A Museum Or Two Does You The World Of Good!

While I was focusing on the technicalities of the painting I made for the first year crit, I was also developing my interest in cabinets of curiosity and the ownership of objects. I have expanded my reading, looking at Mark Dion's digs and development of his exhibition of Cabinets of Curiosity in an American university. I am also reading Jean Baudrillard's "The System Of Objects" and "Simulacra And Simulation".


After a recent visit to the Freud Museum, I have become interested in the museum as a means of display of objects in contrast to a display in the home. When does an object go from having substantial sentimental value, to a monetary or historical value? Is there a difference? Does putting a porcelain ornament in a well lit glass cabinet amongst millions of others, change the status of it if it were placed proudly on a mantlepiece in a family home, passed down through the generations?


So I visited the UCL Petrie Museum and the British Museum out of curiosity and found myself photographing the museum's displays...


UCL Petrie Museum
Cabinet upon cabinet of Egyptian artefacts, it wasn't so much the artefacts themselves that interested me as I found the colours too dull. But the current contemporary art on show in the museum got me interested in the display cabinets and the museum layout. 
'Soul House' by Sara Bevan is a series of manipulated images in response to the space and atmosphere of the museum's layout. She plays with scale and incorporates the magic and myths surrounding the artefacts on display.
These are a few images I took of the museum's displays...

The British Museum
I went straight to the 'Europe' part of the museum and found I was most excited by room 46 (Europe 1400-1800) and room 47 (Europe 1800-1900)
Here I just took a few snapshots of the cabinets and close ups of a few of the objects that caught my eye.