Some things that have happened recently...

... in the last 24 hours or so.

Last night I went to this thing: http://www.secretcinema.org/
And they showed this movie: http://www.cinematical.com/2008/01/19/sundance-review-anvil-the-story-of-anvil/
And afterwards, the band played, and for the encore, they were joined by this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_ian

Today, thanks to a complicated mental calculus involving the fact that it is Presidents' Day, and it is reading week (the UK equivalent of spring break, save that it happens every term), and I didn't sleep well last night, and it was sunny and in the mid-forties and I really didn't want to go to the library, I played hooky and walked around London instead. I wound up visiting Pollock's Toy Museum, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and the Tate Britain, none of which I'd ever been to before. I also intended to visit the Royal Academy of Art and the Banqueting House as well, but the Banqueting House was closed for an event, and I can never work up the enthusiasm for the Royal Academy's exhibitions to make myself pay the comparably high admissions prices. So I bought some macaroons from Laduree in Burlington Arcade, and ate them as I sat in front of the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds and watched for people coming in and out of the nearby Society of Antiquaries. Then I went to Fortnum and Mason, which was eerily subdued. It is possible that £70.00 for 125g of tea looks a bit... conspicuous in these times.

Anyway, as stated, I made it to the three museums above-named, as well as the Samuel French theatrical bookstore, where I bought a copy of one of my advisor's books (There are plural advisors each with plural books; I merely bought one book authored by one advisor) with only a slight twinge of guilt (as I was not doing anything at all dissertation-related). By the same calculus whereby I justified taking the day off in the first place, I figure that buying it from an independent specialist bookstore must count as some sort of good deed, and also, as the title does not mean what I suspect whomever stocked the book thinks it means, no one else in that store was likely to buy it.

I don't know if I could have picked three more different London institutions all laying claim to the title "museum". The first I visited, Pollock's Toy Museum, is clearly a labor of love, perhaps a half dozen small rooms crammed full of toys and other childhood epherma from the last century and a half. Some of the rooms were loosely organized around a theme-- there was a girl's room, with dolls and doll houses, and a boy's room as well-- while others were more of a curious mix: optical illusions with tin models, for example. The exhibits, I have to imagine, have remained largely altered since their installation, and there's a minimum of interpretive material apart from the pamphlet you're handed upon paying your four pounds at the door. If there is a curatorial principle, it's got to be additive: twelve dollhouses are better than ten, and fifteen is better still. The Pollock whose name graces the establishment was a specialist in toy theaters, to be purchased as kits and constructed from heavy stock, and the museum has what I was told is the finest collection of such theaters anywhere, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. It reminded me a bit of the Sloane House museum in its elevation of theme over taxonomy. Yes, everything on display here is a toy of some sort, or could at least be classed as such under a fairly generous definition of the term, but the point that the museum makes is "look at all these toys!" rather than encouraging you to consider individual objects in the collections, and connect them either to other objects at hand, or some larger historical or cultural context.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum, by contrast, is an almost totally commercial affair. But it is also a deeply fascinating thing, because how can you have a museum of a fictional man? It's either deeply cynical or totally deep, and I'm not entirely sure which.

(Because I am lazy, I am copying an earlier attempt to describe the Borgesian infinite-regression effect going on here. The transcript has been edited to remove references to certain faculty members and also the Spice Girls.)

megan: So, I went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum today.
Brooke: !!!!
robert downey jr. is playing watson in an upandcoming remake OMG
but anyway TELL ME ABOUT IT
megan: !! re RDJ.
Um, it's very strange, right?
Brooke: the museum?
megan: Because Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character.

megan: Anyway, so you go in, and you're in the gift shop.
Brooke: yeah
megan: You have to walk up to the til in order to get tickets for the museum.
So, it's basically a gift shop first and foremost.
Brooke: for things made out of tweed and pipes I hope
megan: Yes. Lots of tweed, lots of pipes.
megan: And anyway, you go upstairs, and the first rooms you're in are Holmes bedroom and study, meticulously recreated from the descriptions in the books.
Brooke: oooooooh
Brooke: handsome
megan: And there is a man there, who is dressed up as Sherlock Holmes, and he invites you to look around the room and take pictures and sit in his chair and try on the deerstalker and bowler hats provided for the purpose.
There's real fires in the fireplace, tea in the cups, etc etc.
Brooke: oooh
is he handsome
megan: The whole thing is VERSIMILITUDE, it's like a disney attraction.
No, he is old.
And doesn't look like I think Holmes should look.
Brooke: damn
megan: But anyway.
Brooke: he needs to be dignified and middle ages and handsome
megan: So you go in the other room, which is I think supposed to be a parlor or study, but it is likewise furnished in high victoriana.
megan: Except that there are copies of the novels in the bookcase.
Brooke: that's confusing
Brooke: it's like that with
the charles dickens thing at macy's
where all bookshelves in the recreated world of a xmas carol are copies of an xmas carol
IT IS A PET PEEVE OF MINE BECAUSE IT IS NOT TEXTUALLY FAITHFUL.
Brooke: The only book you can do that with is Don Quixote.
HEH
megan: also maybe Borges?
Brooke: yeah that's true
and certain goosebumps books.
megan: But it gets even WEIRDER.
megan: Because then you go into the other rooms, which are full of wax life-size wax figures representing the villains from the stories.
megan: And then also in the same room is a big book of letters written by (mostly American) schoolchildren asking for Holmes help in solving mysteries.
Brooke: aw(l)
megan: And then in the final room there's a wax figure of Watson WRITING HIS NOTES on Holmes' cases, and a big display case with artefacts from said cases.
I can't decide whether it's brilliant or incoherent.
Brooke: it's a museum about the making of itself
it's infinite
you can find god in it
just like spice world
megan: Except it doesn't document any factual things.
It's a real museum of fictional events!
Brooke: the museum ends with a room that is about how it is going to be made
EVEN MORE COMPLEX
it sounds awesome
did you buy anything
megan: no.

So, as you can see, strange. But useful insofar as it does make me think about the conditions of fictional historicity (the attention to accuracy, accuracy as a kind of textual exegesis). I wonder if Jean Baudrillard ever got around to visiting, because this is the simulacrum pretty much spot-on.

The last of the three I visited was the Tate Britain. I've been to the Tate Modern a few times, mostly because it is conveniently located and a reliably warm and free refuge from the oft-chilly south bank. And, well, turns out the Tate Britain is really lovely. I've run out of steam now, so I won't go on at length, but I really appreciated the fact that it's such a varied collection, both in terms of historical scope and style. As per usual, they did not have a postcard for my favorite painting, which was definitely the following:


Lucretia Borgia Reigns in the Vatican in the Absence of Pope Alexander VI
The image isn't so great, but in person the colors-- the reds and the golds-- are absolutely striking, and I love the juxtaposition of all the cardinals with the incongruous woman at the center. You appreciate the regal nature of the scene at almost the same moment you realize what's so scandalous about it. But aesthetically speaking, I think it's the symmetry that I really love.

After finishing up at the Tate, and realizing that my capacity to absorb visual stimuli had been taxed to it's limit, I came back here and managed to continue assiduously avoiding any real work. Dinner was particularly awful this evening, but the fact that valentines day truffles are half off at the grocery store and-- surprise-- loaded with whiskey makes up for some of it.