Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent clear and fun online lecture from the British Museum introducing the tapestry and the forthcoming exhibition. Curators Michael Lewis and Sue Brunning led us through ideas about how, why and for whom it was made then Lewis took us through a basic outline of the story. I have since done a more detailed dive with him in another lecture. I have heard him talk before and he makes the story come alive. Brunning then explained how they only had one year to prepare the show when an exhibition of this type would usually take about five. She led us through the structure of the exhibition giving a good idea of what to expect when you go. As an exhibition nerd I found details like the fact the display case is the longest ever made fascinating. I have yet to get to the show as I am currently away but have my two free member trips in the diary for my return and I can’t wait!

Exquisite exhibition at the British Museum of Netherlandish drawings from 1400 to 1600. I love this period in Northern Renaissance art and this show didn't disappoint. Starting with the early works done as preparatory studies for workshops through to drawings made as works of art in their own right, they were shown with excellent explanations. This initial trip was a fairly quick one but I still managed to photograph most of the works! I'll definitely be going back particularly as I'll doing a course on it in a couple of weeks. The works were beautifully shown in the Print Room Gallery which gives you a shelf to lean on to study the detail, and what a lot of detail there was! I think my favourite was a procession by the workshop of Roger Van de Weyden with stunningly real faces. I also liked two kneeling ladies from the workshop of Hugo van der Goes. From the later period I loved a portrait of a older lady by Frans Pourbus and a print design by Pieter Bruegel the Eld...

Fascinating exhibition at the British Museum introducing the planned memorial gardens for the late Queen in St James's Park. The display had good illustrations and explanations which were shown with maquettes of the planned statues and sculptures as well as one of the park itself. I loved the one of the Queen and Yinka Shonibare's Commonwealth Wind Sculpture. My one complaint is that it was shown in the historic Reading Room which was full of tourist groups being lectured to about the room who seemed unaware of the exhibition and swarmed around it. It would have been a better experience if it had been shown in a different space. Closed 21 June 2026

Wasted installation at the British Museum to anticipate the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry in September. The work was outside the main entrance to the gallery and consisted of trees and plants typical of East Sussex where the Battle of Hastings happened. They sat on hessian-wrapped rootballs in the colours of the tapestry. The work was designed by Andy Sturgeon. I say wasted as the space was too busy for the work, so it was very hard to see it. It was swamped by tourists and I suspect most of them had no idea that it was a temporary art work. It was such a good idea but it might have been better to place some of the trees in a cordoned off area so you could actually see them. The best area was the flowers along the top of the steps. Closed 2 June 2026

Intriguing exhibition at the British Museum examining the history of the Samurai. It was a beautifully designed show and covered from their origins in medieval Japan's civil wars through to the 19th century when they had become the elite, cultured ruling class. It also looked at their myths and l egacy. My only moan is, that as ever at the British Museum, the labels were quite long and wordy creating log jams partly because they were set low so if anyone leaned over to look at an object they blocked them. Add to that the fact that quite often they were a distance from the item they were discussing so you had to play a game to match the object to the label. There were some beautiful objects and plentiful use of intricate painted scrolls and prints. I think my favourite object was this charming small dish dated 1700-50 which I felt could be a contemporary shop. I also loved a book described as an I-Spy book for processions to enable people to identify the different clans as th...

Fascinating small exhibition at the British Museum highlighting a medieval ewer and its journey to Africa and back. Made in England between 1340 and 1405, the ewer later travelled to West Africa. In the 1880s it was photographed in a courtyard of the royal palace of the Asantehene, king of the Asante people, in Kumasi (in present-day Ghana). During the Anglo-Asante War of 1896 it was looted by British forces and later purchased by the British Museum. A second ewer, also taken in 1896 and shown in the same photograph, was presented to the Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment. This display reunites the two. It was amazing how one object could tell a little-known story of medieval trade, how English objects had been treated as sacred items in Africa and Victorian colonialism.   Closed 7 June 2026

Enlightening online lecture from the British Museum focusing on the portraits of the king and queen of Hawai’i in the Hawai’i exhibition at the museum. Three speakers, Healoha Johnson, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum on Hawai’i, Kate Lemay, Army College Museum, and Alice Christophe, curator of the exhibition, told us the story of King Liholiho and Queen Kamamalu’s visit to Britain in 1823 and how and why they had their portraits painted while they were there. Sadly they both died of measles during the trip. They talked about the history of using Western portrait painters in Hawai’i and how this was done to present the monarchs to the world and the images were circulated via traders and sailors. They then discussed why they chose to be presented in Western clothes and how these were purchased as well as looking at why the prime minister, Na Poki, and his wife chose to be shown in Hawaiian clothes.  

