Exploring the world through museums and stories
A recent NY Times article about the "revisioned" dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History reminded me of a moment during my last visit. Waiting outside the coat check on a cold winter day, I was pleasantly surprised to hear two visitors discussing exactly the subject I always think about in this museum: the problem …
Continue reading Margaret Meade and Museums
Instead of a single object or quote, for Women's History Month I'm highlighting the work of the Guerrilla Girls. They are an anonymous collective of women artists who formed in the 1980s to fight sexism and racism in the art world. According to The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art: We are …
I like to delve into the less visited areas of the British Museum - the out of the way spaces away from most of the tourist traffic. One day in the fall, I impulsively thought to go to the Sainsbury Galleries, rooms I hadn’t been to in ages. The majority of the British Museum’s Oceania, …
We Wear the Mask BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? …
In China Mieville's Kraken, a Giant Squid has been stolen by unimaginable means from the Natural History Museum’s collection of pickled, jarred, and gross things (aka the Spirit Collection). The search for the disappeared cephalopod leads an unprepared museum curator, Billy Harrow, into the demimonde of demigods, cults, magic and spirits. It’s an entertaining jaunt, …
The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch, the newest novel in the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series, called to mind displays in the Museum of London. I've been to this museum so many times, but I was inspired to explore how the Rivers of London series would influence my experience of re-visiting the museum. The magical version of London captured in …
Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988) Palimpsest, 1946 Sugar lift, soft-ground etching and scorper Plate: 8 7/8 × 6 7/8 in. (22.5 × 17.5 cm) Sheet: 13 1/8 × 10 3/16 in. (33.3 × 25.9 cm) Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, 1983 Accession Number: 1983.1141.1 © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York A palimpsest is defined as: writing material …
