Cathy's Art Diary

Small exhibition at the British Museum celebrating works left to the museum by the dealer, Kirsten Schubert. Schubert left 10 works but has donated a further 45 during his lifetime some of which were also featured. They ranged from modern masters like Picasso and Degas and artists he had represented such as Bridget Riley. I loved this early Riley which is hinting at her abstracted work to come but keeps a recognisable landscape. I also liked this Degas copied after a drawing in the Uffizi. Closed 21 April 2025  

Useful exhibition at the British Museum looking at how Picasso used prints throughout his career. The show was laid out clearly and chronically with good explanations of the different print techniques. I knew some of the prints well but hadn’t realised how many different types of print production Picasso had mastered. I loved that they also showed prints by artists who had influenced him amongst his work which included some beautiful Rembrandts and a Goya. The show also gave a good outline of his career in general including portraits of his wives, girlfriends and art dealers. Closed 30 March 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum introducing five possible redesigns of their west wing. The show was held in the Reading Room, which it is always magical to enter, and consisted of architects’ models of the five ideas. The space under review represents over a third of their displays, and currently includes the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Sculptures and the Assyrian Lion Hunt. I’m not convinced that some of the designs would give more and better space for display they seemed to concentrate more on providing prestige public space which seems a common theme of museum refurbishment. It’s great to get more people to come but surely you want to entice them to look at the objects and research. I think I would have found it useful to have a model of what the space is like now to make more direct comparisons. There was a plan but I found it hard to visualise how that related to the new ideas. Closed 2 March 2025    

Thoughtful exhibition at the British Museum by contemporary artist Hew Locke examining the museums relationship with Imperial power. It is a complex subject and is presented as a dialogue, with exhibits arranged as if in a storeroom. I feared it would feel preachy but it was more nuanced. From the welcome via video by the artist with a sparkle in his eye I was captivated. There was a mix of original artefacts combined with new pieces commenting on them by Locke all overseen by some of his signature figures looking down from on top of the cabinets. My only negative comment would be that they were hard to see and often they are fabulously detailed. I learnt some stories I didn’t know, had some turned on their heads and other things confirmed. I came away with a lot to think about as well as having seen some amazing things. Closes 9 February 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Fascinating online lecture from the British Museum explaining their current exhibition on the Silk Roads. I’d enjoyed the exhibition but it was useful to learn a bit more about how it was structured. I had spotted that the show was in geographical zones which roughly made it chronological but had missed that within this were six case studies looking at a topic in more detail. Sue Brunning and Yu Ping Luk, the curators, took us on a whistle stop tour of the show pointing out the star exhibits and explaining why they were chosen. They also explained how the show goes beyond the norms of the museum by drawing objects from all departments as well as borrowing items from 29 international lenders, many of whom had never lent to the British Museum before.

Amazing exhibition at the British Museum looking in detail at the concept of the silk roads. Think of it more as the story of trade in the 1st millennium going geographically from Japan to Ireland. It looked at trade in both directions as well as the spread of religions along the routes. There were some breath taking   pieces such as the earliest known chess pieces, an ivory casket which pairs the Magi with Wheland the Smithy and had Romulus and Remus on one side, a lovely Cosimo and Damian and a Chinese shoe dated about 700AD. It told the story fairly clearly but it was a complex and interwoven narrative and I think I’ll need to come again at least once to get it straight in my mind. It suffered a bit from slow readers many of which seemed to be from the countries represented and I suspect might have been translating the labels. Closes 23 February 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard    

Exquisite small exhibition at the British Museum putting their new acquisition of a drawing by Rembrandt of a sleeping child in context. The show looked at pictures of children in Dutch and Flemish 6th and 17th centuries works in the context of art and social history. They ran chronologically placing Rembrandt in the centre of the timeline. I loved the early drawings by Henrick Goltzius as well as his engraving of Frederick de Vries who was his apprentice while the boys artist father was in Venice. It was done to send to his father to Sue him there but was well! There was a good selection of Rembrandt drawings from the collection featuring children and the commentary talked about how he often saved drawings of everyday life to reuse the images in religious works. The focal drawing, shown here, was so delicate. Finally the show looked at followers of Rembrandt and a new find for me were some beautiful, coloured interiors by Adriaen Van Ostade. Closed 6 October 2024   ...

