I’ve spent the past few days bouncing back and forth from museum to gallery to museum/gallery duo. London has some pretty incredible museums and galleries, and I’ve been lucky enough to explore quite a few of them for school (meaning I get in free!) during my first week of classes. First up was the Cartoon Museum, which is more of a gallery, and is not your typical museum. It’s on a row with little cafes, and looks almost like a town house, except for the sign hanging out front proclaiming that you have arrived at the Cartoon Museum. I would describe it as a hole-in-the-wall museum, definitely oriented to a niche market of cartoon lovers. I am not particularly a cartoon lover, but it was still interesting. The inside was set up much like a high-school art show, with everything from political cartoons to Batman to comics framed and displayed on the walls. The entire feel was laid back, and the entry was only  £3, a steal.

Next up, I visited the Museum of London, which is known for its unique display techniques. The architecture of the entire building was amazing; I had to take an elevator off the street level in order to get up to the path to the front gate. Lola was pretty stoked to go exploring:

 

Inside, the museum is set up in a kind of chronological history of the city of London. The ambiance of the place is great; the objects are displayed in set-ups that mimic their original environment, and there are strategically placed screens with videos playing of actors from the time period, and sound effects to complete the scene. For example, the Pleasure Gardens was my favorite exhibit from London in the 17 and 1800s. It was a dark hallway made into a gravel path, with fake plants, mannequins in period dress in a seeming garden, a gazebo you could sit under, floor to ceiling screens playing a movie of Victorian men and women in a garden, and twinkle lights mimicking the night sky. Lola got to hang out with the butler that was hanging around the exhibit, it was quite the treat:

I also got to see the London Wall, part of the original medieval wall that surrounded Lundenwick (old school Anglo-Saxon London):

 

After that were the decades exhibits, where I found myself a cool new set of wheels and Lola found some snazzy shoes:

                                                     

 

After the Museum of London, I took a very, very long and convolute walk and eventually a bus and made it to the Tate Modern Gallery. The walk was beautiful, if excessively cold. I passed by St. Paul’s Cathedral and some cool looking streets, which of course I photographed and branded myself as a total tourist (but I am a tourist, so who cares, right?):

                      

The Tate Modern, I discovered, is absolutely spectacular. It is a HUGE, ginormous, gigantic, art gallery, complete with a lovely view of the Thames River.

Inside the gallery are works of art from all over and across the century. I went with a class and had the opportunity to view pieces from 1900 all the way through 2010. The place started out with an extravagantly wide “Turbine Hall” that put you right into the midst of the various collection rooms.

The Tate Modern has works by Picasso, Salvador Dali, and George Bruges, and much more contemporary artists as well. Two of my favorite works were by Jannis Kounellis, both “Untiled,” and both without a specific artist-designated interpretation, but rather just other artists trying to put meaning on the works and essentially guessing. But, seriously, these things were huge, taller than me, and the size made the works even more impressive.

 

Not going to lie, the piece with the birds definitely made me thing of the Hunger Games. But both works are 1979, 1960 respectively, so way, way before the Hunger Games could have inspired him. You never know, maybe Suzanne Collins was inspired by this! Anything is possible!

So, of these three museums, I would recommend the Tate Modern first, and then the Museum of London, and then the Cartoon Museum if you’re looking for a more local experience. Until next time!

 

xox,

Lauren