Last Day in London! :o

Today we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum! It is a very cool Museum full of a wide array of artifacts. From Rafael paintings to Greek statues to one of Mick Jagger’s performance outfits, it was a broad selection. They are supposed to have a Theatre and the Arts exhibit, but it was currently closed unfortunately. We started instead in the fashion section. The dresses and outfits accessories and shoes were all very interesting to look at though. I then continued around the rest of the museum. There were some very odd things in there as well. I think one of the reasons I found some of the objects weird, like a very creepy puppet of Margaret Thatcher, was because there were some exhibits specific to British culture. The Victoria and Albert Museum was beautiful both inside and out. The architecture was very nice but also in the middle of the building was an outside space that was very pretty. It had a strange , shallow pool of water and seats around where you could eat from the cafe. I did not get any food there and it was a bit cold but there were other people out there and I know it would have been a nice place to sit around. Inside there was a statue of a dog pinning down a striking snake. It is called “The Faithful Friend of Man” and was commissioned by an Earl of Dudley that sadly died before it was finished. He had it sculpted in the likeness of his Newfoundland dog Bashaw in 1832 and it was completed in 1834. The plaque said “it was subsequently scathingly criticized by John Ruskin.” I do not know who John Ruskin is, I don’t know if I am supposed to, but I thought it was so strange both that they felt the need to put that on the description of the piece and that Ruskin would even carry that opinion in the first place. I think it’s such a moving sculpture even though it is just a dog and it’s completely not my style of art. Since that was the object I had focused on to write about, and it doesn’t really relate back to any of the shows we have seen, I looked up the theatre exhibit collection online. Apparently, they would normally have a film costume from Fred Astaire, costume from Swan Lake (Moscow 1901), 1994 Lion King costumes, a Brexit pantomime costume (which was actually there and I saw), original Elphaba witch hat worn by Idina Menzel, Elton John outfit, Prince’s shoes, and a lot more. It sounds like a cool collection so it is a bummer, but there were already so many things to see. I also went to the Natural History Museum next door, which I enjoyed even more though that may be because it is in more of my wheelhouse (Anthropology). They had lots of skull and bone artifacts from Hominin species and it was so cool and interesting to see them especially because I recognized a lot of the specific ones from talking fabulous them in my Biological Anthropology class not that long ago. There was also lots of interesting facts about space, geography, and birds. Because they currently have a special exhibit on Birds they had a smaller collection to try and draw you into buying tickets. So there were lots of taxidermy birds of all shapes and sizes—Penguin, Flamingo, Owl, Dodo, etc. That was interesting to see but also makes me sad for some reason. Overall I liked the Natural History Museum, but the Victoria and Albert was also an amazing experience!