Lockdown Diaries: Day 41 (Virtual Museums)

Locked Down in London, Day 41: Homeschooling

An Ofsted inspector inspected his own homeschooling arrangements and found his school ‘appalling’:

The headteacher is eminently qualified but is regularly seen wearing nothing but dressing gowns and underpants. This sets a very poor example to the pupils. Also in the evening, both members of staff are often observed drinking alcohol in front of the pupils…

⇒ Read more (BBC)

Guess the Picture (Adivina la imagen)

I’ve been out and about last weekend – despite of the snow and the freezing wind – and took this picture. It’s of a jaw-dropping exhibit in one of my favourite museums.

Estaba saliendo el pasado fin de semana, a pesar del nieve y el viento helado, y saqué esta foto. Es de una exposición alucinante en uno de mis museos favoritos.

Can you guess what it is? Then leave a comment below.

¿Puedes adivinar qué es? Pues déjame un comentario abajo.

You’ll find the answer in next Wednesday’s post, together with some less cryptic photos…!

Encontrarás la solución en el post del miércoles que viene, ¡junto con unas fotos menos enigmáticas…!

View Through the Periscope (HMS Ocelot)

Far from the best photo I’ve ever taken but how often do you get to look through the periscope of a submarine?

A Sense of History

History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning inquiry) is the study of the past…

History is asking questions.

?

And answering them.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds – some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians – not go unsung as well as the causes that led them to make war on each other.

Herodotus: The Histories, 1:1

Turquoise

…like sapphires in colour, only that it is paler and more closely resembles the tint of the water near the sea-shore in appearance.

(Pliny the Elder: Natural History, XXXVII.56)

Night at the Museum

Many of London’s museums and galleries stay open late into the evening once a week. You might think day or night makes no difference…

But it’s nice to break the daily routine once in a while. Instead of going home after work, I head for Bloomsbury.

The British Museum after six pm is a different place

The lights are dimmed. The crowds are gone; it’s quiet. I relax in the members’ room with my book and a glass of wine before going for a wander.

British Museum

The Great Court

I can get up close to the most popular exhibits without an elbow fight. I can contemplate. I can read the labels in peace.

I can take pictures.

The fresco of Nebamun

Golden bracelet

Till next Friday.

You might also like:
⇒ Made by the Egyptians: A Bust of Amenhotep III
⇒ The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
⇒ Three Hours at the British Museum

Through the Doors of the Queen’s House, Greenwich

The Queen’s House in Greenwich is one of those buildings that I walked past dozens of times each year and never once entered, despite being a member in the Maritime Museum and despite the entry being free in any case. There is so much to see in Greenwich that the Queen’s House always ended up bypassed. I finally went in two weeks ago – to see the so-called Armada portrait of Queen Elizabeth I that the museum had recently acquired and which was about to disappear into a conservator’s workshop for the near future. The building is so stunning I can’t believe I ignored it for years – don’t miss it if you ever visit Greenwich!

The Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (The Drake Version) [public domain] via Wikipedia

The Case for the Elgin Marbles

I was reading Keats last night:

My spirit is too weak – mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time – with a billowy main –
A sun – a shadow of a magnitude.

(On Seeing the Elgin Marbles by John Keats)

I have to say it threw me a bit. Not quite as easy as “Then I felt like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken” (On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer also by John Keats). In fact, after much mulling over what some of the phrases actually meant, I had to seek enlightment from Mr Anglo-Saxonist who upon reading it pronounced that it was s**t poem and there was no need to rack my brains about what it meant. (He particularly objected to the sick eagle.) Well, I wouldn’t go quite as far but I have to agree: not one of Keats’s best. Nevertheless I do like the last few lines, in particular:

… mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time…

Which is why today we’re going to talk about some Greek grandeur and the rude wasting of old time.

My Love-Hate Relationship with Caravaggio

Caravaggio (detail from The Taking of Christ)

For today’s Mediterranean theme, we’ll take a painter. From a Mediterranean country, clearly. He’s a painter I cannot be indifferent to: I either hate his pictures – or love them.

Ratlines (Up the Mast)

HMS Gannet, Chatham Historic Dockyard

In response to Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge.

If you'd really like to climb the mast:
SS Great Britain in Bristol allows you to do so.

 

HMS Cavalier (Edge)

HMS Cavalier, a World War II destroyer in Chatham Historic Dockyard

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

Posted in response to the Daily Post Photo Challenge: Edge.

Links:
⇒ O Captain! My Captain by Walt Whitman
⇒ The Fastest Ship in the Fleet - an 18-minute film of the 1971 race between HMS Cavalier and HMS Rapid (Imperial War Museum). No prizes for guessing who won! 
⇒ The service history of HMS Cavalier on Naval-History.net

Venice in Black & White II

It’s been a while since we’ve been to Italy… and the weather outside is pretty grey (this passes for summer hereabouts), so I thought it was time for a new instalment of Venice in Black & White.

