Saturday 9 February 2013

Museum Sketchbook #1: Fossil Tree

















Fossil Tree (2B pencil over two pages of A4 sketchbook)

In these times of slow progress to who knows where, I think I might return to pages from my sketchbooks. When last I thought about doing so, I couldn't quite decide which of the various sketchbooks I should tackle first, but in view of the recent attention I've given to the Great North Museum:Hancock the obvious is the Museum Sketchbook.

These first two pages from 1997 (my first year at Newcastle University) show one of the newly installed display areas built from MDF, the architect's material of choice. As you can see it had a lot of nicely curved coloured surfaces and umpteen lighting tracks illuminating ..... not a great deal. A lonely fossilised tree takes pride of place.

4 comments:

FTL said...

I look forward to seeing more from this sketchbook, although I'm much fonder of traditional displays than those put up by "museum designers".

Bill

harry bell said...

I share your preference, Bill, and there should be a mixture of the two as we go along, I think.

Anonymous said...

Lonely indeed. In the 'Swansea Institution' where I used to wander as a lad, the huge entrance hall behind the Palladian portico was empty, save for a Giraffe's neck. Don't know what happened to the rest of the giraffe.

harry bell said...

There used to be a giraffe's neck in The Barn restaurant in Newcastle, but I don't suppose it was the same one.