Sunday, December 20, 2015

curating the cafe, curating antiquities


Two nights in a central London hotel is a special pre-Christmas treat.  Waiting for our room to be ready, we went round the corner for a coffee and to observe that this shade really should be known as old-London-cafe-green.  And then into the British Museum, where I hadn't previously seen their version of resuscitation of The Enlightenment Gallery - designed by Robert Smirke, completed 1828, to house the library of George III - and now full not just of G3 books, but of Enlightenment-style displays, especially about the Natural World, ancient archaeology, global cultures, religion, trade, discovery ...

So there were large shells (and reflections of the windows);


a large bust of the botanist Sir Joseph Banks;


and lots of miscellaneous things in cases.




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