Saturday at the Museum (and Library)

I moved to London 14 years ago this week but today for the first time I’ve visited the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum. I think the reason I’ve never been to them before is that I thought the BL was only open to researchers and the V&A is in a part of London I rarely visit.

I have recently been paying attention to exhibitions and there were two that I wanted to see. The Magnificent Maps at the BL has been on since May and is finishing next week. I have managed to leave it until the last but one weekend to decide to get there. I’m a fool - I LOVE maps in a truly geek way - and knew about the exhibition for ages but just didn’t manage to get myself there any earlier. The Raphael Tapestries and Cartoons are a different story. This is only on for a short while as the Vatican Museum has lent the tapestries to the V&A to coincide with the visit of Pope Benedict. The Queen has been in possessions of the cartoons and has agreed to let them be shown with the tapestries. It’s a rare opportunity to see the drawing and the tapestries together.

The Maps are amazing. It’s amazing how accurate but also inaccurate the ancient map makers managed to be without any of today cartography tools. I was also intrigued by the idea of maps being used to intimidate other rulers and as art to show off knowledge/lands of a monarch or duke etc. My particular favourite are the maps used for propaganda and the modern map of London depicted as an Island.

The BL was quite busy and it was difficult to get up close to some of the exhibits - I also thought I would go and look at the rest of what’s on show there but time ran out as I had to be at the V&A for 3pm. The other stuff is permanent though so I’ll go back and see it.

I jumped on the Piccadilly line to South Ken and found my way to the V&A through a tunnel - I arrived at 15.33 so was a little bit late - but it didn’t seem to matter. Since this exhibition is ticketed it was much easier to see the pieces. It was really inspiring to see the acts of St Paul and St Peter depicted first on canvas and then in tapestry. The changes made by the weavers are really interesting- mostly made to show off their talents or to make the colours more vivid. I really like the V&A itself - I’m quite impressed by it. And I’ll definitely be back - hopefully in the next few weeks to see the Grace Kelly exhibition if I can get a ticket!

So my day of culture has lead me to conclude that I need to do this sort of thing more often. No more Saturdays spent on the sofa (not that I’ve done that much recently!) - I’m going to try and visit a museum once a month. I will blog about my visits so we’ll see how I get on.

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