Plum Button Art and Design Reviews and Reports :<\/strong>
This is the inaugural issue of a new feature I will be providing to my website, where I share artist-designer reviews and reports on topics related to living art, design, and life, in monthly articles. The question of \u2018What is art? \u2019 has confounded some people for many years, but an answer seems simple to me: It\u2019s how humankind expresses ourselves, in a vast array of methods. And that is what I will be writing about, examples of art and design expressed in the world. This year, Plum Button had the opportunity to travel to London, England and while there, visit some truly wonderful museums, galleries, and other sites with wonderful examples of Artwork. Below is a list of 6 \u00a0excellent stops for any artist-designer \u00a0or art appreciator visiting London, England, U.K.:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/London-Telephone_-bus.gif\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nTelephone boxes and Bus in London. Image by
April Smith, 2013<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The Victoria and Albert<\/strong>\u00a0Museum:<\/strong>\u00a0Their website (\u00a0http:\/\/www.vam.ac.uk\/<\/strong><\/a>) \u00a0proclaims itself the \u201cWorlds greatest museum of art and design\u201d and I\u2019m here to say,\u00a0 in an era of advertising overload, that description is 100% accurate!\u00a0 As a working designer and artist, I have never seen such a wonderful collection of art and design in one place, and that\u2019s including New York and Boston. \u00a0The fact that it includes true design ad well as fine art is a testament to the breadth of items in the collection. The museum is so huge it\u2019s impossible to pick just one section as a favorite, so suffice it to say it\u2019s all amazing. From the Suits of Armor and tapestries to the suspended piece of flattened musical instruments (which sounds odd but is very cool to see)- it\u2019s all a must-see for any artist designer visiting London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suit of Armor and Swords at the Victoria and Albert Museum<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n The Cortauld Gallery, (<\/strong>\u00a0http:\/\/www.courtauld.ac.uk\/gallery\/index.shtml\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>) is a small (as compared to huge ones like the also lovely National Gallery) wonderful gallery, which during our visit, was hosting a special exhibit about Pablo Picasso\u2019s \u2018breakthrough year 1901\u2019., and how I heard about the site in the first place. I believe the Picasso exhibit is over as I write this, but there were so many other wonderful examples of artwork there that I must include this delightful gallery in my list. We saw pieces such as\u00a0 Edouard Manet\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018A Bar at the Folies-Bergere<\/em>\u201d , Edgar Deas \u2018Two Dancers on the Stage<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 and Claude Monet\u2019s \u2018Vase of Flowers<\/em>\u201d . I\u2019m not sure which pieces were part of the permanent collection, I just know I was supremely happy we spent time there. It was a little hard to find, sort of tucked away, but worth seeking it out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\u00a0Churchill War Rooms\u00a0 (http:\/\/www.iwm.org.uk\/visits\/churchill-war-rooms<\/a>)\u00a0<\/strong>sounded intriguing and lived up to our expectations.\u00a0\u00a0 We went with another couple and all got lost in the experience, in a good way. It\u2019s not a museum in the traditional sense of the word, but more like an immersive dive into the history and past. As an American visiting it, it had countless fascinating pieces of information about Churchill and the war itself for me. The manner in which the museum\u2019s designers combine old,\u00a0 ( and I assumed original)\u00a0 features together with new modern tools to convey data to a wide range of viewers is remarkable. I hope whoever did the design work got some kind of award, or something because it\u2019s a brilliant example of creative communication to the masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\u00a0London\u00a0Transport Museum<\/strong>\u00a0http:\/\/www.ltmuseum.co.uk\/<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0The examples of past Subway art and posters were very fun to see. They have an exhibit running now until Jan. 5, 2014, and anyone interested in graphic art would probably find the poster exhibit an enjoyable way to spend some time. I myself love maps of all kinds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, the\u00a0National Gallery (http:\/\/www.nationalgallery.co.uk\/<\/a> ) and National Portrait Gallery (http:\/\/www.npg.org.uk\/<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0were both wonderful.\u00a0 We saw a special\u00a0 Man Ray exhibit at the Portrait Gallery which was excellent. And at the National Gallery, were two pieces, in particular, I had to buy postcards of: \u201cThe Boulevard Montmarte at Night\u201d by Camile Pisaro and \u2018The Umbrellas<\/em>\u201d by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Both locations are wonderful, and London is lucky to have them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Art Review December 2013Plum Button Art and Design Reviews and Reports :This is the inaugural issue of a new feature I will be providing to my website, where I share artist-designer reviews and reports on topics related to living art, design, and life, in monthly articles. The question of \u2018What is art? \u2019 has confounded … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-27","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/plumbutton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/VA-Suits-of-armor.gif\")
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