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Image description: The Guggenheim in Bilbao It was a pleasant sunny afternoon in Bilbao on the day I paid a visit to the Guggenheim. I’d been planning my trip to Spain for three months, and it would be a grave error for anyone remotely interested in art to skip one of the country’s largest, most […]
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Image description: A self-portrait of Rembrandt laughing The Oxford Student was fortunate enough to have been given an early preview of the new ‘Young Rembrandt’ exhibition, now open at the Ashmolean Museum. Speaking to the press preview, Xa Sturgis (director of the museum) informed us that the goal of this exhibition was not to present […]
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Of all the paintings in the vast Ashmolean collection, Paolo ‘Uccello’s’ (real name di Dono) ‘The Hunt in the Forest’ has always been a favourite of mine – and certainly one of the museum’s best-known works, and for good reason: painted between 1465-1470, Uccello’s masterpiece wonderfully encapsulates the transition between the medieval Italianate style and […]
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Image description: bronze reclining satyr figure The art and artefacts of Pompeii radiate life and death in this Ashmolean exhibition. AD79: the eruption of Vesuvius marked the end of the lives of the Pompeiians. The rediscovery of the city in the 18th century marked the beginning of what could be argued to be a new […]
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When a sculpture or a painting is culturally valued, it is exhibited in a museum. Within this museum (or art gallery) is a particular gallery in which the piece is displayed; within this smaller space, there are different surfaces on which to showcase the art. The task of the curator is to exhibit artworks in […]
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Overlooking Doha’s sea front, The National Museum of Qatar appears as a mirage in the desert. The highly anticipated museum, designed by Atelier Jean Nouvel, held its glamorous opening ceremony on March 27th 2019. The building is an avant-garde structure made with 539 intersecting vertical and horizontal disks of multiple diameters, curvatures, and inclinations. Nouvel’s […]
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Image Credit: Steve Daniels (CC BY-SA 2.0) Friday 19th October will see the launch the 1001 Stories Quest, a project aimed at collecting 1001 of the world’s greatest stories. The project costs £6 million and aims at creating 10 new spaces, including the Enchanted Library, Whispering Wood and Treasure Chamber, which will be open for […]
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This winter, the museum world and the world of cinema are set to collide in a highly anticipated exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Earlier this year, the Museum announced a new exhibition that will be unveiled in November called ‘The Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures from the Kunsthistorisches Museum’. Equally as […]
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New research conducted at the University of Warwick has revealed how Oxford’s dodo, whose remains are held at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, died. The renowned bird, which experts previously thought had died as a money-making rarity in London, was actually shot. Dodos, which were native to Mauritius, became extinct as a result […]
Continue ReadingBefore we begin, let’s get something out in the open: I really like museums. I like the way they smell of preservation; I like the deep rouge of the walls, the peculiarity of the mouldings and intricacy of the frames. I like that they are big and full and that, in a single painting, you […]
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In the uncertain global climate of 2017, there is more need than ever for us to celebrate diversity, find common connections and communicate with each other, and what better way to do so than through a shared exploration and appreciation of languages? This was the premise of the Ashmolean Museum’s ‘Live Friday’ programme entitled LinguaMania. […]
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As I stumble out of the urban swirl, through the usual madding crowds of tourists, into the British Museum’s new exhibition, I am met with a sudden and imposing sense of serenity and beauty. Three visions of the classical Greek ideal of the human form stand to face me – a Roman copy of a […]
Continue ReadingAs we move tentatively further into 2014, those unsure as to what the new year will have in store would do well to get themselves down to the V&A, where new year’s is being heralded in with two remarkable, contemporary exhibitions, Jameel Prize 3 and Elmgreen & Dragset’s Tomorrow. On the surface there is little […]
Continue ReadingThursday 2nd Week onwards In Reverse: Where the Future Meets the Past Students from the Royal College of Art present imagined histories of obscure objects at the Pitt Rivers. FREE Sunday 3d Week onwards Romance of Dereliction The OVADA gallery (near Park End, google it) brings together a series of works inspired by the […]
Continue ReadingSome of London’s strangest and most evocative museums were created from the private collections of visionary hoarders. Those planning on embarking on a little spring-cleaning over the next few months might want to consider a period of reflection before they do so. Naturally, it may take some time before your clutter is considered to be […]
Continue ReadingTick-tick, tick-tock, tick-tick. The clockwork inside the fat brass disk clicks as our guide turns the tiny brass handle of the Orrery. It looks too small for his large gnarled hands, but he gently turns the handle and the delicate brass wires suspending the planets in their place begin to turn under the rhythm of […]
Continue ReadingOxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum has received a grant of £76,654 to document some of its founder’s earliest archaeological collections. The grant, awarded by the Arts Council England’s Designation Development Fund, will mean that roughly 7,500 prehistoric artefacts from General Pitt-Rivers’ collections can be studied for the first time. The artefacts come from sites across the UK, including […]
Continue Reading1001 Conversations at the Story Museum Stepping not quite through the wardrobe or into the cupboard under the stairs, but not far off, through the mysterious double oak doors which dominate Pembroke Street there is a world full of enchantment: The Story Museum. This not-for-profit organisation, based on an Oxford side street, was founded in […]
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