Museum Day in London
[London, UK, Jan 19, 2024]
I had only done the British Museum on my 2014 visit, so I looked forward to visiting others this time.
Housed in the former Bankside Power Station, Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world. It moved to the closed power station in 2000 after six years of renovations.
Admission is free, but we did buy tickets for the special Yaoi Kusama exhibit. I had seen some of her “Infinity Mirrors” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2017, but I looked forward to seeing her work again. The Tate exhibition included two rooms, one of which was the “Chandelier of Grief.”
From the permanent exhibit, I loved the Cape Light photographs by Joel Meyerowitz. Shot in Cape Cod, Massachussets, they captured light beautifully.
The views from the Level 10 cafe were great.
From there, we took the train to the Royal Maritime Observatory.
The observatory was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II and it was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, whose work at St Paul’s cathedral we had already seen. The scientific work that took place here resulted in the birth of the Greenwich meridian, which was instrumental for navigation. An international conference in 1884 established the principle of 24 time zones based on the Greenwich Meridian. This became the basis for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The Royal Observatory became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997.
The Flamsteed House is the original Royal Observatory building at Greenwich. On top of Flamsteed House is one of the world’s earliest public time signals, the bright red Time Ball, which has been in operation since 1833. We got there just in time to see it drop at 1pm, like it does every day.
The beautiful Octagon Room was designed to observe celestial events including eclipses, comets and planetary movements. Today it houses a selection of timepieces and astronomical instruments. I loved the light inside.
The Flamsteed House had an exhibit featuring various time pieces, but my favorite one was the dolphin sundial outside. We checked and the shadow of the fins accurately showed 1:21 pm.
Because the observatory was in East London just south of the Thames, we took the opportunity to go back into London City by taking a ferry. It took about 20 mins and we got off right at Tower Bridge.
It was time for some rest and relaxation before our evening activities. I took advantage of the fact that sunset was before 5 pm and took some photos from the rooftop restaurant of our hotel.
In the evening, Ash went to see friends while I went to the National Gallery.
The special exhibition featuring Frans Hals (1582-1666) was quite lovely. It pulled together Hals works from various museums and private collections. I really enjoyed getting to get to know the artist in such a cohesive way instead of seeing random works in different museums all over the world. The Dutch Golden Age painter was best known for portraits of the citizens of Haarlem. He was a master of bringing out his subject’s character to life with an unparalleled sense of animation.
I enjoyed the permanent collection as well. I searched for works but my favorite Renaissance painter, Caravaggio, and I found a couple.
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This is the Gallery’s only example of Cubism, the early twentieth-century art movement initiated by Pablo Picasso and his colleague Georges Braque. Although the picture may seem to be entirely abstract, there are several recognizable objects. These include a table, an off-white tablecloth with grey tassels, the strings and neck of a violin, part of a newspaper (including the letters ‘AL’ of ‘JOURNAL’) and a dish of fruit. Picasso shows these objects from more than one point of view – for example, we see the table from the side and also look down at it from above.
Van Gogh painted this view from his window at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, following a severe epileptic attack which had prevented him from painting. Typical of his work at this date, the scene is based on direct observation but is laden with personal meaning. The hardworking ploughman, tilling the soil at dawn, becomes a symbol for the artist himself: in October 1889, Van Gogh wrote to his mother, ‘I am ploughing on my canvases as they do in their fields’.
Three museums in one day was quite an accomplishment, I think! It was quite a lot to take in and absorb but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
