October | 2016 | Michael S. Moore

After Yorkshire our London filled with Museums…

Tuesday midday began with an attempt to reach the new restaurant in Tate Modern’s Switch House. This proved impractical as the elevators in the new building are comically dysfunctional; just as well, really, as the old restaurant atop the Boiler House was more than fine.

After lunch and Louise Bourgeois’ “artist room”

Rick departed for a walk along the Thames but we determined the elevators [unless of course one needed the restaurant] to be superfluous and visited several exhibitions on the fourth and third floors afoot. Little Chinese girls assiduously drew a city of cous-cous in one,

another commemorated performative works, most memorably Rebecca Horn’s remarkable prostheses [not shown] and a strange Daria Martin film although Helio Otica’s installation was severely compromised by a lack of macaws.

But all in all some pretty good stuff, as well as incidental architecture; worth the walk despite sore feet [which later, much later, were determined to be caused by my expensive new boots being a half size too small].

Below, a Tony Cragg and the griddish thingie to the right a woven hanging structure one could enter by Cristina Iglesias, a Spanish artist who’s realized some amazingly ambitious architecturally scaled works in the E.U….

across the gallery Roni [no relation] Horn’s immense block of cast glass was phenomenal.

Back in the old wing after suitable refreshment we started through the not initially promising Wilfredo Lam retrospective just to see how the story ended…but the story became increasingly interesting [Lam was a Cuban surrealist painter, his grandmother a Santeria Priestess] as his work developed and friendships with pretty much every Important mid-century European Painter grew – he left Cuba to escape the CIA/Mafia-installed Bautista dictatorship, lived in Paris but returned once Castro came to power, bringing with him the surviving dada/surrealists for annual reunions – it got better and better. No photos allowed [the one below surreptitious], but we’ll get the catalog. His last amazing works were done with an Italian master printer late in a long eventful life. A revelation…

Time passed;

we left

to walk the Thames ourselves,

Navigate by The Shard to London Bridge,

jam into a rush hour Jubilee train and slide under the river to meet Linda’s friend Pamela, in town from Vienna for the opening of Frieze, for drinks and a visit in what may have been Mayfair.

P. went around the corner for dinner and

we continued on the Jubilee to West Hampstead, where Rick collected us…and so to Hollycroft and the Friend.

Next day on his recommendation [and membership card] we found our way to the British Museum,

where there were many wonders,

Not least of which was the special exhibition “Sunken Cities” documenting two Ptolemeic ports, Thonus-Haracleion and Canopus, recently discovered downstream from Alexandria where underwater archaeology is revealing tantalizing insights into the workings of various Greco-Roman-Egyptian cross fertilizations [not shown, natch], perhaps most astoundingly intricate details concerning the seed-cult of Osisris.

Exiting through the gift shop we feasted on more antiquities before lunch in the Great Court, enjoying what is described as “fine European dining under the iconic glass roof” [I had the specially themed Egyptian menu] while observing passing schoolchildren and extremely fashionable oriental tourists.