The Museum and Art Galleries Thread - The Bear and Badger

WorKid

You know, for culture and that.

My favourite is obviously The British Museum since it is amazing. But there are plenty of hidden gems.

No schoolchild from north of Barnsley has avoided Beamish I'd imagine.

And then there's the Pencil Museum in Keswick.

All recommendations taken.

Skerret

We have a thing called Scienceworks here. Science, mainly.

Vela

In Hobart you absolutely must see MONA.

Esoteric art. Psychological art. Classic art. Engineering art. A poop machine called Cloaca. Digital art. Film. A room of footage of dozen individuals singing Living in A Material World. Egyptian mummy display. Film festival screenings.

The owner basically gets anything he can get on show regardless of if he likes it or not. Out of archives displays. Sid Nolan's Serpent was up once. Some Brett Whiteley sketches. Wall of Cunts.

Seriously highly recommended.

WorKid

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery was one of the highlights of my last trip to Edinburgh. No Wall Of Cunts though.

acemuzzy

There's a Wall of Cunts at the Emirates Stadium, iirc

Bollockoff

The Leeds Royal Armoury is amazeballs for both modern and old fashioned military exhibits. When I went they had an hour of real jousting to show how it was done as well as a 15th century sword fighting techniques workshop.

Big up the V&A too since it usually gets forgotten next to the British Mus.

hylian_elf

Natural History Museum looks amazing from the outside.

The Daddy

Was in Paris this week. Hit up the Musée du Louvre for some tourist-culture. It's far too big. One can only take in so much art, and there's so much there that you end up dimissively glancing at a lot of stuff that might otherwise be more well received.

It's the second time I've been, the first was about eight years ago, I was on my own with a raging hangover. I think I was better off being worse for wear - the lowered mental processing power coupled with delicate physical meandering and a whole day to kill worked well.

The audio guides they have there are Nintendo 3DS XLs loaded with an audio visual tour.

acemuzzy

Hiroshima Peace Museum is quite a place. Hit me hard.

acemuzzy

Other faves: National Gallery, MOMA (NYC), Science Museum (cos launchpad, as a kid).

Nice architecture, less convinced by content: Guggenheim, Tate Modern

Would like to visit: that one in central park, smithsonian

Webbins

Being in Bradford, one has to big up the National Media Museum. It is free and mega interesting, has a huge Imax cinema, animation/film festivals and an historical games lounge. They had an excellent Star Wars exhibition many years ago, loads of props, McQ concept art, etc.

FranticPea

I had a short film played there once while at college. It was shite. The film that is, the museum was excellent.

Webbins

Nonsense, I remember Man Stares at Puddle being the talk of the town.

WorKid

Tate Modern does everything absolutely right as a museum, whether you like the content or not it's a brilliant experience.

adored

Tate Modern is fantastic.

Tha Baltic in Gateshead is occasionally wonderful too, but because they tend to have a max of 3-4 artists on display at any one time it can occassionaly be a dull experience if nothing really grabs you.

The Louvre really is far too fucking big, you can spend hours just wandering the grounds.

My mate got a fantastic Darth Vader helmet from Bradford many years ago when the Star Wars ex was on, cost a couple of hundred, but was essentially prop quality.

Webbins

I got a £12 Episode 1 Obi Wan lightsaber. Sold it last year on ebay for £7, amazed I got that tbh.

WorKid

Never underestimate how much awful tat Star Wars fans will buy.

Paul the sparky

I was in the Baltic last night. I recommend the belly pork.

Skondo

Reposted from the no subject thread.

Went to London on Friday to see the Vikings exhibition at the BM. Was pretty good, although the centrepiece, the Viking longboat, was somewhat disappointing. I wasn't expecting it to be complete, but there must have been less than ten percent of the original timbers. They have moved some of the Lewis Chessmen into this exhibition and they never fail to impress. Definitely recommend the Sandy Toksvig presented multimedia guide as it does give greater insight to some of the artifacts

Went to the observatory at Greenwich today, which was dire. Possibly the most disorganised attraction I've ever been too. The planetarium show was good, but the rest was awful. Poorly displayed galleries, uninterested staff (excluding planetarium lady) and confusing signage. Six people asked me where the main entrance was.

Lunch at Scandinavian Kitchen was nice and I picked up some Cloudberry jam there too.

Blue Swirl

The Daddy wrote:

Was in Paris this week. Hit up the Musée du Louvre for some tourist-culture.

