Terracotta Warriors in the Living Room: Levels of authenticity in four exhibitions. I have been familiar with the Chinese army of Terracotta Warriors for the past twenty years, because my father was so moved by them after seeing an exhibition in 1987, that he modelled his own versions. Dad was the Chief Executive of the…
Category: Authenticity
Savage Beauty: What do dresses dream of?
Other People’s Places: The Palazzo in Urbino, a tea shop in Rye in a traditional chemist which closes at 5pm, World’s End on the King’s Road. Today I visited the Alexander McQueen retrospective ‘Savage Beauty’ at The Victoria and Albert Museum. The settings were clever, unsettling the eye, the effect moving through a life-sized music…
A steam train to Bodiam Castle: I seem to have something in my eye
Other People’s Places: Hitchhiking to the South of France in 1975 and feeling disappointed with Nice, all roads leading to Anglesea. Riding on a steam train somehow evokes vintage and filmic memories, such as the ‘Brief Encounter’ line “Oh dear, I seem to have a smut in my eye” or the whistled message and writing…
Gilding the goldfish: The painted past
Other People’s Places: New York in the 70’s, The Galapagos Islands, a flat above a butcher’s on Garrett Lane in the early 1990’s, where we used to live. I went to the Defining Beauty Exhibition at the British Museum. It reminded me that classical statues were once decorated with paint, material and, in some cases,…
The Striders: The cloud is a place where nothing ever happens
Other People’s Places: America 1770. Maps as Spectacle. early 1980’s Hull. An unexpected trip to the 70’s. The Cloud. My colleague Lydia Plath organised an International Research Symposium last week. I was presenting with Ken Fox on The Desert in Breaking Bad and and with Sam Hitchmough on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Tours, which will…
Museum Gift Shops 