Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at the Museum of Docklands examining a Bronze Age hoard found in Essex. The display took you from the finding of the hoard in 2018 though what it contained and why it might have been buried to how it was conserved to go on show and what more there might be to learn.   The objects seemed to be the working pieces from a metalworkers business and included ingots of copper, broken pieces, mis-fired pieces and the metal which would have dripped out of a mould. I found a lovely razor they’d found quite moving as it felt like such a personal item.   I liked the section showing each hoard and explaining four reasons why they might have been buried. I was drawn to the one suggesting that as it is late Bronze age that it was buried as a redundant material/skill with the coming of iron. Also the idea that as metalworkers were itinerant they might have buried things they had gathered in one settlement to come back and use on their next visit.   The s...

Stunning new gallery at Brighton Museum to showcase their archaeological collection. The gallery is designed in an imaginative way blending objects and stories really well. It is centred around seven 3D face reconstructions of skeletons which have been found in the area which were shown next to the heads. I found it very moving to see the faces of previous Brighton residents and liked the way they were named after where they were found so the photo is of Whitehawk Woman. The gallery was surrounded by a panorama of forests to show what the land would have been like. The display was chronological and each era, as well as having a reconstructed head, had models of how people would have been living and real objects which had been found from time including the a Bronze Age amber cup. At the centre of the room was an education area for children including clothes to dress up in and children could follow the story of time traveller Elva round the show in a set of specially com...

Fascinating exhibition at the Archaeological Museum in Naples looking at how the news and information about the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii were recorded and circulated from their discovery to the invention of photography. Having been to Pompeii two days before we did this exhibition in filled in the gaps between the then of what we saw and the now of us experiencing it. I’d also done a course last year on classicism and this illuminated a lot of the points made on it about the re-emergence of classical style in art and architecture when these cities were discovered. I loved seeing the notebooks of the engineers who discovered Herculaneum when preparing a site to build a royal villa. They included Jakob Weber’s survey of the Villa of the Papyri. Some of his notes are the only record we have of sites as in digging them they were destroyed. They also had an early notebook showing the finds shown alongside the finds themselves and Francois de Paule’s first overall ...

Newly opened archaeological site of a Roman temple in the basement of the new Bloomberg Building. This Roman temple of Mithras has recently been relocated to the site on which it was originally discovered and is now in an attractive display in the basement of a new office block. It is free to go in but they recommend booking in advance. On the ground floor there is a wall of unlabelled objects found on the site with iPads provided to give details of the items. It is very moving to look at personal objects that were discarded in the past and to imagine the lives of the people who lost them. As you descend to the basement the street levels at different points in time are carved into the marble walls with details of historic events of the time. They limit the number of people going into the Mithraeum but there is a good video in the holding area to keep you occupied. You go into the main site in small groups and once in there you visit starts with a light and sound exper...

Beautiful exhibition at the British Museum looking at finds from underwater excavations at the ancient Egyptian cities of Heracleion and Canopus. This was a visually stunning show. I loved the low slightly rippling lighting and the gentle soundscape of water. It was good that the show put the objects into context but at times this was a bit heavy handed. It was a shame they had to use items from other places to make some of the points and I wasn’t sure we needed the whole story of the myth of Osiris. However that said there were a couple of the most stunning objects I’d ever seen. I just loved the statue of Arsinoe II, a Greek influenced statue of the Queen rising from the water with the finest drapes clinging to her body. I was also knocked out by the life sized sculpture of a bull, although that was from a different site. I was amazed by a wooden statue from 2000BC which still had traces of painting on it. The carving was so fresh. Also the waste from a scarab facto...