I love the Louvre. Musee d'Orsay also comes with the Blue Swirl Seal of Approval™. Pro-tip for Paris; if you visit Versaille Palace and decide to go see Marie Antoinette's gaff, do take the little train. The palace gardens are deceptively big.

Anyone got any recommendations for Vienna?

GurtTractor

Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow is great.

Skondo

@Blue Swirl.

The Belvedere in Vienna has a reasonable Klimt selection or Schönbrunn Palace is a short tube ride away. Lunch at the Sacher is a worthwhile treat too. You can pretty much guarantee that some ignorant tourist will shovel in the freshly grated horseradish and then wonder why they can't breathe. Superb Sachertorte and the hot chocolate is pretty good too.

mk64

I like

the design museum
the tate modern

the V&A
science museum
imperial war museum

most of the galleries i visit are for graffiti/street art so tend to be temporary and usually around shoreditch.

the london aquarium is pretty good

davyK

Churchill's bunker complex in Whitehall is a must see. Basically when WWII ended they walked out and switched off the lights. It is damn near more or less as they left it.

equinox_code

Went to V&A before leaving London. Enjoyed it. I was oddly fascinated with all the old locks and keys on display.

Also a fan of the Natural History Museum. Apparently dinosaurs are still cool even once you hit 30.

[Deleted User]

I went to the British Design Museum today.
The Paul Smith exhibition is superb, a real look inside the mind of a genius not just a collection of his work.
Designer of the year 2014 exhibit was good, noticed occulus rift is on the short list.
Overall quite expensive at £12.50 though, worth it but carried heavily by Paul Smith.

Also Saatchi Gallery.
Bit meh, not as out there as when I went when it was at embankment. Still has the room full of all which I love.

Blue Swirl

Skondo wrote:

@Blue Swirl. The Belvedere in Vienna has a reasonable Klimt selection or Schönbrunn Palace is a short tube ride away. Lunch at the Sacher is a worthwhile treat too. You can pretty much guarantee that some ignorant tourist will shovel in the freshly grated horseradish and then wonder why they can't breathe. Superb Sachertorte and the hot chocolate is pretty good too.

Noted! Cheers very much.

adored

Liveinadive wrote:

I went to the British Design Museum today.
The Paul Smith exhibition is superb, a real look inside the mind of a genius not just a collection of his work.

Bugger, had a couple of hours to kill in London yesterday, that would've been ideal.

He's a shite electrician mind.

beano

Our biennial is upon us http://www.biennial.com/

Skondo

Cinema yesterday to see Vikings Live. A tour of the BM exhibition presented by Michael Wood and Bettany Hughes. Definitely brought the exhibition to life, but they only showed a few exhibits as the BM obviously want this to encourage people to go to the exhibition. First time I've seen something like this at the cinema and I thought it worked quite well. Cinema was full.

tin_robot

My list mainly consists of agreeing with other people - I'm a fan of all those under the banner of the Science Museum Group - namely the Science Museum in London, National Media Museum in Bradford, and the two that haven't been mentioned already - the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, and the National Railway Museum in York. The latter is the best place in the world if you like trains and engineering, and the most tedious if you don't. (Though even the most train averse would probably enjoy riding the replica of Stephenson's Rocket.) The National Media Museum needs a bit more love as some of the galleries have got a bit rough round the edges, but it's still great - and is awesome for kids parties. (You get to make a movie then take the DVD home with you.)

On a similar theme the Life Centre in Newcastle, whilst maybe not on quite the same level, is a good trip out if you have kids - and whilst in Newcastle with a family go to Seven Stories, the Centre for Children's Books.

I'd agree the Baltic can be amazing, but it's worth checking in advance to see who they're exhibiting before travelling. Meanwhile if you're in the North and want to see art, Yorkshire Sculpture park is definitely worth a visit - even if you don't like the work, the grounds are beautiful.

There are also the obvious London ones - V&A, British Museum, Tate Modern and the beautiful secular cathedral that is the Natural History Museum.

Meanwhile, I've spent the last few weeks in Bangladesh and at one point visited the National Museum there. It's kind of a bizarre museum in itself (and at one point I ended up feeling like an exhibit in my own right) but I was lucky enough to be invited behind the scenes and was shown how they go about restoring all the artefacts. It was great - from restoring great works, to creating replicas of others, and fixing up stuff trashed by the public - probably the most interesting trip to a museum I've had in ages.

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