A List of Virtual Art Galleries & Museums #1 - in the UK

If you've been clicking your way through Google Trends (I aced it on the quizzes!) you'll have seen this.....

Virtual Museum was the top trending search in relation to virtual activity

"Virtual Museum" hurtled up the search query rankings to become a TOP TREND in 2020 for virtual activities

So I thought I'd make a list of Virtual Museums - for your delectation over the Covid / Christmas Break (take your pick - says woman sat in a 'Deep Purple' zone in Tier 4 London - who's going absolutely nowhere in the foreseeable future).

Here's some of the things I've learned through this process:

• some art galleries and museums are using the word "virtual" to rechristen their existing offering on the website. Doubtless after they realise that "virtual museum" was a search query which was hitting new heights during Covid. 
• I'm looking for either:
• pre-existing and genuine virtual tours (i.e. you get to decide where you go and what you look at)
• new initiatives aimed at making art galleries and museums more accessible via virtual tours.
• The process also told me which art galleries and museum 
• really think hard about "virtual" from the perspective of the viewer i.e. we want to decide where we go and what we do - just as we do when we visit for real
• have an online marketing team which does NOT look at trends in search queries - and 
• which have not used the downtime associated with museums being closed to get virtual tours started properly!

Initially I'm going to divide the listing into three posts covering museums and art galleries in different geographical area i.e. 

1. the United Kingdom
2. Europe
• France
• Italy
• Spain
3. the USA

However if you like these posts, I'll do more!  Plus these are posts I can come back to and add in more art galleries and museums with virtual tours - and I'll do an update post to tell you what's been added when I do.

Finally - this is very much a work in progress - broken off initially today because I need to make dinner - but I will return!

A List of Virtual Museums

This list of art galleries and museums is ordered on the basis of which museums I found had invested and produced the best results. 

• I'm starting today with London - but will add in more museums from elsewhere in the UK later - within a regional context
• Suggestions of Virtual Tours you know about elsewhere in the UK to me on my Facebook Page
  
  

LONDON

British Museum

The British Museum has some unusual ways of viewing its collection online.

VIDEO: Painting the Modern Garden

One of the new initiatives by Museums during the Lockdown has been better promotion of the Exhibitions on Screen films made in the past in association with different art galleries and museums.

This week the Royal Academy of Arts has posted a video related to its 2016 Exhibition about Painting The Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse.

Joaquin Sorolla, Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1911. Oil on canvas, 150 x 225.5 cm.
On loan from the Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY. Photo
© Courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, New York;

Back in 2016, we filled our Main Galleries with all the vibrant colours of the garden, as we traced its many forms through a period of great social change and innovation in the arts.
Discover the paintings of some of the most important artists of the early twentieth century exploring the theme, including Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet, Sargent, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Matisse, Klimt and Klee.

A 90 minute DOCUMENTARY was made about ‘Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse’. 

• This video is available FOR FREE via the link above and YouTube (see small version below)
• both sources of the video provide HD resolution if desired.

Originally released in cinemas, this ‘Exhibition on Screen’ film takes us back to our landmark exhibition, ‘Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse’, examining the role gardens played in the evolution of art from the early 1860s through to the 1920s.

One page on the RA website Video: Inside the Artists’ Gardens provides

• access to videos of the gardens of various artists 
• these can be watched full screen 
• via the above page or via a YouTube playlist associated with the exhibition

Both are available at 1080 HD - but you have to choose this.

Using the work of Monet as a starting point, this landmark exhibition (30 Jan–20 April 2016) examines the role gardens played in the evolution of art from the early 1860s through to the 1920s. In this video series we take you into the gardens of artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre Bonnard and Emil Nolde.

The documentary video is also available via Seventh Art Productions

VIDEO: Wildlife Field Study sketches by the SWLA

This is my video (below) of the sketches and artwork produced by members of the Society of Wildlife Artists during Wildlife Study Projects in the field at:

1. Kingcombe Meadows Nature Reserve, Dorset Wildlife Reserve - during a Residency by SWLA in May 2017 
2. RSPB/SWLA Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project 

For more about each of these places/projects click the links above.

The sketches are being displayed in the North Galleries of the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists at the Mall Galleries - which runs until 1pm on Sunday 29th October.

Given my personal preference for botanical subject matter it's unsurprising that I was particularly taken by Carry Akroyd's sketches of the Kingscombe Meadows.

Amazing sketches pf Kingscombe Meadows by Carry Akroyd SWLA

Sketches and a woodblock print by Matt Underwood

Some of the sketches from the John Busby Seabird Drawing Bursaries can be seen right at the end of the video

My review of the exhibition - which is taking a bit longer than anticipated - follows tomorrow.

