Dan caught a chill while on yesterday’s bus tour, so I headed out solo while he stayed home and worked on blog posts. I’m so grateful for this daily log of our adventure that he’s created, and am already looking back at things I would have forgotten. Paris seems like a long time ago! It’s a lot of work and he’s been so diligent about it. Love seeing all his photos, too. Yay Dan-o!!!!
I took my now-favorite walk across Hyde Park to museum row, and returned to the Victoria & Albert. I think this is my favorite museum so far. It has a huge section on Mesopotamia, with lots of artifacts up to 9,000 years old. My minor was in Classical Studies, and I loved my class on Sumerian Mythology. All the masses of information I forgot during that program has gradually been coming back to me (Greek and Roman pantheons, history, myths) as we’ve traveled, and I was especially excited to see actual artifacts from this area (modern Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey). It was here that some of the world’s first civilizations developed, and they were very sophisticated. I wonder sometimes how much our modern science and mathematics is a relearning of ancient knowledge.
I have mixed feelings about the museums: huge gratitude to be able to see and learn about different worldwide cultures, societies, civilizations and arts, and horror at the pure plundering that took place to acquire all of these pieces, including human bodies and many funerary items. By random coincidence, I started reading “Warrior Girl Unearthed” by Angeline Boulley, which focuses on missing Indigenous women and how an Ojibwa tribe is affected by and works to have their ancestors and sacred artifacts returned from museums. It gave me an added perspective to what I was feeling intuitively as I wandered these museums.
Photo and Collection and Library
I was completely gob-smocked to find the most varied photo gallery I’ve experienced here, and then that they had a huge photography library where you can check out books to read. The breadth of the collection was spectacular, and included so many photographers that I’ve studied but never seen their actual prints. Stunning collection. They also had rooms set up like gallery exhibitions, focusing on particular artists.
Film and Multimedia Gallery
They had an very cool multimedia gallery, but as if my photo experience wasn’t enough, I entered a film gallery and they had a bunch of items from the set of “His Dark Materials” (based on the Phillip Pullman book series of the same name). I’ve read the books many times and also watched the series. In fact, Dan and I were watching it together at home before we left on this trip, and we’ve still got two episodes left. They had a great film that explained how they did the CG and how they used puppets for the daemons so the actors could interact with ‘real’ characters and then they’d overlay the CG on the scenes. Fascinating. I recall an article where Sir Ian McKellen spoke of how painful it was to play Gandalf, as he was always by himself in a green room.
Heading Home
I walk back along’ museum row’ to get to Hyde Park. I love Hyde Park! During the day it’s filled with people, dogs playing off-leash, kids running around, birds. At night, there are cyclists and runners, but the shapes of the trees take main stage. There are twisted, ancient trees throughout. It’s like wandering a magic forest at night.
