or even superimposed on a postcard or an umbrella or a banner, I have absolutely no interest in the logo whatsoever so I am not distracted from the art itself. However, I think it could still be improved. How? I have no idea. I just know that I'm not thrilled by it, but I have no good suggestion of what to replace it with. I do think, though, if I saw a good substitution, I'd know.

I like the van Gogh paintings, for the most part. I'll admit, I'm not entirely thrilled by the still life chair-type paintings, but I love his landscapes and natural subjects. I like the squiggly lines van Gogh often uses. Perhaps it's because I let my knowledge of his life and end color my opinion, but I've always thought the repeated lines give his works a sense of time flying by, a feeling that this moment is stolen and cannot be properly captured because it's about to float away. For example, in his "Wheatfield with cypresses," I feel like the clouds are literally moving, that the painting is more a snapshot, capturing motion in a freeze-frame. The "Long grass with butterflies" painting also seems to capture time passing, but in a different way. Unlike the "Wheatfield with cypresses" or the "Sunflowers" paintings, this piece focuses on a close-up of grass with a distant path in the background. It seems like a photo that was accidentally taken when the camera was pointed at the ground. The background grass seems to be bent in the wind, while in the foreground, bare patches of earth can be imagined. I love the contrast between the pokiness of this piece and the flowiness of the cypresses piece.

I want all of JMW Turner's pieces. My favorite from this collection was "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus." Looking at the piece, I was amazed at the color, the composition, the contrasts, the figures, the story and just everything. I really, really like this piece. I think it would fit perfectly on the wall of my future castle, over the mantle. My sister and I have always loved studying Greek mythology. When our friends were reading "Goosebumps" and "Nancy Drew" to each other, we would take turns reading out of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology." This Turner painting not only pleases my eye, but also brings to mind happy times spent with my sister, something we continue to this day.

I have varying feelings about the wall colors of the National Gallery. On the one hand, I love the richness they create. The bright colors also make the spaces seem less like a gallery. On the other hand, the colors sometimes conflict with individual paintings and sometimes seem chaotic and confusing. Who chose the colors and why? What authority did they have? Personally, I had a real problem with the rooms that were not only brightly colored, but also wallpapered. The scalloped fleur-de-lis-type patterns on the wallpaper seemed entirely inappropriate in a gallery. I really didn't like galleries 33 and 34 for their sky blue and gray-green wallpaper. I also wasn't a huge fan of the tangerine in the Vermeer room. Why tangerine? I remember hearing that tangerine was a popular wall color in the 1700s or so from a castle tour I was on in Dublin several weeks ago, but is this the real reason for the tangerine, or was it simply because all the other colors were taken, and Vermeer was just unlucky? I did, however, like the rich red in the room that displayed the "Execution of Lady Jane Grey" by Delaroche. Though morbid, the red seemed to fit with the painting and the dramatic scene it presented. I also liked the muted gray-brown in the van Gogh gallery, mostly because of the beautiful green marble door frames, which I absolutely loved.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the use of famous art in objects such as umbrellas, handbags, and tshirts. I want to think of it as needlessly commercializing great art, but then again, I find nothing wrong with the sale of postcards of artwork. I find the postcards to be a way for people to remember their trip to a gallery where photography is not allowed, and also as a good way for a free museum to make some money. If I don't mind the postcards, how can I mind tshirts or umbrellas? They're a way to integrate great art into everyday life. Instead of disliking that art is being brought down to every day level, I find it charming that people can access the work of Vermeer or van Gogh or Picasso and surround themselves with the cultural capital that comes with the images of the great artists.

I really enjoyed looking at Renoir's "Gladioli in a Vase," 1874. As an obsessed gardener, I love representations of flowers and plants that are true to form. The gladioli in the painting could be growing in my garden. Really; I have some that are that beautiful coral color. I realize that this is hardly a grand or exotic or limit-pushing piece, but that's what I like about it. It's peaceful. It makes me want to look at it. I'm a simple person when it comes to art: I like pretty things, and I would certainly classify this as a "pretty" thing. Renoir gets everything right, from the flowers to the lighting to the lovely blue contrasting vase. Normally I don't like still life paintings, but with the flowers, it doesn't seem still and boring. I also loved it because of the giant urns full of  real fuscia-colored gladioli on either side of the main staircase when we walked into the gallery. The echo of the real flowers made the painting all the more fun to see.