Enjoy. 🙂

Miss Britain III: An Experiment

Miss Britain III was a single-engine speedboat built by Hubert Scott-Payne, an aristocratic boat designer in 1933. Although it was then narrowly beaten in a race on the St Clair River in Michigan by Miss America X, a boat powered by four engines, later that year Miss Britain III broke the speed record for a single-engine motorboat with Scott-Payne and team-mate Gordon Thomas becoming the first men to travel over 100 miles per hour in a single-engined boat – a record that remained unbeaten for 50 years.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Larger than life statue of Mausolus from the Mausoleum (British Museum)

Halicarnassus, the birth place of Herodotus (nowadays Bodrum, Turkey) was home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Mausoleum, a colossal tomb of Mausolus, a Persian satrap and a ruler of Caria (377-353 B.C.). The word mausoleum as used today originates precisely in the name of Mausolus and his tomb.

“Halicarnassus, the royal residence of the dynasts of Caria,” wrote the Greek geographer Strabo two thousand years ago. “Here is the tomb of Mausolus, one of the Seven Wonders, a monument erected by Artemisia in honour of her husband.” (Strabo: Geography, XIV.2)

Mausolus made Halicarnassus his capital and spent a huge amount of money on improving the harbour, fortifying the town and embellishing it with temples, palaces and statues.

 About halfway up the curving slope… a broad wide street was laid out, in the middle of which was built the Mausoleum, a work so remarkable that it is classed among the Seven Wonders of the World. (Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, II.8)

The Ship and the Skimpy Night-dress

Imagine that you just built a graceful sailing ship – a tea clipper, no less – and have to come up with a name for it…  Any ideas? No? Well, if you’re short of ideas, allow me to suggest you a name. How about the Skimpy Night-dress?

The Mask of Agamemnon

The Mask of Agamemnon. Photo by: Xuan Che [CC BY 2.0] via Wikipedia

In the Archeological Museum in Athens there’s a golden funeral mask that was found by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 when he was excavating Mycenae. It goes by the name of the mask of Agamemnon. Needless to say, it’s probably not the mask of Agamemnon but I, like Schliemann, find the idea that it depicts Agamemnon, rather than somebody we never heard of, much more interesting… and easier to remember. 🙂

Riggers Aloft the Cutty Sark

Different from most other museum ships is the fact that all the ropes were installed. It is the 8 miles of rope and 3 miles of wire and chain that help make Cutty Sark’s rigging so spectacular.
(Who’s Who at Cutty Sark: Meet Rigger Andy)

Salvaging something of a rainy day in half-term with Young Friend of the Elephants – visiting the Cutty Sark in Greenwich… and catching the riggers at work aloft. (Yes, those are real people in the rigging. 🙂 )

“She might be static, but in terms of rigging all she needs is some sails and she’s ready to go sailing!”
(Rigger Andy)

Oranges Like Blazing Fire

The oranges of the island are like blazing fire among the emerald boughs,
And the lemons are like the pale faces of lovers who have spent the night crying.

Chinotto oranges. Photo by Nadiatalent via Wikipedia.

Two widely quoted lines from an obscure poet. If you can name the island this quote refers to, I’m impressed. If you can also name the poet, you know far too much about literature and history – would you be interested in writing a guest post for me?

As for the rest of you, the hoi polloi, the mere mortals 🙂 reading this:

The British Museum Goes B&W (A Different Point of View)

Still on the day 12 assignment… The British Museum goes black & white, part II. Turning another earlier assignment into monochrome:

A Black & White  (Different) Point of View

And have I learned anything from the exercise?

1. Not all photos look good in black & white.
2. There are different black & white filters and not all of them suit all the photos. I used the one my photo program calls noir here – and I think the clouds look nice & dramatic. The same clouds almost didn’t show at all with the other two filters (one called mono, the other tonal)
3. There was a third point, but I got interrupted and forgot what is was! (I’ll put it here when it comes back to me.)

 

The British Museum Goes B&W (Behind the Bars)

Day 12: the assignment is “to capture the beauty and complexity of architecture” and especially, by looking for elements that would come out well in black & white.

When I read this in the morning, I felt a sense of frustrated achievement. Because for last Friday’s assignment I did happen to take a picture of the back façade of the British Museum shot through some bars… which I duly posted. And when I got bored with admiring my handiwork on Saturday, I decided to turn it into black & white – and pleased with the result I posted it on my brand new Instagram account. (Well, I had to put it somewhere.)

And so now here we are. Today the British Museum goes black & white. Part I.

Behind the Bars in Black & White