I’m going to make a big call here: the London Mithraeum, which straddles a line between public and private in the basement of a City office tower, is somehow the best interpreted archaeological site I think I’ve ever seen. And this despite the fact that the cult of Mithras hardly appears in contemporary written records […]
Those with around £20 and a few hours in London to spare this weekend should get themselves to the National Portrait Gallery, where the exhibition Cézanne Portraits is due to close on Sunday. The exhibition is organised by the Musée d’Orsay and the National Gallery of Art in Washington as well as the National Portrait Gallery, and […]
Despite having been in London for close to eight years and having a personal and professional interest in museums, this was my first trip to Sir John Soane’s Museum. I can’t believe it took me that long! It is a slightly crazy place in the tradition of English eccentrics, a fascinating window into Enlightenment collecting […]
This production seems to be pitched as the thing to see when you don’t want to see the Nutcracker (or have left it too late to get tickets), and it was in this mindset that I came to see it having, you guessed it, left it too late to get tickets for the Nutcracker. First […]
Let me preface this by saying I’m a massive (and proud) history geek, but it’s hard to underestimate how impressive it is seeing all of the bits usually missing from archaeological exhibitions and museum displays. The wood, the fabrics, the leather, the hair: the things that are normally inferred from the lack of them (an […]
So I shouldn’t be too harsh, right? Bringing all my London expectations to a regional museum and expecting it to live up to them? As regional museums go, the Leeds Art Gallery is ok. As a newly refurbished regional art gallery that was shut for a couple of years to fix the roof and do […]
Ah, the bank holiday weekend. A time to get out of London and piece together an agenda of interesting activities, hopefully interspersed with at least one pub lunch. At the start of May I spend a weekend in the West Riding of Yorkshire, including a day in Leeds, and enjoyed activities including a very windy […]
I recently had the good fortune to be in Milan with an evening to spare, and decided on going to the late evening opening at the Pinacoteca di Brera. I had been once before, last year, but hadn’t seen everything I wanted to see, and was expecting a nice evening of art appreciation. What I […]
It’s an interesting thing, travelling to the Middle East. I’ve done it a few times in recent years, and the countries I have so far been to (Israel, UAE, Oman, Palestine and now Jordan) have at the same time confirmed and subverted my expectations. Edward Said’s seminal 1978 work Orientalism really resonated with me when I first […]
