Outings

Owen and I have gradually been exploring the museums around Dundee. Today we went on our second visit to the McManus Galleries. The McManus is an incredible mishmash of a museum - some old art, some contemporary art, some natural history, some cultural history, and some fairly random collections of stuff that various colonizers brought back from across the globe during the Age of Empire (shrunken heads! seriously!). One of the "stars" of the collection is the complete skeleton of a humpback whale that swam up the River Tay in 1883. "The Famous Tay Whale," it is called. Or would you rather look at artifacts from the Roman period? Maybe an authentic Dundee Football Club uniform from the 1950s, or is Victorian portraiture more to your taste? (Dante Rossetti was the biggest name I noticed among the permanent collection, although I'll admit to being less than expert on Scottish painters.)

The big draw right now is Titian's "Diana and Actaeon," which the National Galleries of Scotland and London recently acquired for the sum of 50 million pounds; it will only on be display here for a month before moving on. Sadly, I didn't get to spend much time admiring it, as Owen proclaimed "No wike it!" and demanded that we go back downstairs to the "whale keltin" forthwith.

Comments

Erin (moviemuse) said…
Gee, Mom, keltins are so much cooler!
August 16, 2010 at 7:44 PM
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