Partner and I excursed to Tate Modern today to visit the Olafur Eliasson In real life - we were somewhat less than whelmed by the exhibition itself - not as good as the one I visited in San Francisco some while since - but we were actually quite impressed by the associated lunch event, Studio Olafur Eliasson Kitchen at the Terrace Bar, rather ( Read more... )

So, a lot of this has been about the quirky and the overlooked and not necessarily the Top London Things that annoying travel sites send you emails about because you once booked something or other through them.

But let us not neglect the sparkling Gems As Big As The Ritz.

Like the British Museum.

Yes, they have these amazing special exhibitions, ( Read more... )

Perhaps this is not exactly the best time to be going 'yay! Wallace Collection!' as a quick look at its website indicates that the
Great Gallery, one of the world’s greatest Old Master picture galleries, will undergo an extensive refurbishment programme from 22 October 2012. Re-opening in 2014

when it will
be lit by natural daylight. In addition ( Read more... )

A groundbreaking analysis of sex in Ireland. This sounds excellent, though I'm not sure if the following is not making over-specific a more generally and not nationally-delimited problem around sex:
There is a word that crops up twice in Diarmaid Ferriter's groundbreaking study of the control of sexuality by church and state in 20th-century Ireland ( Read more... )

Feeling much better.

Probably ought to consider going into work tomorrow, except that there are a whole lot of branching choices spinning off from that:

Supposing I feel well enough to go into work, am I really up to going to funeral for former colleague (which involves a certain amount of travelling)?

If I don't go, there is a follow-on from ( Read more... )

Another review of the Women and Surrealism exhibition: What happens when a muse is left to her own devices, when an object becomes a subject, when a woman is free to be herself?

The boundary between The Observer Magazine and Observer Woman becomes yet more permeable: this was in the former, am surprised it wasn't in the latter, and am generally, ( Read more... )

Arrived at conference in decent time - tube to Liverpool St (one convoluted change) and taxi to venue, which turned out to be adjacent to site of former public baths where taxi driver learnt to swim - a Tired of London? Tired of Life! moment.

The conference, though small (it was never going to be huge, at the venue in question) went very well ( Read more... )

Yesterday to see the Walking in My Mind exhibit at the Hayward.

As one might anticipate, these installations were all very different and evoked different responses in me.

The cavern/labyrinth by Thomas Hirschhorn ('Cavemanman') impressed me far more than the installation of his we saw at the Vienna Secession last year in spite of a perhaps similar ( Read more... )

My attention has been drawn to this fascinating online archive of promotional photographs and advertising images, from 1939 to the early 1950s, of UK cosmetic companies.

And the main site, VADS - the online resource for the visual arts, has a lot of Really Cool Collections available:
African and Asian Visual Artists Archive
South Asian Diaspora ( Read more... )

I was really excited to learn about this:
Mrs. Delany and Her Circle
which is happening later this year at the Yale Center for British Art and then coming to London, yay!
This exhibition will explore the life, world and work of Mary Delany, née Mary Granville (1700 - 1788). Though best known for her almost one thousand botanical "paper mosaics" now ( Read more... )