Cities and the interesting places within them
Looking down on Sydney from one of its many skyscrapers, what is most striking is the sheer extent of the harbour. It seems to twist and turn forever in an endless melee of coves and bays. Having checked it out on Wikipedia, I note it is indeed “the world’s largest natural harbour”.
The visionary Mayor of Auckland has taken to describing his domain as “a city in a forest”. It’s a lovely idea and from what markontour saw on a brief work visit it is not far off being realised. So while Auckland has its challenges, particularly constraining the urban sprawl that comes from the New Zealand dream of a single-storey house and half an acre for everyone, the great attraction of this growing city is its proximity to the natural world beyond.
Sited on an archipelago in the port district of Rio de Janeiro, on approach the Museum of Tomorrow looks like some kind of spaceship, perhaps an inter-galactic freighter. Once inside and looking out, however, the feeling is of being in the belly of a whale, its huge skeletal frame exposed to the burning sun. It is an extraordinary structure housing a truly unique museum, that invites the visitor to ponder human existence in way that is progressively profound, disturbing, and uplifting.
The British Library’s ‘West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song’ is an engrossing and rewarding introduction to this vast region of 340 million people, 1,000 languages and 17 nations. Despite loving the music of Fela Kuti, Toumani Diabate, and Ali Fark Toure, markontour had hitherto failed to understand the regional and cultural connections between these great artists. This exhibition shows how their West African homelands share a love of story-telling, of which these great artists are simply modern expressions.
There are three good reasons to visit Cromford in Derbyshire. First, Richard Arkwright’s cotton mills on the edge of the hamlet were the birthplace of the factory system. Second, the nearby John Smedley shop, itself a survivor from the late eighteenth century, sells the finest woollen and cotton pullovers in the world. Third, the Scarthin bookshop boasts a cafe hidden behind a revolving bookshelf. Finally, my old history professor has edited a cracking volume of essays about Cromford’s role in the Industrial Revolution.
Despite having no aptitude for science, I have been fascinated by space travel and the stars since I was a teenager. So I had to borrow a friend’s son for an excuse to visit the Science Museum’s nostalgic tribute to the Soviet space programme – Cosmonauts.
While the gentrification of Walthamstow Village continues apace with the addition of a wine bar (I’m not complaining), it was nice last weekend to be able to enjoy one of E17’s long-lasting attractions, the Vestry House Museum.
We took advantage of the end of British Summer Time this morning to get out ahead of the dog walkers and were rewarded with four hours of Epping Forest in golden glory.
It turns out that the ancient Greeks coined the label Keltoi to categorise non-Mediterranean Europeans. Plato and his intellectual mates regarded the Keltoi as war-mad alcoholics with a penchant for fancy jewellery. But as the British Museum’s exhibition shows, the Celts were far from shallow. The Greeks might have corneed the early market in naturalistic art, but the Celts were already well into abstractionism 2,500 years ago.
It’s E17 Art Trail time again, the annual community-led arts programme where the good people of Walthamstow turn their homes, shops and pubs into temporary art galleries. This weekend we only had time to sample of a few of the highlights in the Village, but the Art Trail runs until 14 June so there’s a bit of time to explore more. Here follows markontour’s highlights written, in keeping with the departure lounge ethos of this blog, on a train to Stoke for a Sunday of boating.
markontour 