The British Museum

     On Tuesday January 11th we went to The British Museum which happens to be right around the corner from our flats and we pass it almost everyday.  The grand pillars on the outside of the staircase lead you inside to the huge lobby that is bright due to the natural light shining in from the sky-lights.  I personally felt that this space was somewhat wasted space, there were a few sculptural pieces along the edge but otherwise it was just an open area with a souvenir shop in the middle and another large staircase leading up the center.  There were a lot of adjacent rooms and galleries but I just felt the entrance hall was completely empty.
    We immediately found the Rosetta Stone on the ground level that was blocked by a large crowd of people.  The stone includes the language and symbols of hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek, and was the key to unlocking the language codes of these ancient civilizations in the late 1700s by two different men named Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion.  It was acquired by Britain through the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801 under King George III.  The heiroglyphic text at the top of the stone is large and each text underneath become smaller.  It was incredible to stand in front of such a great piece of history and to imagine having to decipher the symbols.  I wished I knew Greek so I could at least read some of the Stone, but I could not so it really gave me a sense of what the mystery must have felt like until they were able to unlock it.
     Another important piece of ancient history that was equally intriguing were the Parthenon Sculptures and Elgin Marbles.  These friezes were acquired by Britain in the very early 1800s by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and they sparked a new interest of ancient Greek culture throughout Europe.  The debate tahat arises out of this issue is the feeling of the Greek government that the marbles belong in Greece as they were part of the Parthenon and Greece has recently been trying to gather the original pieces to display in the New Acropolis Museum, however the Trustees of the British Museum feel the marbles belong to everyone.  It does not bother me if the sculptures are not reunited with Greece, however I thought it very odd that many pieces of the South Merope high relief sculptures and the West Pediment pieces were split in half between London and Athens.  For example, the head of one of the soldiers resides in Athens but the British Museum has his body on display.  I think that if the collection was split up at least the individual pieces should have been kept together.  I did enjoy viewing the pieces because I have studied the great history they represent and I have always loved relief sculptures and just Greek marble statues in general.  The ancient statues that idealized their gods and men have such a strong insight to their culture and are really beautiful.
    The upper level of the museum included the Picasso to Julie Mehretu exhibition.  This was easily my favorite part of the whole museum, because while I appreciate the ancient Greek statues I enjoy looking at more modern art as well.   I was so excited when I found a piece by William Anastai, a minimalist artist whose works include Blind and Pocket.  On display in The British Museum I found his "Subway Drawings" from 1967 hung in a corner.  I had first heard about Anastai my first semester at SUNY New Paltz when I had a fantastic professor for Drawing and Thinking I who tried to teach us the essentials of process and drawing itself instead of focusing solely on the finished product.  I have tried to include what I learned in that class in all of my own work, but I had never seen or heard about Anastai outside of this class and I was excited and surprised that I should run into his pieces all the way in London.  Anastai was a forerunner of the conceptual movement of art in the 1960s, and his "Subway Drawings" are different because they focus on mark making through the tracking of his own movements while physically riding the subway.  It is a different kind of drawing, not of an object but of a movement, something my professor taught us in that class that was so hard to understand at first.  I have always appreciated this lesson but never as much as I had today standing in front of one of the pieces that ultimately changed the entire way that I now attempt to draw.  It was quite amazing.