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( Keith here. In the interest of ethical blogging, I'll reveal that this entry is one that we should have done some time ago, but just haven't gotten around to it. Our time here is running short, and we felt like we finally had to get this one in.)
There are lots of wonderful museums in London, and it's impossible to get to all of them. But one that we wanted to make sure we visited this time, because we hadn't returned since our first trip here late in 2000, was the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Located in the South Kensington area, it's named, of course, for Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert, who dedicated it when it was founded in 1851 as the Museum of Manufactures. It's been the Victoria & Albert Museum since 1899, when the Queen made one of her last public appearances at the dedication and naming of the current building.
The "V&A" as it's called, isn't as big as the massive British Museum, but it has a collection that rivals its better-known competitor, with 80 miles of corridors. It is one of the best places in the world to see the history of applied arts -- ceramics, glass, textiles (including some fascinating clothing exhibits), ironwork, sculpture, prints and photographs.
The scope of the museum makes it hard to cover everything that's there, but we'll show you one of our favorite pieces -- a statue from India that dates from around the 1790s called "Tippoo's Tiger." Jayne remembered it well enough from our first visit to make a beeline right to it when we started looking at the main collection.
The wooden statue, which belonged to the Indian ruler Tipu Sultan, depicts a tiger devouring a helpless Western soldier, probably British. Inside the tiger is a metal organ which makes noises that simulate the roar of the animal and the shrieks of his victim. Fun stuff.
In addition to being a neat piece of artwork, the statue is a commentary on Great Britain's status then as an imperial power, which was not always well-received by the countries the Brits invited themselves to. (One of my students this semester interviewed some folks in front of the British Museum who observed that museums in their native country, Australia, didn't have anything like the antiquities you find in museums here. "That's because we don't go to other countries plundering their things," they added, not in a complimentary way.)
But the main attraction for our visit this time was not the ancient stuff. One of the special collections at the V&A this fall has been entitled "Cold War Modern Design, 1945-1970." As we have noted previously, we've both become interested in this period of history and how the design of things reflected the conflicts that were going on in the world at the time. See our previous entries on the Atomium and the 1958 World's Fair from our trip to Brussels and the boxy Communist-era buildings we saw in Budapest.
The exhibit covered these things and much more -- lots of exhibits of plastic furniture and clothing and some interesting building plans, some that became reality and some that didn't. One of the more quirky was some drawings by the great French architect Le Corbusier of a plan for an Olympic Stadium in Baghdad, in anticipation of a bid by Iraq for the 1960 Games which didn't quite happen. Reminded me a little of Beijing's "Birds Nest" Olympic stadium.
So it was appropriate that to top off our day, as we left the Cold War retrospective, we set out for that triumph of Western capitalism and design, the supermarket. Tesco, Great Britain's largest grocery store chain, has what to us is the closest thing we've seen to an American-style supermarket out on Cromwell Road, reachable from the V&A by a bus ride and a few blocks' walk. Two floors, rest rooms, a Costa Coffee cafe and a car park. Lots of different brands, good quantities of items. No waiting in endless lines for drab merchandise. We grabbed a few things, paid up and headed for home, glad that that old Cold War turned out the way it did.
A RANDOM NOTE: We had one of those "small world" encounters tonight. We've blogged previously about the huge new Westfield mall that opened at the end of October. We had a shopping errand to do out there tonight and decided to have dinner at a restaurant called The Real Greek. It turned into quite a feast -- we haven't had much grilled meat here this fall and we had some tender skewers of chicken, pork and lamb with some tasty accompaniments.
Our waiter was a pleasant young man who made note of the fact at the end of our meal that we didn't seem to be English. Oddly enough, he could tell by our accents! And he began to list some places in the U.S. that he had lived while he worked with the Royal Caribbean cruise line and was a waiter on a ship called the Radiance of the Seas.
That was the ship on which Jayne and I took a wonderful Alaska cruise in the summer of 2003. Our waiter's job, as it turns out, was in the Chops steak house on that ship, a place where Jayne and I spent a very relaxing evening the night our ship left Juneau. And further, it turns out he was on that very same cruise -- which we all remembered for the fact that, early on our last day at sea, the Radiance rescued four fishermen whose boat had capsized in the choppy Pacific Ocean waters.
Just one more in a series of memorable moments that have made up this unforgettable experience. And if you're ever in London, definitely stop in at The Real Greek. It's the real thing.
