This week we’ve seen two exhibits and made a short jaunt to visit friends in Dorset, Wareham to be specific. We’re a short walk from the V&A Museum so that was an essential as was the featured exhibit at the Royal Academy. Being in Dorset was being transported to another world, full of history and marked by heaths, ridges, flood plains, and even a castle. Corfe Castle sitting high on a ridge in Corfe. All lovely.
FASHION AT THE V&A
The Victoria and Albert Museum has free exhibits and ones for which you must pay. We decided to take advantage of one of the free ones. It was a history of British fashion from about 1790 up through the ages to around 1970. Mostly women’s clothing, but here and there examples of menswear. It was fun to see the many layers women wore in the early years, so many that you wonder how ordinary women, as opposed to rich ones, could dress themselves. Here are a few highlights that appealed to me. You can probably guess which decade the later ones are from.
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
The other exhibit we saw was “Abstract Expressionism” at the Royal Academy of Art, and it was superb! A very detailed exploration of the movement with lots of attention paid to several of the biggest names, Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko. But also, we were introduced to Clyfford Still, an outsider in the movement whose work was really only seen by the public after his death in 1980. The museum in Denver dedicated to his work owns ninety-five percent of it. A westerner from North Dakota, his work shows the influence of those landscapes.
I found the exhibit fascinating, appreciated Pollock’s work and impact in a new way, and loved the intimate display of seven of Rothko’s works in a smallish space–strange to say, I know, since the works themselves aren’t small. But in this hanging, you can immerse yourself in the saturated color. No photography allowed so I can’t share it with you, but, if you’re in London, do go!
Note: All photos copyright JWFarrington (some rights reserved)
We arrived yesterday morning in London and powered through the day with lots of walking, one nap, and a respectable early bedtime. Today we increased our step count exploring Knightsbridge (think Harrod’s Food Hall) and spending time in both Hyde Park and Green Park. The rose garden was mostly over except for one or two last blooms.
RECENT READING
The Latter Days by Judith Freeman
Continuing my reading of memoirs by writers and reporters, I read this one by novelist Judith Freeman. She was brought up in the Mormon faith, but strained against its strictures and rules from an early age. Certainly by her teen years, she was rebelling internally, being given talks by one of the church elders, and subjected to little chats with her mother who admonished her to behave more like her older sister, Marcia.
Somewhat surprisingly, Freeman married a local boy at seventeen, got pregnant very soon thereafter and surrendered any thought of college for herself. Later she and her husband moved from Utah to Minnesota and grew even farther away from the church.
Freeman’s memoir is straightforward and plain as she recounts a childhood starved of warmth and thin on material goods. I found some of the early chapters slow, but appreciated more her later discussion of the turquoise notebook she found from her high school years and how she was eventually able to quench her thirst for learning and channel her desire to become a writer. She has written several novels based on her Mormonism.
One of the delights of a being in a big city is choosing from a wide range of restaurants and cuisines. London is one of the best places in the world in which to do this; there is everything from traditional British pub food to Indian and Chinese plus Lebanese, Thai, Mexican, Italian, French, and the list continues. While here, we indulged in some special places, but also returned to old favorites from seven years ago. Here’s my list of where we dined on good, and occasionally great, food.
Norfolk Arms (Russell Square)–This gastropub was just introducing Spanish tapas when we lived here and they were delicious! They still are and we made it a point of booking several lunches here. Highlights were the choice of sherries to start, the mounded blue cheese and walnut brushetta with a drizzle of honey, the blistered Padron peppers, and the delectable meat platters—ham, chorizo and the like. And if you simply must have your Sunday roast, that’s available too.
Benares (Mayfair)–This Michelin-starred Indian restaurant is superb! The space is elegant, the service attentive, and the food Indian with a contemporary twist.
Hutong (LondonBridge)–Located on the 33rd floor of The Shard, the view from the window tables is spectacular. This is London with the twisting Thames and the rippling rail yards splayed out before you and St. Paul’s looming on the horizon. The food is similar to what you would find in Beijing and good, but not exceptional.
De Amicis (Notting Hill)–Small, family-run Italian restaurant that is most welcoming with good food. We’ve enjoyed their veal preparations (one with fresh porcini) as well as the chicken cacciatore–so much so that we ate here several times this visit!
Mall Tavern (Notting Hill)–An upscale pub that gets very lively most every night (not for those desiring a quiet tete-a-tete), but which offers a sophisticated menu. Reserve ahead and you may be able to sit on the non-bar side which is somewhat quieter. We liked the hake with fennel and the smoked salmon in particular.
Kettner’s (Soho)–Many years ago my grandfather gave me a copy of Kettner’s Book of the Table, published around 1880 with recipes and tips supposedly from this renowned restaurant. We had walked by on a previous visit, but never eaten here. This time we closed the loop and enjoyed a pre-theatre dinner. Kettner’s is known for its selection of champagnes and has a pre-theatre menu. We chose neither preferring instead to order a la carte. It was good and very acceptable as a pre-theatre meal. Kettner was the chef here, back in the day, and had cooked for Napoleon. But he didn’t write the book–someone else did!
