The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, claims in its introduction, to be the world’s oldest purpose built public museum; founded in the world’s oldest University (in the English speaking world.) The initial collection was based on the curios assembled by the Tradescant dynasty in Lambeth, in the seventeenth century. It was opened by Elias Ashmole in…
Category: Exhibition Reviews
Bill Viola and Michelangelo
Bill Viola. I first saw Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005, in the chapel at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park about five years ago. I have since seen it at The Guggenheim, Bilbao, but this week’s viewing at the Royal Academy in London has restored my faith in the ‘blockbuster exhibition’. …
Mick Rooney at The Fosse Gallery
The Fosse Gallery in Stow on the Wold is very excited about its March exhibition. There is a terrific buzz of enthusiasm. Mick Rooney the Royal Academician is showing a new series of works entitled “From Genesis to Nemesis”. I called in last week while I was in Stow and saw the delivery of the…
Edward Burne Jones
Tate membership brings many benefits and I am grateful to my family for buying me an annual card in a (not very) secret Santa draw last year. We made our first trip to London for a while to visit Tate Modern last week, to test the membership and view the retrospective of Sir Edward Burne…
Chance Order Change (2016)
The Barber Institute in Birmingham is probably one of the finest small collections of Western Art to be found anywhere in the world. When Lady Hattie Barber set out the acquisitions policy through the trust deed in 1933 the seeds were sown for a brilliant representation of the progression from early Italian painting through to the post impressionists of Paris. However the stipulation that no…