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum tracing the relationship between Hawai'I and the United Kingdom. The show marked 200 years since the first royal Hawaiian visit to London. I'd not come across this event before and found it fascinating to learn how King Liholiho and his queen Kamamalu   with an entourage had come to see George IV but sadly the monarchs died of measles while they were here. The show started by looking at the early history of the Hawaiian Islands and their culture leading up to their unification into one kingdom in 1810. The show was very careful to document the provenance of the objects on display, many of which had entered the collection as the result of the travels of Captain Cook and other British explorers. There were some beautiful objects in the show and care had been taken to consult the Hawaiian community in London to honour the items but the core of the show was the tragic story of the visit and the aftermath when the bodies were retur...

Fascinating small exhibition at the British Museum looking at the work of Pierre Alexandre Wille and his circle. The show celebrates the bequest from the dealer and philanthropist Colin Clark which doubled the size of the works held by the museum by Wille who they had been collecting since the 19th century. Willie studied under the genre artist, Jean Baptist Greuze and imitated his style which suited the tastes of the ancient regime but failed to develop as times changed I thought the most striking works were the portraits at the end and I loved this portrait of a man from 1783. He often drew personalities from the Revolution in courtroom sketches. It was an interesting show to have on with the contemporary artist, Ian Hamilton Finlay who responding the same events 200 years later. No end date given

Intriguing small exhibition at the British Museum looking at prints by Ian Hamilton Finley examining themes from the French Revolution. Hamilton was known as a poet, writer, artist and gardener but the subject of the French Revolution came to dominate his work in the 1980s with an interest in how high ideals can lead to violence and corruption. These pieces come from a group of prints donated to the museum by Professor Stephen Bann, an art historian. I wasn't always sure of the link to the Revolution, but some were more obvious than others such as a version of "The Death of Marat" by David. I was drawn to a mock cover for a magazine called "Peoples' Friend" which my grandmother used to read. During the Revolution Marat edited a newspaper called "L'Ami du peuple". No end date give.

Stolid exhibition at the British Museum looking at works on paper by Scandinavian artists since the death of Edvard Munch. I usually love exhibitions in the print room galleries as they are so well explained but in this case there was too much detail which became a bit of a turn off. It failed to make me care. I found it hard to follow the themes a nd to engage with the work. It was a large show starting with a Munch print and a discussion on his influence on subsequent woodblock artists. Most of the first section looked at prints. I was caught by the book published after the war "The Resistance" with a selection of prints produced illegally during the German occupation. I liked the inclusion of contemporary work and I loved this watercolour by Maria Nordin painted during Covid also an amazingly detailed drawing of the bodice of a historic dress by Anna Zimmerman. Closed 22 March 2026 Review Guardian

Intriguing online lecture from the British Museum introducing a travelling exhibition on ‘inauthentic objects’. Tom Cummins led us through the themes of the show telling us some of the fascinating stories of the objects included. He outlining all the different reasons objects are inauthentic from the obvious one of fakes, through copies made for study, positive uses of copies to replace or enhance original pieces and overly restored pieces. I knew some of the stories but my favourite, which I hadn’t known before, was that of the Risley Park Lanx, which had been known via a drawing from the 18th century but which reappeared in an auction in 1991 however it was proved to be a fake made by Shaun Greenhalgh based on the drawing. I was also interested to hear how 3D printing had been used at the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Palenque in Mexico to basically produce a cover for it based on an 1891 photograph to both protect it and to show its condition over 100 years ago as it has already ...

Enlightening small exhibition at the British Museum of recently acquired drawings by the sculptor Edward Allington. Allington's work was inspired by a fascination with classical antiquity which is reflected in these works. Although known as a sculptor, drawing was at the heart of his practice and expertly links the drawings to known sculptural work. I loved the fact that some of the drawings were done on paper which he had recycled such as an old account ledger and a record shop inventory. Closes 25 January 2026

Charming small exhibition at the British Museum of portrait drawings by a group of late 17th century artists based in London who knew each other. The display marks the acquisition by the museum of drawings by Samuel Cooper and Richard Gibson and they are shown with other works by artists in their circle who include Sir Peter Lely, Charles Beale, son of Mary Beale, and Sir Godfrey Kneller. The images are of family members, friends and servants as well as fellow artists. Most touching was Cooper's drawing of his cousin's infant son who died at a few weeks old. I loved Gibson's delicate drawing of his son-in-law, Michael Rosse, a jeweller and Kneller's of the artist Hugh Howard who he trained with in Rome. Closes 25 January 20

