National Gallery & Natural History Museum

This past weekend was, comparatively speaking, very low-key. On Friday, my free day, Jackie and I finally made it to the National Gallery. The places is huge, far too big to see in a single day. So, we concentrated on the Holbeins (including the spectacular "The Ambassadors" with its strange distorted death's head in the foreground), the DeVincis, highlights from the British collection, the Impressionists and the post-Impressionists. My favorite thing about the day was seeing Hogarth's satirical series "Marriage A La Mode" up close. It also struck me as we were wandering through the museum that John Berger's book "Ways of Seeing" draws most of its examples from paintings held by the National Gallery, which I suppose makes sense since he wrote it in England as a companion book to his BBC series.

The weekend proper was fairly lack luster and lazy. The kids and I visited the Natural History museum in the afternoon. Among other things it boasts an animatronic T-Rex whose eyes follow you around the room. But we spent the most time at the interesting exhibits on memory, perception and language. We only staye a couple of hours before meeting Jackie to do som serious grocery shopping at Sainsburys (which is near the museum).

More later.