Tag Archives: museum

Jan 07 2025
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Creature from the inside of Tim Burton’s head

Tuesday 7th January 2025, 12.35pm (day 4,884)

Tim Burton spider, 7/1/25

Another movie reference, courtesy of the exhibition currently running at the Design Museum in London, featuring a range of drawings, models, photos and other artefacts that have poured out of the head of director Tim Burton over the last 50 years or so. Two things are apparent; 1) the guy can have done very little in his life other than pour out this endless stream of creative work, more or less constantly; 2) there is some seriously weird shit going on inside that head. Worth seeing though.

An early post today as I now sit at Heathrow Airport waiting for an overnight flight. Unless something goes seriously wrong, the next three weeks of posts will all be coming from places a damn sight warmer than this one.

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Jul 03 2024
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Daily Post, Interior, Transport

The Mary Rose

Wednesday 3rd July 2024, 11.15am (day 4,696)

Mary Rose, 3/7/24

The Mary Rose went down in the Solent during a battle in 1545 and then sat on the sea floor for 437 years until what remained of it was raised in 1982. I remember watching this event on TV in my teens and then not long after, on my only previous visit to Portsmouth, visiting a mouldering hulk that was hanging in a big shed being sprayed constantly with water to stop it drying out catastrophically. Four decades on and the Mary Rose‘s transition from the mud of the sea floor to hanging off a wall has been completed, and what we’re all rewarded with is one of the most interesting museums I’ve ever visited, for sure. The amount of stuff — not just weapons, but personal effects, foodstuffs, even the skeleton of the ship’s pet ratcatching dog — that came up with the wreck is astonishing. Not an easy thing to photograph with my mediocre equipment, but I gave it a shot.

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Jul 01 2024
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Daily Post, Interior

William Morris gallery

Friday 28th June 2024, 3.45pm (day 4,691)

William Morris gallery, 28/6/24

The Ideal Book? Good question. This afternoon’s visitors to the WIlliam Morris gallery in Walthamstow, London, get the chance to ponder this question. Morris himself gave a lot of care and attention in his later life to producing the ideal book. If you ask me it’s Shogun, but that’s just a personal and rather non-literary opinion.

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May 17 2024
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Daily Post, Friend, Portrait

Professor Dan’s lecture

Thursday 16th May 2024, 7.15pm (day 4,648)

Dan Yon, 16/5/24

The island of St Helena was discovered in May — at least according to tradition, May 21st 1502. Hence its name, as that’s the feast day of St Helena. So this may have prompted May 2024 being declared ‘St Helena Culture Month’, and here’s probably the world’s most senior St Helenian academic, Professor Dan Yon, doing his bit for it with a public lecture in the museum in Jamestown tonight. Not that he teaches here — Toronto is his usual base.

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Nov 02 2023
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Daily Post, Interior

Spinning machinery

Wednesday 1st November 2023, 2.20pm (day 4,451)

Spinning machinery, 1/11/23

November opens with a far more interesting day than October closed. A day off work was called for, with Clare’s company. This is taken in the Bradford Industrial Museum, which is free to entry, easy to reach from home and has been there all the 23 years we’ve lived there, only I’ve never been there before. Worth a visit though.

On this shot, the game is to spot the asymmetries that are not the fault of the photographer. As in the puzzles in magazines — how many can you see…? I have at least six that trouble me.

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Jul 18 2023
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Daily Post, Interior

Ribchester Helmet (replica and reflections)

Tuesday 18th July 2023, 2.50pm (day 4,345)

Ribchester Helmet, 18/7/23

In the late 18th century a teenager called John Walton found a great horde of Roman artefacts buried in the village of Ribchester. The most significant object therein was a ceremonial helmet, now displayed in the British Museum in London; what remains in the tiny museum in Ribchester, depicted here, is just a replica.

In which case: why not display it without the glass? If it could be touched, held, perhaps even worn, at least then we could get a sense of the materiality of the thing, experience it as a tangible object. I’m not saying it’s valueless in itself but stick it behind glass and something is lost.

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May 07 2023
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Daily Post, Interior

At Discovery Point

Sunday 7th May 2023, 12.40pm (day 4,273)

Discovery Point, 7/5/23

I am still finding the light input of my new camera somewhat difficult to set accurately. Most of the time I get it to acceptable levels that reflect the environment but other times it’s way up or down, with unpredictable results. But ‘unpredictable’ can also mean ‘interesting’ and ‘not what was expected’ — as with here. This room, showing the introductory movie at the Discovery Point centre in Dundee, was quite dark when I took this one. It worked, though.

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Nov 17 2022
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Tea outside the museum

Wednesday 16th November 2022, 9.20am (day 4,101)

Tea at the museum, 16/11/22

Bolstered myself for a heavy day’s work in the library (yes, it was) with a necessary cup of tea on a sunny morning in Oxford. Behind, the Natural History Museum, which has not resisted the current trend for public buildings to be engaged in some major renovation project or other. [NOTE: thanks to follower John, who pointed out I had misidentified the building first time round.]

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Aug 12 2022
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Daily Post, Interior

In the Museum of Free Derry

Thursday 11th August 2022, 11.20am (day 4,004)

On 30th January 1972, not more than a hundred yards from the Bed & Breakfast where we are staying in Derry, the British Army killed 14 citizens of its own country, and wounded 14 more. It took decades, but in 2010 it finally came out how the Estalishment massacred these innocent people, as this quote from a radio conversation between a soldier and his officer reveals: “This chap is clearly unarmed, but can I shoot him anyway?” (The answer was yes.)

The Museum of Free Derry now stands more-or-less on the spot where this atrocity took place, and I’m glad it’s there, and doesn’t depend on state funding. The present bunch of ruling morons are as likely to encourage moves towards a united Ireland as they are anything else. Sadly, I’m English, and can’t secede with them.

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Jun 25 2022
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Daily Post, Interior

In death, still reading

Friday 24th June 2022, 10.05am (day 3,956)

Sarcophagi, V & A, 24/6/22

A working week in London, and this becomes the third time that city has been the setting for five pictures in a row. Friday morning was spent at the Victoria & Albert museum, where this collection of sarcophagi reside. Whomever was the subject for the one second from bottom, they clearly wanted to be portrayed as studious, even in death.

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