I’m one of these people who find spending an entire day in a museum a bit of an ordeal. Perhaps it is the flightiness of my astrological make-up but I do tend to get a little impatient when there are hordes of people around. In addition to that there is only so much brilliance I can cope with in one sitting. I don’t want to get blasé about what I am seeing. Sometimes, it is just too hard to actually take in everything that you are seeing.
When I first moved to London, I excitedly dashed around from museum to museum almost on a weekly basis. The first summer holidays down here was spent taking in a spectacular sum of exhibitions and shows; an amount of time as yet surpassed by me.
On Wednesday evenings, when a group of us from college all met up in Covent Garden, I’d often go in early so that I could spend twenty minutes in the National Gallery or even the Portrait Gallery before walking up Long Acre to the pub.
That is the wonderful thing about free museums. You do not have to attempt to consume the whole thing in one go. You can simply dip in and out as often or as infrequently as you wish.
It ardently annoyed me when, during the Conservative years of ’79 – ’97, museums stopped being free. I resented the money that I had to pay to get in to see artefacts and art that I believed belonged to me, as a citizen of this country. I was horrified at the thought that there were people who would not be able to afford to go and see these things that were, by right, there’s to see.
Thankfully, that is one thing that New Labour got right and the abominable costs of walking into our museums was rescinded.
Freedom for the people, of sorts.
What a pity the Church of England could not follow the government’s lead and make Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s free to walk into. An astronomical £14 is the price they want you to pay nowadays to get into the City Cathedral with the big dome. It is truly criminal.
Today, I decided to do something. It was a grey and somewhat dreary morning; February at its most stereotypical – bland weather albeit mild. I was keen to do some photography with my new camera but the light was still not forthcoming and so I had to think of another way of purposefully using my time.
As I searched through the internet, I came across a pointer to the British Museum; Picasso to Julie Mehretu.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/picasso_to_julie_mehretu.aspx
This was the impetus I needed to get me off my bottom and catch a train into town; an impulsive decision but one that I am glad that I took. Living in London, one really does become oblivious to what this wonderful city has to offer. Even walking from the tube station to the museum, one feels as though one is invading onto another person’s world, of past, present and hopeful futures. Buildings are sprouting up anew, old ones juxtapose awkwardly in some cases but there is always plenty to see, if only we use our eyes to look.
The British Museum stands proudly in a street of Georgian houses. Academia Central, the Bloomsbury life, clever people all around. There have been times when I haven’t felt intellectual enough to go into this museum. There have been times, in my youth, where I have been somewhat overwhelmed and dare I say, bored by the mass of old objects housed within.
Nowadays, thankfully, I am more receptive to this type of learning and I eagerly dive through various exhibitions hungrily wanting to learn, especially when I know I can return home and look at some of the things I have seen in greater detail.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/default.aspx
As soon as you enter into the courtyard, designed by Norman Foster, you feel as though you are in a surreal bubble, encased, and perhaps even trapped in another world where you are merely a spectator.
It is an incredible space and amazingly warm with its sandy stone that appears to be the perfect preparation for viewing these artefacts from those delightfully hot countries of origin.
I hadn’t been up to this museum for some time. As I wandered in, searching for Room 90 where the Picasso sketch was to be found, my eyes met with the posters for the resident exhibition; Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. With the modern Egypt so prevalent in the news at present, I thought I really ought to go and pay some respects to their forefathers. I cannot sit in Tahrir Square in Cairo right now, as much as I would like to, so this was my small, insignificant show of solidarity with those who are peacefully pleading for democracy and regime change.
The museum is free. I could have gone and seen the Mummy room at the top of the museum but I had decided, as is my impulsiveness, that Picasso could wait and I would go and see these books that the dead Egyptians took with them to guide and protect them into the afterlife.
The special exhibitions cost, and I do not have a problem with paying for such brilliance. So I bought my ticket and wandered into a darkened and completely packed room.
It was too much to take in with all the crowds and I was thankful that I had spent the additional money so that I could return at a later date to see the exhibition in better conditions, i.e. with less people. However, you could not be anything other than mesmerised by the intricacies of the papyrus hieroglyphics on display. Fascinating lines of pictures that depict vignettes and spells to help the deceased into their afterlife with Ra guiding and Osiris awaiting. The jackal headed god of embalming, Anubis, was prevalent in all the drawings, carefully and protectively standing next to the dead bodies of these unknown people.
The wooden caskets, carved and painted thousands of years ago, stand vividly and proudly in the centre of the rooms. It is truly stunning to see such mastery in these objects that were then hidden in shrouds for so few people to see.
You do have a sense of invading into a world that you should not be seeing. Every room is crammed with an incredible amount of history that is completely overwhelming and there really is too much for one visit but it is certainly worth taking the trouble to look at this once in a lifetime exhibition.
The final part of the exhibition houses a magnificent 37 metres of Nesitanebisheru’s Book of the Dead. She was the daughter of a high priest in Thebes, and at the time of her death, was an extremely powerful woman. The complexity and completeness of this Book of the Dead is breathtaking, as is her determination to stamp some early feminism into it.
There is no point in me regurgitating what has been written in great detail but for any reader who is interested in reading more, then here is a useful link.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/3665_BOTD_schools_Teachers.pdf
Having walked somewhat briskly through the “Book of the Dead” exhibition, I wandered up to the higher reaches of the museum to look at my intended exhibition.
The British Museum has an unparalleled collection of graphic art from across the world, and actively collects modern and contemporary works today.
Collected over the past 35 years, this exhibition showcases many of the great artists of the 20th century, starting with Picasso’s study for his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the painting that shook the art world in 1907.
It also features works by E L Kirchner, Otto Dix, Matisse, Magritte, David Smith and Louise Bourgeois and major contemporary artists, including Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter and William Kentridge.
The exhibition concludes with Julie Mehretu, the Ethiopian-born artist who is one of the stars of the international contemporary art scene with acclaimed solo exhibitions at the Guggenheim in New York and across the world.
In many ways, this exhibition was too eclectic with pictures ranging from Michaelangelo to Picasso with some unknown artists (well unknown to me) in between. However, I loved the mixture from the erotic pictures of Matisse and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to the disturbing rejection of heroism and nationalistic pride by Otto Dix. Japanese Calligraphy of modern times and sketches from incomplete pictures also stood out in this mixture of work.
Sadly, you couldn’t take photographs in this exhibition and because these are some relatively rare and unknown pieces of work, their copies have yet to seep onto the internet, other than the more famous ones.
Once more though, it is worth a visit to this exhibition before it ends in late April.
I completed this visit to the British Museum with a quick look at the Mitsubishi Corporation Japan Rooms with infamous pictures by Katsushika Hokusai being my highlight, and an all too brief trek into the world of Buddhism.
My horoscope for today said I was going to be a teacher and a student. The latter was more than true with me searching greedily for information on what I could see. The former, I hope, is somewhat fulfilled by me writing this blog. I have offered no teachings other than a plea to do what I have done, and take a wander around the things that are on our doorstep from around the world.
“I go for refuge to the Buddha
I go for refuge to the Dharma
I go to refuge to the Sangha”
I think that is what I have done today.
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