There are lots of wonderful museums in London, and it's impossible to get to all of them. But one that we wanted to make sure we visited this time, because we hadn't returned since our first trip here late in 2000, was the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Located in the South Kensington area, it's named, of course, for Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert, who dedicated it when it was founded in 1851 as the Museum of Manufactures. It's been the Victoria & Albert Museum since 1899, when the Queen made one of her last public appearances at the dedication and naming of the current building.
The "V&A" as it's called, isn't as big as the massive British Museum, but it has a collection that rivals its better-known competitor, with 80 miles of corridors. It is one of the best places in the world to see the history of applied arts -- ceramics, glass, textiles (including some fascinating clothing exhibits), ironwork, sculpture, prints and photographs.
The scope of the museum makes it hard to cover everything that's there, but we'll show you one of our favorite pieces -- a statue from India that dates from around the 1790s called "Tippoo's Tiger." Jayne remembered it well enough from our first visit to make a beeline right to it when we started looking at the main collection.
The wooden statue, which belonged to the Indian ruler Tipu Sultan, depicts a tiger devouring a helpless Western soldier, probably British. Inside the tiger is a metal organ which makes noises that simulate the roar of the animal and the shrieks of his victim. Fun stuff.
In addition to being a neat piece of artwork, the statue is a commentary on Great Britain's status then as an imperial power, which was not always well-received by the countries the Brits invited themselves to. (One of my students this semester interviewed some folks in front of the British Museum who observed that museums in their native country, Australia, didn't have anything like the antiquities you find in museums here. "That's because we don't go to other countries plundering their things," they added, not in a complimentary way.)
But the main attraction for our visit this time was not the ancient stuff. One of the special collections at the V&A this fall has been entitled "Cold War Modern Design, 1945-1970." As we have noted previously, we've both become interested in this period of history and how the design of things reflected the conflicts that were going on in the world at the time. See our previous entries on the Atomium and the 1958 World's Fair from our trip to Brussels and the boxy Communist-era buildings we saw in Budapest.
The exhibit covered these things and much more -- lots of exhibits of plastic furniture and clothing and some interesting building plans, some that became reality and some that didn't. One of the more quirky was some drawings by the great French architect Le Corbusier of a plan for an Olympic Stadium in Baghdad, in anticipation of a bid by Iraq for the 1960 Games which didn't quite happen. Reminded me a little of Beijing's "Birds Nest" Olympic stadium.
So it was appropriate that to top off our day, as we left the Cold War retrospective, we set out for that triumph of Western capitalism and design, the supermarket. Tesco, Great Britain's largest grocery store chain, has what to us is the closest thing we've seen to an American-style supermarket out on Cromwell Road, reachable from the V&A by a bus ride and a few blocks' walk. Two floors, rest rooms, a Costa Coffee cafe and a car park. Lots of different brands, good quantities of items. No waiting in endless lines for drab merchandise. We grabbed a few things, paid up and headed for home, glad that that old Cold War turned out the way it did.
A RANDOM NOTE: We had one of those "small world" encounters tonight. We've blogged previously about the huge new Westfield mall that opened at the end of October. We had a shopping errand to do out there tonight and decided to have dinner at a restaurant called The Real Greek. It turned into quite a feast -- we haven't had much grilled meat here this fall and we had some tender skewers of chicken, pork and lamb with some tasty accompaniments.
Our waiter was a pleasant young man who made note of the fact at the end of our meal that we didn't seem to be English. Oddly enough, he could tell by our accents! And he began to list some places in the U.S. that he had lived while he worked with the Royal Caribbean cruise line and was a waiter on a ship called the Radiance of the Seas.
That was the ship on which Jayne and I took a wonderful Alaska cruise in the summer of 2003. Our waiter's job, as it turns out, was in the Chops steak house on that ship, a place where Jayne and I spent a very relaxing evening the night our ship left Juneau. And further, it turns out he was on that very same cruise -- which we all remembered for the fact that, early on our last day at sea, the Radiance rescued four fishermen whose boat had capsized in the choppy Pacific Ocean waters.
Just one more in a series of memorable moments that have made up this unforgettable experience. And if you're ever in London, definitely stop in at The Real Greek. It's the real thing.
1 comment:
I am a student of your sister's and I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed reading your blog on London. I'll miss checking it for new posts everyday. Thank you so much for sharing your adventure. Lynn
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