Lisa as Tourist V: Sir John Soane's Museum, the Museum of London, and the Guildhall Art Gallery
Tuesday was my last day for being a tourist before the BL reopened after computer maintenance, so I decided to go some out of the way sorts of places. I first went to Sir John Soane's Museum. This museum is housed in Soane's house and is full of any number of random things. Soane was a celebrated architect and there are many plans and models for London buildings around. There also some very good nineteenth-century paintings, but what this place really has is antiquities. There is a room crammed full with original and copies of everything from ancient Greece to Italian renaissance sculpture. I particularly liked this relief of Eros carrying Psyche to his palace (she is of course blindfolded at this point). There was so much in such a small space that I'm sure I missed tons of other interesting stuff, but one can only take in so much. This guy was one big time collector, and obviously should have got a bigger house. Already overloaded by the place, I almost didn't realize that much of what I should have been able to see was closed at the time I was there because of staffing shortages due to the Tube strike (see Installment 13). |
|
|
Sir John's house o' stuff |
|
From Soane's I walked to the Museum of London in the City. Although we think of London as being a city, the City proper is only a small part of it. The City is where the really money making business happens and was originally run by the Guild council. The Museum of London is located next to the Barbican, a newly chic housing and arts complex (people didn't like it for a long time because it's all concrete and is a bit like trying to navigate UF's Turlington for the first time). |
|
|
one of the dragons which marks the boundary of the city throughout London |
|
| The museum chronicles London's history from the Romans until today, with quite a bit on the Victorians. However, I don't think I really enjoyed it because there were children shrieking and running everywhere and someone playing a horn quite loudly - just a bit too much to take for very long. Still the Victorian section had great dresses and other fashion. I found particularly interesting the "Victorian Walk," a replica of Victorian shops and such - the fancy stationers was super cool. The best part of the museum was the special exhibit on the 1920s in London. The gowns were fabulous, and I loved all the ephemera they had from music and literature. They even had twenties style hat you could try on. | |
the Barbican |
the Museum of London |
| So, having done the Museum of London fairly quickly, I thought I'd wander over to the Guildhall Art Gallery as well. The Gallery itself was wonderful, but took me forever to find it because it's so hidden behind other buildings and the signs they have don't actually point the way through all that. I had to take a break when I got there even though it was only a few blocks away from the other museum. | |
|
|
|
one of the Guildhall buildings |
|
| I have to admit though it was worth it. It only cost a pound to get it and the Victorian galleries are superb. There are several interesting Millais, with his usual innocent girls. But, the Rossetti La Ghirlandata was amazing. Such richness of color and verve - makes you want to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood then and there. It's in the undercroft gallery so it's just a bit dark and the lighting really picks up the vibrant hues of red and green. Of course, it took me another half an hour just to get back to streets I recognized, but it wasn't so bad with the image of the Rossetti firmly in my mind. | |
|| Home || Research || Teaching || Other ||