Date: March 23
Partners for the day: Jacqueline Olson (text) Peter Van Buren
Museums: The British Museum
Time Spent on Each Site: from ca. 3 PM to ca. 5:30 PM [ _2.5_ hours]
Weather: Sunny, warm, and pleasant.
The exhibits at the British Museum are explained very effectively. The individual texts for the artifacts tend to be short enough to provide the necessary background for a piece, including the date of origin, artists and location where the artifacts were found. In some cases, when images are difficult to see, such as the small seals found in the case of bull jumping images, larger outlines of the images are placed next to the text. Also, for those who may not have recognized a particular mythological reference or theme, short descriptions are included of what is going on in the depictions. The supplemental material is just enough to make the audience aware of the importance of the pieces without distracting them from the piece itself. The British Museum appears to have put a great deal of effort into making its exhibits as stimulating as possible to the general public who may not have the background an expert would have. This may be a reflection of the free admission, which draws people of all backgrounds and levels education to the famous museum.
More notable, though, is the unique and effective ways that the artifacts are displayed. In the first gallery we visited, which was where the old library was located and had since been remodeled to resemble the museum in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the central portion of the long corridor is marked off by four impressive Roman copies of Greek sculpture. Larger than life-size, these white marble statues are resting on black marble bases and set against a protruding part of the wall. The walls themselves are made of a yellowish-orange marble and are flanked on either side by white, rectangular, attached columns. The color contrast of the black, white and yellow, besides being a sign of the artistic level of the exhibit, also brings out the whiteness of the statue. The columns also have the effect of framing the pieces in manners similar to the interior peristyles around cult statues in temples. At the entrance to the Greek and Roman exhibit, columns also utilized. In this example, they are used to recreate the entrance of the actual tomb of a site in Greece. It is not only symbolic as an entrance, but also as the beginning of Greek Art, since the columns are from the early Mycenaean site of the Treasury of Atreus.