Cathy's Art Diary

Nice little exhibition at the British Museum looking at sculptor Mary Gillick’s design for the Queen’s head for the coinage on her accession. This was a lovely way for the museum to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. It outlined how Gillick based the image on Renaissance models which giving it a modern spin. The image continued to be used until the 1990s and I’d never noticed that the Queen is shown in a laurel wreath with a ribbon. It talked about Gillick worked the plaster image and the Royal Mint reduced it in size mechanically . The show also included other work by Gillick including medals of The Duke of Edinburgh. On the death of her niece the family gave her medals and plaster models to the British Museum and the Henry Moore Institute. Closed 31 July 2023

Interesting exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham looking at the last Roman emperor, Justinian, via the coinage of the time.   The show included reproductions of the lovely mosaics of Justinian and his wife Theodora from Ravenna as well as maps of Europe before and after his reign. He became an Orthodox saint as he oversaw the 5th Ecumenical Council in 533 which laid down church law and founded the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The coinage was shown with good enlargements of them and a commentary of their iconography.   I was fascinated by the story of the Nika Riots in 532 when chariot racing factions, the blue and greens, who combined sport and hooliganism, joined forces against the emperor. Do societies really change?   Closes on 19 April 2019

Nice little exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art looking at the history of Byzantium through its coins and seals. There was a good timeline of the empire in coins with the real coins and enlarged pictures of them so you could see the detail. It showed how depictions of the emperors moved from being in military dress to civilian. It also showed how sometimes emperors were shown with their successors   or empress regents with their sons. The show looked at the iconography on the coins showing how Christianity started to be seen in the images however pagan imagery carried on alongside it for a long time. It also looked at how the coins were made moving from dies in the early years to casting later on and the show included some glass weights used to check the metal content of the coinage. The show included seals made of lead rather than wax which were used to authentic official documents. Closes on 18 March 2018  

Fascinating little exhibition at the British Museum looking at how and why images of the Roman emperors were defaced focusing on the coinage. The show pointed out that when images are made as a sign of power they are also liable to be defaced when the person represented is no longer in power. The earliest examples were of Nero and Caligula and included a coin from Caligula’s reign which had been over stamped with the head of Claudius. There were some busts included in the exhibition and these showed how they were often defaced by attaching the sensory organs, eyes, nose and mouth. It also looked at the habit of reworking a head to be a different empower. I was fascinated by a head of Germanicus with a cross carved on its forehead. Was this a mark of exorcism or baptism? Closes on 7 May 2017