Thursday, February 19, 2009

Tate Museum

Journal for Thursday, Feb 4, London late morning, afternoon


I was going to finish up my London photos tonight, but realized it's going to take one more day to do so. This first photo is of one of the absolutely delightful young women who served us breakfast each morning in our hotel. You can see a little of the breakfast area in the background, and I wish I'd taken a few more photos in there. It was fun, some mornings, to join a table with people from Italy, or Australia, and hear about someone's research, or acupuncture practice.

Here's my very tired little one, on the Tube, heading from the Buckingham area, to the Tate Museum.

Can you tell that the Tate Museum is modern art? It's another of the many FREE London museums (a VERY nice feature!) This was a work of many brightly colored bunk beds, many of which had books on them having to do with the Holocaust, and then large dinosaur sculptures here and there interspersed among the beds. You be the judge, and extract meaning from this . . . .

Here you see a bit of the dinosaur just above the beds. You entered the room through the plastic . . . ribbons? . . . down below. This room, the Turbine Room, was the only one in which photography was allowed. We felt very rained on as we got to this museum, so I liked this quote.

And then we headed off in search of food. We found a little cafe, where people were standing around throwing darts, and I ordered Scotch Pies & Chips. No color balance here!

We headed back toward the West End, where our hotel was. The parks (Russell Park) were open by this point in the trip, and this was the first non-frozen fountain I saw. The parks in London are wonderful, and I'd love to see what this is like, with lots of people all around (and pigeons!)

I'd been secretly wanting to photograph a mom with her baby in the stroller, but this was the best I could do. People in London have much, much nicer baby strollers than we have here!

Thanks for looking!

9 comments:

shirley said...

The Turbine room is that big expanse of space which houses a guest artist, right?
Last year when I was there, the artist created a big crack in the floor, which started at one end as a barely perceptible hairline crack in the concrete and grew bigger. It was quite amusing.
The bunk beds and dinosaurs? Wow. That's the Tate for you....
Still loving all of your pictures and stories!

Meaghan said...

That museum looks really cool! I love all your pictures. I feel like I've been there now!

Becky said...

I just got caught up on the last few days. It looks like so much fun. You really packed a lot into just a few days!

Becky Anderson said...

Great pictures. I love the one you caught of you dd looking exhausted. She still looks beautiful.
Nicer strollers, probably because they get a lot more use, don't they walk everywhere?

Jeanne said...

Excellent photos, once again! I really like how you capture so many details to make the trip seem so real...esp your poor tired daughter!

Jess said...

Wow, I would LOVE to putter around that museum for a day! Sounds amazing!

Reds said...

Thanks again for taking us with you on your trip!! So fun!

Amy said...

What an interesting museum, I sometimes wonder how some stuff is put together and considered art??? We went to a museum in Seattle (SMA?) with some friends and we were totally lost on what the exhibits were trying to convey...but the funny thing was that everyone else was 'getting' it. We figured they were high or had brains that saw things on a different level because not one of us had a clue! We ended up listening to everyone else and giggling at the way they were so serious about a pile of tires or something else!

Your London pics and journaling have been so much fun...I don't want them to end! :)

Suzy said...

We need those strollers here!? Seriously why are they not for sale in the US? Great captures and looks like y'all did so much on your trip!