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum looking at the origins and visual development of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. I felt the show was wrongly titled as a lot wasn’t ancient. I thought I’d read somewhere that it was about how India influenced Greece and Rome but I should have paid more attention to the subtitle. However I liked the way the show began with ancient sculptures from the three religions and ended with contemporary ones.   There were some beautiful objects and it was well explained but, as ever in large British Museum shows, the low wordy labels created bottle necks not helped by people who’d opted for the large print booklets of labels still standing in front on the label to read the booklet!   It did make me muse on how art, like standard archetypal human stories, develops in a similar way everywhere. A lot of the art and sculpture from around 1000AD had a feel of Norman art and a lot of the iconography felt similar like the use of halos.  ...

Interesting small exhibition at the British Museum highlighting a recent bequest of 30 works from the collection of Nina Drucker. A selection of the works were shown here alongside other works from the museum's collection which Drucker was known to have seen or which compliment the bequest. The works include pieces form the 19th century but were strongest in the 20th century pieces. My favourites were the works by C.R.W. Nevison whose work I love but these were not the style we usually associate him with. I loved the scenes of the Thames, two of which seemed to be a tribute to Monet's paintings of the river and I suspect they were even drawn from the same hotel room at the Savoy or are a reimagining of those works as another in the series is definitely an imagined view. There were also some lovely John Mintons and a fun watercolour by Sir Muirhead Bone of people at the seaside. Of the earlier works , course I loved a watercolour of Greenwich Hospital by John Lessore and ...

Fascinating exhibition at the British Museum focusing on the collection of Richard Payne Knight which was bequeathed to the museum in the early 19th century. There were some amazing works particularly a Michelangelo, a Raphael and a Mantegna but as interesting was seeing the contemporary art of his time which he collected and how he brought his aesthetic into planning the park of his estate. I loved a number of works by Claude Lorrain and evidently the bequest included 246 studies by the artist. Payne Knight travelled extensively in Italy and he must have found these very evocative of the landscapes he saw there. There was also a lovely set of contemporary drawings by Thomas Hearne of Payne Knight's Herefordshire estate, Downton Castle. In the grounds of the estate he developed ideas of the Picturesque in the landscape. The show also included work by other artists who the collector had supported, John Hamilton Mortimer and John Robert Cozens who travelled with him to Italy...

Charming exhibition at the British Museum focusing on drawings by Watteau from their collection. These were delightful, delicate works. They explained how Watteau would draw the people around him in the streets and reuse and combine the images in his paintings. He also produced finished drawings for collectors. As ever in the print galleries the labels were clearly written and explained Watteau's use of drawing but also used the chronological display to outline his life and career. I felt I came out of the show appreciating Watteau a lot more as I sometimes find the paintings a bit twee. My fact of the day was that he was born in an area of France which had been Flemish and there is a real feel of Dutch genre scenes in his him work. Favourites included this lovely back view and the way he uses the stripes to reflect the shape of the body below and this picture of two maids which he drew when in England for a year. Closed 17 September 2025

Sublime exhibition at the British Museum looking at the work of the 19th century Japanese print designers, Utagawa Hiroshige. I love Japanese prints and these were some of the finest I'd seen. I'd done a lecture on it a few days before which proved helpful to have an outline of narrative for the show already. The labels were clear and simple and told you a lot more about the places you were looking at. I would have liked to know a bit more about the block cutters and printers as they are as much a part of the magic as the designer. The example of a block they did has a very shallow cut and you can't image it producing such beautiful images. I think this may have been explained on videos but they were quite small and caused bottle necks. I the inclusion of a section on designs for fans and it explained that these were very fashionable items which would have only been used for a season. I loved the variety of images for them and my favourite was this wonderful picture ...

Small exhibition at the British Museum showing three statues from three different ancient cultures. The show marks a collaboration between the museum and one of India's leading museums, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), highlighting the Mumbai museum's ambitious Ancient World Project. These three statues from Egypt, Greece and India would not normally shown together but the display aims to make comparisons with the varied ways ancient civilisations imagined the divine in physical form. I did find the show felt quite thin. It just showed the three statues with a few questions around the walls about the nature of museums. A beautiful display but I wanted more meat. Closes 11 January 2026