The Royal Academy of Arts is based in Burlington House, a 17th century mansion. Construction began in 1664; the plot of land had been given to Sir John Denham, Charles II’s Surveyor of the Office of Works, as thanks for his loyalty to the King. Renovations to the exterior and interior took place over the years with the third Earl of Burlington in particular inspired by Italian architecture.
Back in September I attended my first Open House London weekend which was fantastic and I managed to see everything I wanted to and more. The one place that I absolutely wanted to visit was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office building so I headed there near its opening time and after a brief security check I got in without having to queue – not the situation when I left as the queue then was starting to skirt around the building.
Back in June I went to Liverpool for three nights. The main reason for my visit was to go to the Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the World Museum (more of which in a later post) but the first place I visited on arrival in the city was The Walker Art Gallery. One of the largest collections of artwork outside London it began in 1819 when the Liverpool Royal Institute bought 37 paintings from the collection of local philanthropist William Roscoe.
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On Sunday I decided to go and photograph as many of the Hoodwinked: A Twist in the Tale art trail figures as I could; there are 33 in total and I managed around 25 or so before deciding that at 28C it was getting a bit too hot for me to comfortably continue walking around the city centre so I’ll pick up the ones I’m missing in the next few weeks. The trail of colourful robins is here until September when they will be auctioned off to raise funds for the Nottinghamshire Hospice – they are also raising funds through the official app, and apparently a souvenir guide which I haven’t seen yet but intend to purchase when I’m next near the Tourist Centre. Each design is really well done and represents a certain aspect of Nottingham that will be fun for locals and hopefully entertaining for visitors. The idea is that Robin has donned all these different disguises in order to outwit the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham (below, painted in a homage to Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham).
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Nottingham Castle is currently displaying (until 9 October) 10 of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, on loan from the Royal Collection. The drawings take in many of Leonardo’s eclectic interests spanning anatomy, botany and engineering and were done in pen and ink, chalk and watercolours.
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The Munch Museum in Oslo has the largest collection of Edvard Munch’s work in the world and when I visited their exhibition focused on the parallels between Munch’s work and that of Vincent van Gogh.
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