Category Archives: Art

Herod, That Moody King

Posted on 16/12/2015 by carolinemmurray

Last Christmas, the Cambridge Library Collection reissued Songs of the Nativity, Being Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern, edited by William Henry Husk (1814–87), a solicitor’s clerk and amateur singer who was librarian of the Sacred Harmonic Society in London. (He … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, History, Literature, Music, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Object of the Month: November

Posted on 24/11/2015 by carolinemmurray

This month’s object is a bit of a cheat. It is held by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, but is not currently on display – nor, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when he viewed it in 1833, should it ever have … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Cambridge, History, Museums and Galleries, Music | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Object of the Month: October

Posted on 30/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

Moving on from the edible apples of autumn, it’s appropriate to consider the golden apples of the Hesperides, which can be viewed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, down the road from the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge, in a small exhibition on … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Art, Classics, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Posted on 16/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

Disambiguation, as they say on Wikipedia. This is not about the novel by the great Kate Atkinson (another Jackson Brodie! Soon! PLEASE!), but about the usually scruffy, draughty, unkempt warrens which tend to lurk behind many of our great national … Continue reading →

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Object of the Month: September

Posted on 21/09/2015 by carolinemmurray

I’m not yet done with Venice (how could one ever be?), and this month’s highlighted object can currently be seen there, in the wonderful Ca’ Rezzonico (left), which, after a chequered history, is now the museum of eighteenth-century Venice. The … Continue reading →

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We Close in Venice (Part 3: Why Venice AGAIN?)

Posted on 14/09/2015 by carolinemmurray

As our holiday draws to an end, and we contemplate our return – to autumn, to cleansing of the liver, to new challenges, and to a totally pissed-off Max the Cat, who started getting antsy when we brought out the … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Gardens, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

How Not to Go to the Venice Biennale

Posted on 13/09/2015 by carolinemmurray

Unless you really go for the sort of art for which you need an A4-sized explanatory label containing phrases such as ‘multiple discourses’, ‘time and transience’, ‘viscerally visual’, ‘expressive dynamism’, ‘atemporal incongruence’ or ‘axis of displacements’, ‘sonorous light of introspective … Continue reading →

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We Close in Venice (Part 2: Mantua me genuit)

Posted on 10/09/2015 by carolinemmurray

I would assert that there is unlikely to be any greater, more playful or more evocative epitaph in any language than the one (dubiously) ascribed to Virgil: Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces, with … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Gardens, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

We Close in Venice (Part 1)

Posted on 08/09/2015 by carolinemmurray

Unlike Cole Porter’s troupe of strolling players, we did not open in Venice: we go there last, having spent two very hot days in Ferrara, and having arrived in Mantua, to the twin delights of wifi and a terrific thunderstorm … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

All Saints’ Church

Posted on 17/08/2015 by carolinemmurray

I was walking up Jesus Lane the other day, and All Saints’ church was open. This Victorian pile was, for a long period in my Cambridge life, locked and threatened with demolition. Only about one hundred years after it was … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Cambridge, History | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments