Going to see the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery? Lucky you. Make the most of the hot ticket by reading this from the LRB before you go.
Archive for the ‘Exhibitions’ Category
May 4th, 2010
Magna Carta in New York City
A volcano, of which you may have heard, recently left this author stranded in New York.
Boo hoo, I know.
Alas, flights reopened just too early for me to get along to have a look at a copy of Magna Carta, which was in town for a visit.
(Magna Carta was also stranded in New York. Don’t ask me why.)
Anyway, I am glad I have a subscription to The New Yorker, because it was that excellent magazine which reported on the exhibition. My copy arrived in London shortly after I did. Go figure, as they say across the Pond.
You can read the (rather amusing) article here.
February 25th, 2010
Delaroche at the National Gallery
On Tuesday morning I went along to the press viewing for the Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey exhibition at the National Gallery, which opened yesterday.
It’s a decent exhibition, although one can see why Delaroche was out of fashion for so long. His sentimental, even mawkish renderings of great moments from Tudor and Stuart history manage to be both gruesome and twee, often at the same stroke.
The exhibition centres around his portrayal of the execution of Lady Jane Grey. Much wailing from the ladies-in-waiting; compare and contrast with the ambivalence of the axeman, who stands impassive, as though it were not an act of human cruelty he were about to commit, but a pre-determined act demanded by a higher power. Delaroche has layed on the pathos in spades by having a blindfolded Lady Jane grope helplessly for the block - you have both weepy sentimentality and a sort of grotesque historical determinism in the same canvas.
This is the model for most of the major works on show. The Princes in the Tower tremble before their murderer (represented only by a shadow under the door) while a pathetic little toy-dog yaps bravely but pointlessly at impending doom. Cromwell lifts the lid of a coffin to peer at the ashen face of Charles I’s corpse; everything about him is blood-red, to the point that it looks as though his very boots are brimming over with blood. There is a holiness to the dead King’s visage, but it hardly lights up the canvas - this is a painting literally coated in gore and cruelty.
Delaroche was, of course, a product of the French Revolution, so had seen his fair share of gore; this also contributed no doubt to the depressing inevitability of death in his major works. He is not a subtle painter, nor are his paintings especially demanding. Still, the exhibition is pretty well lit and certainly worth half an hour if you are loitering in Trafalgar Square. But as for Delaroche as the purpose of a day out? There’s not much to separate it from a quick squizz around The London Dungeon.
February 4th, 2010
Marginalia gone mad: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves
The Mouth of Hell: from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves
I have a weak spot for images of medieval demons. In fact, I could pore over the finely illuminated manuscripts of the high Middle Ages for hours, wondering at the mindset of the monks who spent days straining their eyes and their necks to create fantastical and terrifying visions of hell in the margins of their most sacred texts.
What were they thinking? Were they trying to amuse or intimidate their readers? Where did they look for their inspiration? And who in their right mind, as another blogger has asked, could anyone begin to come up with something like an image of a woman vomiting up a fox?
Anyway, all that is to say that the lovely folk at The Morgan Museum have pointed out to me that their new exhibition of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves is now open for business. All the way across the Pond in New York City, alas! Or, alas! unless you live in New York City, I suppose.
And not that alas! at all actually, since you can browse the whole thing in pretty high-def online. Check it out. Demons ago-go. As close as it gets to medieval porn, IMHO.
February 1st, 2010
Another medieval exhibition
The 1001 Inventions exhibition opened in Manchester last year (correction: in 2006), and has therefore been running for a while. But it moved last week to the London Science Museum, and I suspect may be worth a look. (If you live in or around London, obviously.)
The exhibition purports to celebrate the scientific advances made by Islamic scholars and inventors during the Middle Ages. The promotional hoopla on the website is a bit nauseating, since the whole thing seems to be less about the exhibition per se and more about implicitly defending modern Islam’s reputation as a learned and humanistic faith… erm, I’ll get back to you on that one…
But as I say, it’s probably worth a look, since a) it’s free, and b) if it’s rubbish you can nip down the road to the V&A Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, which I promised myself I would stop banging on about, but seem incapable of doing so…
PS For a good book about medieval science with emphasis on the Christian tradition, check out James Hannam’s God’s Philosophers, which was published last year.
