Hello. I’ve been to the Bowes Museum. I thought i might
tell you about it.
Housed in a gloriously incongruous French mansion in the small town of
Barnard Castle1, it was built to house the art collections of the noble Bowes-Lyons — a family lucky enough to
count the Queen Mother herself among their members.
Its collection lies largely parallel to the “main” visual arts: ceramics, fashion, textiles,
furniture, and other such things which must account for function as much as form. Most of it plunges
headfirst into the latter, a bit frilly even for my often anti-modernist tastes, but i did like this
caduceus-adorned wooden cabinet:
The star of the show here is the Silver Swan, a gorgeous eighteenth-century automaton which preens
and sways on a bed of glass water. Unfortunately, it’s broken, and the closest you’ll get to see it
is its dismembered corpse awaiting restoration, so [raspberry noise]. You can,
however, see their exhibition on its legacy, which houses a wonderful collection of modern
animatronics made by crafters and tinkerers from all over the world, like this 10/10 pianist:
There are a few items which don’t fit into the above. They’ve managed to snag some real Goyas,
Canalettos, and El Grecos. (Los Grecos?) They even have Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, somehow
— i assume it’s on loan from London?
Manchester is not particularly renowned as a home for the aristocracy or patrons of the high arts,
so i was pleased to discover upon a visit that the
Manchester Art Gallery is one of the finest of its
kind.
The Mag (as nobody calls it)’s success lies not in the size of its collection — it’s no larger than
my local, the Laing — but in its presentation. Like many museums, its curators have lately been
making efforts to diversify their collections and make them more relatable to the average yoof of
today. It’s a process that can often come off as haphazard and rushed1, but
the team at the Mag have pulled it off with care and respect.
Newer works are dotted in each gallery in such a way that they complement, rather than denigrate,
the greats of old. A visa rejection letter from a group of Pakistani artists hangs alongside
Victorian paintings of eastern caravans; where a gallery about protest and revolution could have
added some shrewd, vapid letterpress and called it a day, the museum’s curators have instead chosen
to incorporate a thoughtful self-portrait by a South African painter, made in the wake of the
Marikana massacre.2
The captions accompanying each artwork face a similarly complicated task. Be too conservative and
you’ll disappear up your own arse into a world of romanticist masturbation; be too reactionary and
you’ll come off as cloyingly didactic, engaging in pseudohistoric iconoclasm for iconoclasm’s sake.
The Mag hit a stroke of genius here: after a brief description in the typical style, the captions
adorning prominent works also include conversations and thoughts from a variety of perspectives, be
it historians, curators, or the artists themselves. It’s a brilliant way to further inform the
visitor without beating them over the head with one opinion, alienating them with arcane academese,
or leaving out unsavoury histories.
Other highlights on the lower floors include a portrait of the early black tragedian Ira Aldridge
(the very first work in the museum’s collection, which rather surprised me coming from the people of
1858), a Ghanaian tapestry that i was surprised to learn was actually made of glass, and a lovely
painting of an industrial scene lit by hazy fog whose name — to current me’s infuriation — i
neglected to include in the photo, taken from an angle so inconvenient that reverse image search
returns nothing of relevance. Past me is a bastard and i’m killing him when i get the chance.
Upstairs sit the gallery’s temporary exhibitions. The most prominently advertised was on the topic
of the history of men’s fashion, something i regrettably could not get myself to muster up any
interest in. I’m sure it’s quite interesting if that’s your sort of thing. The other (smaller)
exhibition sits in a surprisingly grand hall which, from what i can tell, normally houses the
museum’s pottery galleries, and it’s about tea. No wait come back i sw—
I jest, but there really is some fascinating stuff in there. The room’s cabinets are packed with
advertisements, old jugs, and all sorts of other things detailing how hot drinks have shaped Britain
and the world over the years — from sparking conversation to funding colonisation. But there was one
thing that stuck out to me the most. A newly-created work of art, perhaps meant to inspire some
thought or another in the viewer, but that our whole group agreed could only be described as one
thing:
PS: I had to ask what the abbreviation “dbl” (“double”) on the signs for
upcoming trams meant. My poor exurban soul simply could not comprehend the idea of a transit system
that consistently ran so punctually — i had been thinking it stood for something like
“delayed by late”.
PPS: This was meant to be the last post in the series, but my rambling
about the gallery got so out of hand that i thought i’d spin off its intended complement into its
own part. Tune in next week3 for one last dispatch from Affleck’s Palace.
I don't know how
somepeople do it,
posting almost every day. I suppose my life just isn’t interesting enough for this sort of thing!
Anyway. I was going to write up a full post about a recent jaunt to
Lady Waterford Hall, but my memory
is awful and i’m not sure that it would be very interesting. Instead, here are some photos
from the trip:
(If you’d like to visit, admission is free with a suggested donation of £3, and the place is
wheelchair-accessible.)