Museums in Quarantine Episodes 3 & 4

Second pair of episodes in this fascinating series from BBC4 exploring national museum collections at a time of enforced closure.

The first two episodes focused on exhibitions which had had to close due to the Covid outbreak whereas these two looked at specific galleries and talked about what the art and artefacts in them show us about the human condition. James Fox takes us around Tate Britain and Janina Ramirez looks at the British Museum.

I found Fox’s tour started in such a melancholy way, talking about how art shows how we don’t suffer alone and that suffering is a human condition, that I found it hard to watch however it did cheer up and look at the human need for beauty and imagination. Ramirez took a more upbeat view from the start and looked at objects which demonstrated our need for love and spirituality although we did stray into death as well with a Mexican mosaic skull and cat mummies.

Both pieces were beautifully filmed and drifted around the closed galleries in a timeless way including longing shots of shut cafes and gift shops. Although we want to see the pictures and objects we also want to interact with others over coffee! The films also introduced me to things I didn’t know, and I can’t wait to get back into the spaces to go and see them. Top of my list at the Tate will be a Winfred Nicholson’s “Sandpipers, Alnmouth” and at the British Museum the “Ain Sakhri Lovers”