March 28, 2005
March 27 Photos: Nkosi
As you first walk into the backside of the museum there is a temporary exhibition of modern and ancient art. The goal of the exhibition is to prompt questions about death and dying in modern society. The glass case in the picture is placed in the main corridor and is the first thing you see when walking through. You are supposed to read the case, however, starting from the other side. The exhibit is multimedia and shows the number of pills and injections the average person is likely to take in their lifetime along with pictures of everyday life. It is an interesting if somewhat somber look at modern life.
Here is a close up of the exhibit. The pills are encased in a nylon mesh cloth. Represented by the two cloths are one male and one female. Each has their own special circumstance, one has asthma and the other diabetes.
As you know from the text we had an assignment today to analyize one museum exhibition. Because we weren’t together for the majority of the day, I decided to simply show some of the galleries that a few of us picked.
The museum is doing a special exhibition on Africa. This is just one example of the many ways to display pots. It is a truly fantastic way to display art objects which by themselves would not have been as inspiring.
The group taking a break. During the afternoon after we had gone through the British Museum we went to the Museum of London. On our way we saw several remnants of the old London wall and a very futuristic apartment complex.
The piece of London wall we were looking at.
Back to the morning. This is the Southwest Asia display in the museum. It is a very traditional display, relying on glass cases, natural cases and a few spotlights.
One the first floor to pass from the Roman and Greek to the Assyrian and Egyptian you walk through a hallway with Assyrian reliefs. As you can tell from the picture it is grandly displayed, but in a way different from the Elgin Marbles or the Southwest Asian exhibits.
One of the questions we were supposed to ask ourselves in our paper was about traffic flow. You are looking at the Rosetta Stone, you wouldn’t know it because of the object, but because of the crowds surrounding it. This corridor leads into Egypt, Greece and Rome and from the time the museum opens till the time it closes there are hoards of people blocking entrance into the other galleries. For the people trying to get to those other galleries it is a pain, but everyone around the stone seems to enjoy it.
The Americas section is on the backside of the museum. Some of the galleries are very traditional, but the mezzo-american gallery is very modern and dramatic. Here is a section of the gallery. The rest of the gallery is blue, very dark with spotlights. The red is for added effect. The wall has only four object which allows you to concentrate on those specific objects.
The front façade of St. Paul’s Cathedral. After the London Museum (which prohibited the use of cameras. sorry we couldn’t take pictures) we broke off into out groups. The girls ended up going to St. Paul’s for a brief period before dinner.
The girls (all but one) about a block away from the Cathedral.