See also my blog post Awards - Society of Wildlife Artists Annual Exhibition 2017

Lachlan Goudie on "Sargent: The Watercolours"

Guess where I am this afternoon?

Down at Dulwich Picture Gallery viewing Sargent: The Watercolours. It's one of those exhibitions where I've been thinking I've got ages left and then woke up to the fact I haven't. (I bought the book months before it opened!)

So, despite a very painful foot, I'm driving down to Dulwich (the joys of parking in Gallery Road!)

Here's Lachlan Goudie's take on Sargent as a watercolourist - painting for himself - and the exhibition - plus ratings by various newspapers popping up from time to time

If you want to see it you've not got much time left - just over a week in fact. It finishes on 8th October (and is closed on 2nd October). Plus lots of time slots are already sold out.

Choose your date and time and book tickets and print them off once you've received your email.

The "tickets" were shambolic on my iMac and better on my iPhone! I gather they;re getting a new ticketing app. Let's hope it's one which allows me to store tickets on my iPhone Wallet!

VIDEO Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition 2017

Below you can see the Video of the Annual Open Exhibition 2017 held by the Society of Women Artists at the Mall Galleries this week. The exhibition is open until 3pm on Sunday.



However for those of you who can't get to see it, you can view my (slightly unsteady) walk (with a stick) around the exhibition and/or read yesterday's post reviewing the exhibition Review: Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition 2017

Artworks which caught my eye

I also said I'd highlight a few artworks which caught my eye.  See if you can spot them in the video.

I was particularly struck by the media used for artwork which I've never seen outside this exhibition

The first piece by Heather Meyerratken was awarded a prize yesterday and was also highlighted in my first post - but deserves another outing! It's a screen print - but on a wire mesh located within a 3D grid made of thick brass-coloured wire

Meyerratken carefully selects the images from discarded slides and photographs which she finds in bins and junk shops around the world....However, it is the unique printing onto wire mesh that encourages yet another layer of loss to the image. A particular fragility aligned with faded memory. This occurs serendipitously during the mechanics of printing in the form of pixellation and is relative to how the ink remains partially suspended within the mesh. The image becomes both translucent and lenticular. As one moves to the side of the image the colours become more intense and as you move to face the image it fades.

Sitting Pretty by Heather Meyerratken
(Edition 1 of 6 - five available) £1,200 

On the same wall I also spotted a piece in glass. The artist, Dr Linda Smith SWA is both an artist and a scientist with a PhD in chemistry. After this she switched to art and graduated with PGCE’s in both Fine Art and Glass and Architecture (2007) from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. She was also was awarded the John Corkill Memorial Award for best presentation in 2006 by The British Society of Master Glass Painters.

Treasured Possessions by Dr Linda Smith SWA
Enamel fired on Glass, £1,890

She now teaches hot and cold glass working techniques and tutoring students on the Fine and Applied Arts BA (Hons) course at Canterbury University - which explains the sophistication of her glass artwork in the main gallery.

I have absolutely no idea how you fire enamel on glass and achieve the effects she does! Her website has even more interesting cast glass pieces

There were other interesting and innovative pieces within the exhibition - but I didn't take photos of all of them.

Last year I was intrigued by Wang Ziling's painting and this year had me puzzling over her optical illustion again.  She is one of the Young Artists being supported by the SWA and the catalogue includes a piece about this painting.

How we perceive time is influenced by how time is fragmented and divided by the structures of our one-dimensional society, as a result of mechanical and monotonous reproduction and repetitions

It's a very healthy antidote to the "same old same old" seen in some exhibitions.

The Wall of Repetition by Ziling Wang YAA

Wang was born in China in 1988 and now lives in London. Her work is being exhibited in Beijing, London and Venice.

I liked Christine Southworth ASWA MAFA NDD's suite of pen and ink drawings of different landscapes. It was interesting figuring out how the artist had tackled the question of composition of a monochrome drawing within the context of an oval - not just once but four times - and how to get them to read from a distance

Ovals One to Four by Christine Southworth
Pen and Ink (£480 each)

and finally......

Probably like most artists my eye goes automatically to any paintings of art materials or equipment.

In this case it was Dani Humberstone's oil painting of paint tubes and a brush.

Cerulean Blue by Dani Humberstone
oil (£495)

Plus another work from the innovative Dr Linda Smith who also painted and drew Painters Palette which comprises a montage of painted paper annotated with a drawing of the name of the colour - with all of them laid out in terms of colour and tone

Painters Palette by Dr Linda Smith SWA
mixed media £680

Past posts

• Review: Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition 2017
• Review: Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition 2016
• Review - Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition 2015