11.17.05
Culture and a pub lunch
I have to come clean here, my experience of art is pretty limited. We are not people who spend our weekends wandering around art galleries having our cultural senses aroused. But do you know what I could get to like it, because it really is quite an interesting way to spend a day, or at least part of one. Our trip to the National Portrait Gallery was to get us to think about how power and leadership can be demonstrated within visual art. But for someone like me, who loves history actually seeing the centuries depicted in this way was pretty interesting. Some observations: Tudor and Stuart people were in the main pretty fat, and often quite ugly. If the artists were trying to pick up some of their ‘better sides’ then they pretty much failed. People appeared not to be allowed to smile until at least the nineteenth century. I particularly liked some of the more modern 20th Century photos and paintings, one observation in the exhibition entitled Heads of Government, Tony and Gordon appeared not to be part of the British Government; is that telling us something?
Eating a proper lunch is not something I get time for on a normal working day, but there was a need to recharge batteries, rest our feet and debrief, so we found ourselves a pub across the road from Trafalgar Square. Well you have to continue the cultural experiences of the capital city don’t you?
I have still to completely work out the whole thing about linking today with the course, and my hubby thinks the whole thing is a complete skive; maybe it was, but it was a fun skive!
Thesisville said,
November 21, 2005 at 9:20 am
The National Portrait Gallery is my favourite place to visit each time I’m in London. It’s brilliant. And very calm because lots of people, rather unfortunately, pass it by. I’m always telling people to go there.
Nemesis said,
November 22, 2005 at 3:03 pm
Hey, I just went there a couple of weeks ago! It was really great, but I didn’t see everything because my feet were tired.
Julie said,
November 22, 2005 at 3:15 pm
That is a problem and I intend to go back. I had the added problem that there were a number of school trips; falling over groups of 8 year olds is not fun. Mind you of course I wouldn’t want to stop them from going there, just not when I am there!