Blog-Backlog_Day Eight_A

The V&A

The Victoria and Albert Museum is one of the oldest museums in London. It has one of the largest collections of objects, in the world. What is really very interesting is that it is divided by material, and not by style or period. Within each discipline the objects are divided roughly practice in a more or less time linear fashion. (IE: metals : welding: weldings from 1700 - 1800)

The V&A is also home to many famous, copies, talk about the aura of the original. None quite captured it, like the lack luster David hanging out in the corner, but they work quite effectively for study of the objects. The have a significant amount of less damage from the elements and due to lack of aura, they are actually more approachable.

Glen Adamson's tour was the source of most of the information listed above. I thought he was really interesting, and a very matter of fact way of speaking, that was delightfully unexpected. He was also significantly younger than I thought as well. I really appreciated his honesty when talking about the Tate Modern, its really nice when those in the industry can say things like "yeah, wow, they dropped the ball on that one." I suppose its easier to say when it wasn't the V&A dropping the ball. However, he did mention the few "scrappy librarians who were almost solely responsible for their (modest) modern home home exhibit. I was able to ask V&As interest as an institution in sort of, bringing back or giving precedences to curating via discipline, given the height of interdisciplinary work. He explained his position, and how that its significantly more complicated because each person has their own, sort of agenda and ideas. (Which, makes perfect sense, given the size of the museum and amount of curators who probably work there). I was however excited to hear that there are other people who are interested in promoting a more divided by discipline, rather than theme, which is a dreadful turn the art world is taking to organize and catalog work.

Cameraless Photography

This idea of using shadow to create an image sort of seemed a bit like something that you learn in photo class, and it becomes a sort of, kitschy, however the artists in this utilized it such a a sophisticated way. There was a good sense of absence in most of the figurative pieces, which were my favorite.