Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Chasing the sunset
Yesterday to Trafalgar Square to see how the sunset did there. I am pleased to say that at around 1745 it was indeed very spectacular. Massive panorama of blue, grey and yellow clouds. And the square itself, together with the surrounding buildings, most impressive in the fading light. London not a massive tourist attraction for nothing. I wonder if the square's centrality & prominence irritate the French and Spanish losers of the battle in question, a battle which was certainly massively decisive, much more so in the long run than Napoleon's similarly stunning victory at Austerlitz? I certainly find the Parisian focus on the deeds of Napoleon rather tiresome - regarding him mainly as a blood thirsty tyrant, responsible for a few million excess deaths. I would guess that the French would be less relaxed than the Spanish on this score.
During the stroll through town while we waited for the sunset, took in the British Museum where we paid what was for me my first visit to the Enlightenment Room (ask google for 'enlightenment room british museum' to get the full story from the horse's mouth). A large rectangular room, fully up to the standard of a large stately home, lined with bookshelves at two levels - there was a narrow walkway running around the room, half way up the wall - and filled with exhibition cases. The books were a rum mix, mostly but by no means all old leather bound affairs. Mostly in English but with a fair bit of French. I did not notice anything else, German, Latin or Greek for example, but I dare say they were there, the educated in those days before English overwhelmed the world going in for languages. Lots of travel. Lots of history. Some four volume sets by bishops, presumably sermons.
But I think the idea was that, unlike the books, the things were supposed to be representative of the sort of things that a rich gentleman might acquire to stock his house with to provide entertainment for his house guests, this at a time before DVDs or CDs were available. And one had to be very rich to be able to run to one's own live entertainment. So there were a lot of old pots, presumably Greek. A case full of oil lamps, perhaps a bit younger than the pots. A miscellany of classical oddments. A miscellany of oddments from the colonial world. I learn, for example, that the cowrie shells which used to be used as currency in parts of Africa were quite small, maybe a centimetre in length and that you needed around 100 of them to buy grub for self, servant and horse for a day. Various scientific instruments, some contemporary some older. Various geological specimens. Various fossils with an honourable mention for that pioneering lady fossil hunter from Lyme Regis, Mary Anning. A small collection of stuffed birds.
All in all a first class entertainment, not too crowded and not spoiled by lots of people standing around listening to commentaries through leaky headphones. A meta museum if you will, in the sense that the point of the thing was not the things themselves, rather that they were the sort of thing that were collected during the Enlightenment. But if you wanted the things themselves, I think the exhibition galleries of the museum still do that: they have not all been destroyed in the drive for accessibility.
During the stroll through town while we waited for the sunset, took in the British Museum where we paid what was for me my first visit to the Enlightenment Room (ask google for 'enlightenment room british museum' to get the full story from the horse's mouth). A large rectangular room, fully up to the standard of a large stately home, lined with bookshelves at two levels - there was a narrow walkway running around the room, half way up the wall - and filled with exhibition cases. The books were a rum mix, mostly but by no means all old leather bound affairs. Mostly in English but with a fair bit of French. I did not notice anything else, German, Latin or Greek for example, but I dare say they were there, the educated in those days before English overwhelmed the world going in for languages. Lots of travel. Lots of history. Some four volume sets by bishops, presumably sermons.
But I think the idea was that, unlike the books, the things were supposed to be representative of the sort of things that a rich gentleman might acquire to stock his house with to provide entertainment for his house guests, this at a time before DVDs or CDs were available. And one had to be very rich to be able to run to one's own live entertainment. So there were a lot of old pots, presumably Greek. A case full of oil lamps, perhaps a bit younger than the pots. A miscellany of classical oddments. A miscellany of oddments from the colonial world. I learn, for example, that the cowrie shells which used to be used as currency in parts of Africa were quite small, maybe a centimetre in length and that you needed around 100 of them to buy grub for self, servant and horse for a day. Various scientific instruments, some contemporary some older. Various geological specimens. Various fossils with an honourable mention for that pioneering lady fossil hunter from Lyme Regis, Mary Anning. A small collection of stuffed birds.
All in all a first class entertainment, not too crowded and not spoiled by lots of people standing around listening to commentaries through leaky headphones. A meta museum if you will, in the sense that the point of the thing was not the things themselves, rather that they were the sort of thing that were collected during the Enlightenment. But if you wanted the things themselves, I think the exhibition galleries of the museum still do that: they have not all been destroyed in the drive for accessibility.
# posted by Jim @ 1:45 AM 
