Cultural Monday's....Topolski's Century and Gabriel's Wharf

Hidden among the arches of Waterloo is Topolski's Century, the artist's 600 ft record of the 20h century. Topolski was an eye witness to many of the major events, including both World Wars, the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement in the US (to name a few). In particular, he was an official war artist for the Brits in World War Two, creating many sketches during the Blitz, and he was embedded with one of the units involved in the liberation of (if i recall) Bergen-Belsen.
In short? Dude's seen a lot, and his art is worth taking a look at. More over, his gallery has free admission on Monday's (2 quid for adults during the rest of the week). So off we went.


















Left: The UN Wheel, Right: World War I

One of the more interesting items for me, personally, was the original door to Newgate Prison, which was demolished in the late 17oos. Now...WHY Topolski had the door to Newgate, and decided that it would be a great piece to display as part of his artwork relating to the Soviet Union and Cold War mentality....I don't know. I can understand the prison connotations etc etc, but why THIS door? There's so much more history related to it! Sigh....silly artists.
History note: The 'original' Newgate was demolished in 1777, but the prison existed, in some form or another from the 1100s through to 1902. Also note that the 'original' as previously referenced, was definitely not the original, if nothing else, it burned down in the Great Fire in 1666. I'm not entirely sure which iteration the door is from, but that's neither here nor there.

After wandering through Topolski's Mural, his paintings regarding the opening of Bergen-Belsen being particularly poignant for me, we went for a walk along Southbank, including a visit to the top of OXO Tower and Gabriel's Wharf.

Cultural Mondays.....British Museum and Russel Square

It's absolutely disgraceful, that I live in one of the most incredible cities in the world, but I've yet to see much of what it has to offer. As part of my 'must stop being lazy' note to self, I've been trying to get out more and see what the city has to offer. Monday afternoons have been 'Cultural Mondays", the day when Yas and I get out and see what there is to see.

Part One: the British Museum -
Starting with an absolutely fantastic lunch in a little cafe by the Museum.



And then on to the Museum itself.


This year, the Museum, in conjunction with Radio 4 are running a year-long event called A History of the World in 100 Objects, very cool. We spent several hours in the museum tracking down 17 of the first 30 objects that they have released. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, it's year long, so I don't think I'll be here to track down the other 70 in the list that are un-released, but I thought these were a good place to start. I am a big fan of this sort of scavenger hunt approach to the Museum, as typically when people go, they only see the Greek and Egyptian sections, the Elgin Marbles, Rosetta Stone an the Mummies....it's good to see another part of i.

Here is one of my favorite of the objects that we found (and also highlighted all over their website, turns out other people like it too)
# 4 - The Swimming Reindeer, roughly 13,000 years old and one of the oldest items in the Museum (possibly the oldest? I don't remember)


Not on the list of objects, but probably my favorite thing that I saw that day was this guy, an awesome Woodcut of a Rhinoceros - 1515 AD

The Museum gives out a pamphlet that has a list of the objects that have been marked so far and the rooms they are in. but we set a rule, that for every room we went in, we had to actually look at the OTHER stuff in there, as opposed to just going from object to object and ignoring everything else (which we saw several other pairs of folks doing). That's totally cheating, and you won't learn as much that way! The catch as that doing it our way, we missed 13 of the objects, and only saw the top three floors, so we're going to have to go back and find them!

After the Museum, we had a nice walk around the Holborn/Russell Square area...
And followed it up with a lovely cup of tea and some pastries at Patisserie Valerie