Cathy's Art Diary

Exhibition of items from the boy kings tomb at the O2. This exhibition was much better than I expected. I must admit I hadn’t heard good things but it was well set out with some beautiful artefacts. I particularly liked the two children’s chairs, they were so perfect despite their age. The objects were given space to be shown off to their best and often the reflections in the cabinets and across cabinets added to the mystic. I must admit though that the shop must get an award for the tackiest gifts ever! As one friend said “You really shouldn’t do that to a teddy bear”! Pictures Times Reviews Times Guardian Daily Telegraph Evening Standard

M ajor exhibition at the British Museum of the life and death of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuangdi. The first half of the exhibition focused on the emperor’s life looking at how he unified the country both militarily, administratively and emotionally. I must admit I found this section a little bit superfluous. Although I am sure if was good to give a context to the terracotta warriors, which I am sure is what most people had come to see, the sparse nature of the artefacts made this a rather reading based section and a bit stodgy. It felt a little like a way of controlling the flow of people to the meat of the exhibition. Talking of the meat the figures themselves were not disappointing. They were put into the context of the death of the emperor although I found myself viewing them as art artefacts in their own right. I was most struck by how different they all were. The image you get from photo’s of the tomb is of an amorphous group of figures more astonishing for their numbers that...