New York New York

I was very lucky to have a weekend in New York, on the way home from the work trip to Orange County. I was so excited, and although it was only a weekend we visited a lot of the highlights. Autumn colours, pretzels, outdoor skating, yellow cabs, lots of coffee, miles of walking, visiting iconic stores such as Tiffany's and FAO Schwarz, we rode up to the 86th floor of the Empire State, and so much more!

I've always thought of it as somewhere I wanted to visit one day, now I think it's somewhere I certainly want to go back to!

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Museum visiting in Stockholm

There are some 87 museums in Stockholm, so there's always another to investigate. Each time I visit I try and see one or two that are new to me, but I must admit I'm getting to the point on the list where I either think I'm not interested (day out at the Tobacco and Match museum anyone?) or the more difficult to reach by public transport with no sense of direction and a cartoon map.

This time it's been a pleasant surprise though, I've visited two that I had previously thought too boring - The Museum of Ethnography and The Historiska Museet, or the Museum of Antiquities.

The Museum of Ethnography is described in the brochure as 'a meeting place of cultures for everyone interested in the wider world'. As a lover of the old fashioned style museum I loved the current exhibition of 'bringing the world home' which is a broad selection of objects from the museums archives, displayed in old fashioned glass museum cases, aisles and aisles of oddities behind glass - just what I love in a museum. As a twist they have displayed everything in groups as it is stored, which is by material rather than origin. In order to give the illusion of never ending cabinets they have installed mirrors at the end of the rows, which worked a little too well, as I found myself stepping aside to give way to, well um myself!

I did struggle in this exhibition to match up the cabinets with the English translation sheet, so just gave up and enjoyed the looking with no great information on what I was looking at.

This fellow wins best oddity I've found to draw in a while, the skin of a baby hippopotamus which must have been folded for transport.

The displays on climate, and how cultures adapt to extreme climates were something different, and there was an extensive Aboriginal display. It was good to see that it was fair representation on the modern Aboriginal culture, explaining the issues of the stolen generation and land rights. There was an area of displays and film related to Swedish explorers in Australia who took skeletons and recently deceased from funeral sites as museum items, and film documenting the apology and ceremonies related to the return of these in recent history.

There were displays on historical expeditions, to Papua New Guinea and the Congo (and cultural damage there by well meaning missionaries of their day).

All up, lots of interesting objects to draw, and rather sadly the opportunity to see how history has repeated itself over and over; white men travel to foreign lands and try to 'improve' the locals by stealing their children and raising them as white, introducing alcohol, tobacco and violence to traditional cultures - apologising after 200 years and leaving these cultures in a mess of identity, dependency and violence. Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Congo, North America, Canada, and Northern Scandanavia.

The Historiska Museum has it's 'Gold Room' as pride of place, with an extensive collection of antique gold, silver and jewel currency and jewellery. For me the more interesting sections were the textiles hall, with ancient embroideries, many were church vestments. The amount of work put into these was amazing. I sketched some of the animal shapes to perhaps embroider myself later as the designs were really interesting.

There were halls full of old church icons, alters, and iconastas - which made me wonder if every old church in Sweden was gutted at some point? There was so much of it. It was great to see them, but I did feel a little sad about how much of it had been removed from where it belonged? I would have liked to drawn some of these but there were no seats available and my back was not cooperating with standing and holding a sketchbook to draw.

I ran out of time to take in everything, and while doing a speed view through the remaining exhibitions on my way out, this fellow caught my interest. At about four feet high, carved from wood with rope decoration, holding a skeleton which appeared to be various real bones with a wooden carved skull. I had to stop and read, and then draw;

"Associated with the cannibal dancing society: skeleton made from various animals such as seal paws and a carved human skull. When covered in vegetable pastry it looked like a human corpse. Used in ceremony when someone was obsessed with the cannibal spirit to regain their human nature"

I'll definitely look forward to another visit when I'm looking for a drawing refuge on a rainy day.

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Edinburgh Easter

The UK weather has been a bit crazy in March, with a sudden and severe throwback to proper winter. With no where booked for Easter, the weekend before we thought we better make a plan! Considering how badly the UK copes with snow, and peak traffic (having sat in three hour Easter traffic queues before), and peak numbers of airports we had a dilemma. We wanted to go somewhere, but didn't want to deal with traffic or long airport security queues, and given the snow train cancellations would be no surprise either.

We eventually formed a plan of Edinburgh, a city we hadn't yet got around to visiting. It was a 50/50 bet, my husband had business in Manchester on Thursday which took us halfway by car. So we caught a train from Manchester on Thursday night, knowing on Monday we had half the trip by train, half by car - halving or doubling the risk of delays?

The weekend was gorgeous with winter weather, clear blue skies, sunshine, but cold. Which was fine, we had our coats and hats, so happy to be in a pretty city, without snow or rain we mostly walked around for the weekend admiring the Georgian streets and green spaces.

On the art front, we visited the National Portrait Gallery, which as a bonus had an Annie Lennox exhibition on of her personal archive of costumes, handwritten song lyrics and music, personal sketchbooks and photos. It was small but I really enjoyed it, what amazingly neat handwriting she has, and very self critical self portrait drawings - which were really quite sad to see in their own way. The building itself seemed quite modern inside, then we wandered into this amazing central atrium. Amazing lights, murals, paintings, stained glass windows, it was as stunning as any of the painting galleries.

detail from the mural - I love finding dogs and horses in paintings

Of course you have to visit the Castle when in Edinburgh, and although we decided to just have a general wander around rather than check out every gallery and museum within, we did wander into one of the military galleries, and came across this painting - The Thin Red Line (1881), by Robert Gibb.

It reminded my of 'Scotland for Ever (1861) by Lady Elizabeth Butler, which hangs in the Leeds Art Gallery, were I've visited and sketched the horses many times. I wrote about this here.

After the poignancy of The Thin Red Line, I noticed this beauty in the next cabinet - surely the campest enlistment poster ever?

We also did a bit of retail therapy while we were there, in two independent shops (always excited to find something beyond the high street dominators), both of which we loved, then later found out they are owned by the same owner. Well worth seeking out if you are ever in town. Paper Tiger has a fantastic selection of cards and gifts, we left with an armful of both! Next door is Studio One, this store has a huge and eclectic range of gifts, unique handmade items, Stylish design (the largest range of Littala I've seen outside of Helsinki/Stockholm), books, toys, jewellery and it just goes on! We certainly picked up a few birthday cards and presents, and just a couple of things for us too! Maybe it was a good thing we were on the train and couldn't carry anymore?

love my new fox terrier brooch from Studio One

I look forward to seeing you again Edinburgh.

PS As for our great travel planning, the train home was only delayed by an hour, and the roads were clear by the time we got underway, our weekend apartment was in a quiet area and the two people we know in Edinburgh were both around for Easter so we could catch up. A successful Easter trip all round.