Fascinating exhibition at the British Museum of new contemporary acquisitions celebrating a grant from the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation which has enabled them to buy over 300 works. The show had some beautiful pieces but also acted as an overview of art since the 1960s. I was impressed at how many of the artists I knew but I was also introduced to some great new finds. The show was gently themed bringing together works influenced by art history, pictures of people, still-lives, landscape and abstract work. Needless to say it was the art history section which I loved most. As ever in the print room galleries the labels were comprehensive but simply written. Highlights included the first in the show by Cornelia Parker of wine glasses, Jake Garfield’s take on Zoffany’s Tribuna of the Uffizi and Charlotte Verity’s watercolour monotypes based on plants in her garden in lockdown. My favourite was this exquisite Japanese ink work by Joy Gerard based on a photograph of a demonstration...

Fascinating online discussion from the British Museum looking in detail at Michelangelo’s Epifania cartoon. Sarah Vowels and Grant Lewis, curators of the excellent exhibition “Michelangelo: The Last Decades” at the museum, introduced us to the cartoon dated from around 1550-3 and its possible iconography. They also talked about the painting based on it by Condivi which was also in the show. Art historian Daniel Godfrey then took us through the history of the cartoon after Michelangelo’s death and how it got to be in the museum’s collection. Finally conservator, Emma Turner led us through the six year conservation project with some great pictures of all the processes and explained what had been discovered during the project. All the talks added to a more rounded view of the picture and its history.

Fabulous exhibition at the British Museum focusing on the last three decades of Michelangelo’s life and career. The show was beautifully arranged with a clear narrative for a complicated subject. The labels not only told you about the image but also told you where it fitted into the story with some charming details such as the fact one picture was painted for the children of his servant, Urbino, who died. The show covered major projects, such as the Sistine Chapel “Last Judgement”, but also looked at his architectural projects and private drawings. There were sections of his friendships with Tommaso de'Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna including a clear description of the latter’s poetry and religious beliefs. There was a good analysis of his collaboration with other artists including Marcello Venusti and Daniele da Volterra outlining how he produced drawings for them to work from. Most moving was the last section of drawings which were probably made as part of his meditative p...

Fascinating lecture at the British Museum introducing their Michelangelo exhibition. Co-curator of the show Sarah Vowles led us through Michelangelo’s career from 1534 when he returned to Rome and worked for the next 30 years.   From the drawings for the Last Judgement she took us through the drawings for Tommaso dei Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna spending some time on the religious nuisances of the latter drawings. She also spent some time discussing the letters to his nephew Leonardo and his work with collaborators then finished by looking at his architectural work and late drawings which may be showing a less controlled hand. It was a great taster for the show and I can’t wait to go when it opens. I particularly want to see the conserved Epifania cartoon and a painting by Ascanio Condivi based on it. Stop press : I have been since so watch out for my review of it! Sorry I’m still very behind with blogging!    

Fascinating series of short online talks from the British Museum looking at life at the fort of Vindolanda. The event was linked to the current exhibition “Legion” and brought together an interesting collection of speakers to talk about the fort. Guy de la Bedoyere kicked things off by looking at the function of forts and the types of people that would be found there. Barbara Burley, director of the Vindolands Trust outlined the layers of archaeology on the site and spent some time talking about the writing tablets which have been found and what they can tell us about everyday life. Finally novelist Adrian Goldsworth looked at how he has taken the facts from these, such as a birthday invitation, and used them to build stories of the fort and its place in the Roman world.

Excellent exhibition at the British Museum looking at life in the Roman Army. Don’t be put off by the early, obvious targeting at children, using the Horrible Histories rat. The show strikes a good balance between a clear and personal narrative, following the career of a real soldier, Claudius Terentianus, whose letters home survive, with fantastic and significant objects. Inevitably it is the small, personal items which are most engaging and moving and I loved the use of tombstones as a way of telling some of the individual stories. I also liked the use throughout of images from Trajan’s column. Favourite objects included the only surviving Roman long shield and a lovely tomb showing how they were used. I have to give a shout out for almost the last object in the show which was a hoard of coins, equivalent to the value of a soldiers pension, found in my home town of Didcot. I was moved by the bell of a mule which would have carried the goods of a cohort who shared a tent. Its...