Produce at Borough Market
Borough Market (Southwark)–I don’t know how we missed out on discovering this marvelous maze of food stalls and produce and meat purveyors on past visits, but we did. This 100-year old market complex is worth the price of the Tube ride with lots of options of ingredients to cook at home, international dishes to takeaway and several sit-down restaurants. We opted for lunch at Fish! which offered a wide range of choices and an excellent fish soup with rouille. We first tasted this smooth, perfect for a nippy day, comfort food in Ajaccio, Corsica in the late 1970’s. It became a favorite then and still is.
Waitrose (everywhere, but especially The Brunswick in Bloomsbury)–I was amazed and impressed with the selection in this supermarket when I came here from Pennsylvania. After having lived in San Francisco for some years, I remain impressed. Waitrose, and even the other food chains (Marks & Spenser and Tesco) do ready-to-heat prepared foods far better than their American counterparts. These items occupy a significant amount of shelf space and the range of cuisines from which to choose is mouthwatering. We purchased several curries this time, which didn’t happen to be from Waitrose, and they were very good!
Just a sampling of prepared foods offered at Waitrose
We spent the better part of the day in the London Bridge area of the city and learned about Science Gallery London from Daniel Glaser (pictured above.) It is part of the Global Science Gallery Network begun in Dublin in 2008 to engage 15-25 year olds with science. More specifically to engage them “where art and science collide” through a variety of media—film, theater, immersive and online experiences, art of all types, and the like. London is the second location for Science Gallery and it will officially open in 2016. In the meantime, it is in pre-season mode, as it were, before its new home is created. Set in the shadow of the Shard and just steps from the London Bridge Tube and rail stations, Science Gallery is at a busy crossroads and the ideal spot for attracting an audience. It is affiliated with King’s College and all of the future Science Gallery locations (goal is to have a global presence of eight of them by 2020) will be based at universities. But part of their mission is to engage with the entire community and to be a bridge between academe and the city. Future sites include New York, Bangalore, and Melbourne. Why not San Francisco, I say?
King’s College Guy’s Campus
According to Dan, their enthusiastic and well-qualified director, the plan is to have 3-4 seasons each year around a common theme. This fall (September and October 2014) is a time of experimentation and a prototype of what is to come. The SG folks worked with youth in the community as well as with staff and researchers at King’s College to find out what topics and concepts interested them and then have commissioned professional artists and producers to create works. This is a facilitated approach to content development, but one that gets at what the young people want to know about, not what the adults or program staff think they should. Dan and his staff did six months of engagement work ahead of any programming. One novel aspect is that the media team is comprised entirely of youth and led by two sisters, aged 17 and 19, who have 16,000 You Tube subscribers.
Theme for the fall is FREQUENCIES: Tune into Lifeand it relates to the sounds of life, to the rhythms and cycles of our body. Involvement in FREQUENCIES includes: a juggler interacting with children, a cellist at the cancer center, a DJ with a market trader, looking at the physiology of sleep, and the participation of a hospital porter and a lung pollution expert. The emphasis in program development is on rapid prototyping with nine collaborators having just one week in which to create a new sound, and a sound that would be open source!
Science Gallery will have no permanent collections and will focus to some extent, but not exclusively, on issues of health and medicine, given its location on the Guy’s campus. This campus is home to the medical school and Guy’s Hospital. There will be several pre-seasons prior to the official opening of Science Gallery in 2016. Future themes are likely to be: “Spare Parts” (transplantation), “Teeth,” and in 2016, “Addictive.” For this last theme, they will do engagement work with addicts, pushers, specialists, and others in order to generate ideas for the works themselves.
Beginning in 2015, the building they are now in will be renovated to include a theater, a wide open gallery-like space, production facilities, and a cafe. Project cost is 12 million pounds which is a combination of funds from the university, from individual donors, and the Guy’s Hospital charity. Ongoing operating costs will come from the university budget.
Current home of Science Gallery to be renovated in 2015
Students involved in the project were recruited through the Youth Media Agency and are paid for their time. For those familiar with the California Academy of Sciences, Science Gallery has elements of NightLife, Brilliant!Science, Careers in Science, and Teen Advocates for Science Communication (TASC) with its flash mobs. One significant difference is that all events are free; some revenue will be realized from the cafe and a shop. The current staff is quite small, around a dozen individuals, plus three working on commission for this season, and the students. Attendance goal for the first year is 350,000.
We had the privilege of attending one of the FREQUENCIES events, a performance by Bishi, a Bengali British musician and singer based in London, which featured images from a lab recording of her sleep patterns juxtaposed with haunting music and singing. It was different and certainly combined science with art. It will be informative to watch how Science Gallery London evolves, how they define success and what outcomes they achieve. And it would be fun to return in 2016 when they are up and fully operational in their new space.