PPS also seen today: check out the Telegraph’s video tour of the V&A galleries here, and a puff-piece about Islamic science and the 1001 Inventions show, at the Guardian, here.
January 25th, 2010
A History of the World in 100 Objects, addendum
This, from Cambridge student rag ‘Varsity’, just buzzed onto my BlackBerry, courtesy of a Google Alert.
It pertains to the BBC series I mentioned earlier today.
It’s fairly dull.
But I was interested to read this:
“Many objects chosen have been dramatically excavated from Cambridgeshire soil… The Archaeological Unit… offered a remarkable medieval coin hoard discovered by workmen in a sewerage shaft in Cambridge city centre.”
And there’s me thinking that the only things to be found down Cambridge sewerage shafts were regurgitated porto-wine and swans’ feet…
January 25th, 2010
A History of the World in 100 Objects
I was a bit narked that Radio 4’s Book of the Week was bumped to make way for the BBC’s central programme in its History of the World in 100 Objects bonanza. Authors are struggling enough as it is, without whipping out a valuable promotional rug from under our feet.
But after the first six shows it seems to be an irritation amply rewarded. The show is thoughtful, surprising and intellectually engaged. Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum is a fine host (although the Scots have now almost entirely taken over the morning airwaves: on a Monday one can go from James Naughtie on the Today programme, to Andrew Marr on Start the Week, and on to MacGregor: a festival of Scotchness from 6am to 10am.) And the guest ‘experts’ are entertaining choices. Forget dusty old suits from the universities: in the last three episodes, all concerning prehistoric man, I’ve heard the archbishop of Canterbury, Madhur Jaffrey and Bob Geldof.
Niggles: the music is appalling (pan pipes? I believe the expression is WTF). The plugs on Radio 4 and elsewhere are enraging, and take BBC internal advertising to a new level of self-indulgence. And the website is a Flash nightmare.
Well worth listening, either live or archived here.
January 13th, 2010
The Staffordshire Hoard
Never was an historical cause so worthy of support. Please visit the campaign page here.
The Staffordshire hoard is the most important and the largest find of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver in existence, and the campaign to raise £3.3m to keep it together and in what was once Mercia is a noble one.
As my old tutor Dr David Starkey was quoted saying today, this hoard epitomises what good history is all about:
“History is not just about reason and logic, which is what you get with the school curriculum, it is about story and myth and emotion. This hoard has got all of those things.”
January 12th, 2010
More than just stained glass
A new exhibition of medieval glass is slated for this coming May at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. I don’t know I can justify a trip to the Big Bagel and beyond just to check out some ancient tableware, but if you’re in the area it might be worth a look. I might order the catalogue, just to get a feel for the thing.
December 2nd, 2009
Beyond brilliant
There were still men on ladders in the V&A museum in South Kensington, London, this morning, as the public were allowed into the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries for the first time. They are still putting the finishing touches to one of the most important medieval collections on display in the country, perhaps in Europe.
The reviews have been exceptional - both the Times and the Telegraph have lauded the galleries with 5* ratings. I visited for an hour and half or so (stolen from writing time) this morning. It was enough to get a flavour of the collection there; I will be back tomorrow for a more in-depth viewing.
First impressions are that the press hype is justified. The Galleries are not just enormous and magnificently stocked, they are also stunningly beautiful. The bulk of the pieces I saw today are Italian C15th/C16th, and there is a clear story to be read among the collection of the relationship between the High Middle Ages and the art and culture of late Latin antiquity.
Individual highlights seen today:
- a stunning silver reliquary of the martyrdom of St Sebastian, by Hans Holbein the Elder, from 1497. A glass panel on the back shows the relic intact within, wrapped in silk. Likely to be shafts of the arrows that did for poor old Seb.
- a processional cross in gold and silver from around 1350, northern Italy.
- a tiny Leonardo da Vinci notebook, with an interactive flick-through terminal next to it.
- a mock 14th-century knightly brass in the floor for kids to take rubbings from
These are just a few of the pieces that caught my eye. I also had a lovely conversation with a lady who lectures in history of art and illuminated manuscripts in the Dorset area. We swapped opinions on the strange beasties of medieval marginalia, and their place in the medieval mind.
Utterly mesmerising. I cannot recommend these galleries highly enough. I will Twitpic a few snaps taken on my Blackberry, and put some better pics up tomorrow.