Comprehensive small exhibition at the British Museum looking at antique gems and the history of the museum’s collection. For a small show this exhibition covered a lot of ground. It had some beautiful examples but also talked about how the gems were faked and included those. It talks about collecting in the Renaissance and 18th century with a focus on the collection of Charles Townley which was sold to the museum in the early 19th century. There is also a section on the recent thefts from the museum which had included gems and some of those which have been recovered were there. It talks about how this has prompted a major project to catalogue and record the gems in the collection which has not been done before. Closes 2 June 2024

Small display at the British Museum to highlight their acquisition of six screen prints by Ed Ruscha called “Insects”. The set of prints is from 1972 showing life sized insects resting or moving across the paper. They were detailed depictions of the insects in a minimal setting. They also showed the portfolio they came in which contained soil from Ruscha’s elementary school. I loved the detail which, as someone who doesn’t like insects, made you want to swat the surface of the work. To bulk out the display, and to make the point that Ruscha often collects objects or categories in visual series, the portfolio was shown with sets of prints about roads. I loved his 2001 series of abstract, minimalistic imaginary maps. Closed 28 January 2024

Stunning small display at the British Museum of botanical drawings by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. From a first glance I had assumed these were late 17th early 18th century works so was stunned to find they came from an album given to Lady Mary Sidney in 1586. Le Moyne was a Huguenot who came to London in 1580 having been on a French Protestant expedition to America in 1565. The pictures were exquisite showing fruit, vegetables, insects and plants in detail. In some of the flower pictures he shows all stages of their development in one image. A beautiful picture of a fir come uses the frame to build the composition whereas in others the plant escapes from the frame. As ever at in British Museum print gallery displays the labels were well written, not only explaining the art but also the plants and their histories. Closed 24 January 2024

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum of work by four German and Austrian artists from a recent gift of 67 works on paper by Count Christian Duerchein. The show devoted a section to each of the four artists. I warmed more to the three Germans, Rudi Troger, Karl Bohrmann and Carl Heinz Wegert whose work was more introspective. Austrian, Herman Nitsch’s work was inspired by his rather strange sounding performance art. I think my favourite was Troger who did expressive, figurative work often of his wife and home. There were some brilliant quotes from him such as the idea of “drawing something so it becomes something else” and that art is “expressing feelings with visual means”. Talking quotes I also loved one by Bohrmann that “a drawn line is a moment of time though which the artist has lived”. Closes 1 April 2024

Beautiful exhibition at the British Museum focusing on works on paper from Genoa. The title came from Petrach’s description of the city as ‘La Superba’ or The Proud which I thought was a lovely play on words. The commentary explains how the city attracted artists with the arrival of one of Raphael’s pupils, Perino del Vaga, but has been largely overshadowed by Venice. The show consisted of a large selection of prints and drawings which were well explained. I think my favourite was Giovanni Batista Castello’s “Ulysses in the Gardens of King Alanous’ Palace” from about 1550. I loved Luca Cambiaso’s simple but expressive pieces. Among the explanations were some fascinating stories such as how Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s invented the monotype print and a nobleman artist who murdered a fellow noble in self-defence and had to flee to Florence. There was also a section on Flemish artists who came to the city including a wonderful sketchbook of genre scenes by Cornelius Wael. A...

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum examining the history and material culture of Myanmar formerly Burma. You know when an exhibition started with quite a long definition of terms that you are in for a complicated ride and this was no exception with numerous small states and kingdoms to discuss as well as British Colonial rule, independence and military rule. I must admit I didn’t understand a lot of the nuisances so I just sat back and enjoyed the beautiful objects.   I liked the way it started by outlining the raw materials available in the country from luxury ones, such as gold and silver, rubies and lacquer to oil and now materials used in mobile phones. I was particularly drawn to innovative types of letters including a gold letter sent to George II, a letter encased in a shell and another piece of writing in Mother of Pearl. I also loved a tiny painting by U Ba Nyan who was sent to study at the Royal College of Art in London in the 1920s. Closed 11 February ...

Ambitious and fascinating exhibition at the British Museum looking at China from 1796 to 1912. The premise was that we think of that time as a period of decline but it was also a time of great creativity and social, political and technological change. Again this show had beautiful objects but there was almost too much story to tell in one show, considering the military section listed seven wars and up uprisings in the century there was a lot to understand about a subject I knew very little about at the start. I loved the use of clothing in the show which felt quite unusual for the British Museum and I am increasingly fascinated by Chinese painting. I think my favourite pieces were the volumes of an illustrated journal of stories from around the world. I loved the New York firemen shown here. Closes 8 October 2023 Review Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard