Cambridge Museums

Recently I went to Cambridge on a day trip particularly to explore the museums. I'll start with the Fitzwilliam Museum. I have been to the Fitz several times before but unless you write off a whole day to just the Fitz, you can't possibly take it all in. What I usually like to do when visiting the Fitz is to focus on one particular part of the museum that I would like to see and accept that I won't see much else. This particular time I decided to focus on Italian religious art.

Really there were too many stunning paintings to tell you about all of them but there was one that caught my eye. It was a long rectangular painting telling the story of Jesus, split into two parts. The painting technique from a distance looked almost a block colour, modern style painting, which is what drew me to it in the first place. However, when you get closer to the painting you start to notice the subtle detail the artist included in his painting and how although the painting itself looks fairly simple, that for me was its beauty. It stood out from the rest as being different, something that you can imagine may have been a completely new painting style in its time, something that wasn't following the regular pattern of the time of detailed, realistic depictions of exactly what the artists is seeing.

Moving onto the other museum I visited, the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology (MAA). I visited this museum because I have of course met Sarah-Jane Harknett at this museum and I therefore wanted to get an idea of some of the pieces in their exhibitions as my plan for the workshop was for the students to create a piece which has been inspired by a piece in the museum.

I wasn't looking closely at the pieces in MAA, but more at the colour combinations in anticipation of me buying the correct colours of fleece for my workshop. I found that the mains colours, aswell as the natural colours, consisted of blues, reds, yellows and greens. I found this very useful to me as I needed the right colours in order for my students to be able to recreate their chosen pattern.

Thats all for now, if any of you are ever in Cambridge, I can't recommend these two museums enough.
Meghan