Culture and cocktails
This Friday was one of the semi-regular trips to London I make to meet with former university compadre Cap’n Sharp. We usually try to do a couple of museums or exhibitions, rounded off by what has now become a tradition of cocktails at a TGI Fridays. I’m not quite sure how manly it is to drink a huge banana and ice cream concoction called a Chocolate Monkey, but it tasted just fine, as did all the other cocktails I tested. Still got to pluck up the courage to ask for a Grendel though…
But that’s beside the point. It’s the culture that’s the important bit, and first stop was the Wellcome Collection, which can only be described as a smorgasbord of medical ephemera thrown into a series of rooms with only loose connections between the various items. Thus there’s an entire mummified body cheek by jowl with a Chinese sign made from human teeth, some 19th century Japanese sex aids, slivers of tattooed skin and a trepanned skull. There is a bit of an emphasis on bodily remains, so the squeamish might want to give it a miss.
There is also a small area dedicated to more recent medical research, in particular the Human Genome Project. A huge rack of books printed in tiny lettering comprise the raw DNA sequence of one person and serve to give a good insight into the sheer amount of data encoded in the molecule. But, and this was the case with most of the Wellcome Collection, I would have liked a bit more information about this. If you’re up on your biology, you’ll know that DNA is encoded with bases designated by A, C, G and T. Through the books on display, some of the letter groupings were in lowercase, while others were capitals, but with nothing to explain the difference. I would guess that perhaps these designate encodings for specific amino acids, as opposed to the junk DNA that makes up much of the molecule, but who knows? I do find sometimes in museums that not enough information is given to the visitor – I appreciate that you don’t always have time to read huge swathes of text about an exhibit, but it would be nice to have the option.
Perhaps the most cohesive part of the Collection was the current temporary exhibition Sleeping & Dreaming which benefited from being dedicated to one topic.
The afternoon destination was the Design Museum, which is always a bit of a gamble depending on what they are exhibiting at any given time. This month’s focus was Jean Prouvé, whose skills lay more in the functional than aesthetic - some of the classic school chair designs, for example, where economy and durability outweighs beauty. As Cap’n Sharp pointed out, they are some of the items that you don’t think of having been designed in the first place. Prouvé also produced some interesting modular architecture, but this wasn’t shown to very good effect at the exhibition. All in all a bit of a disappointment, for me at least. This was balanced out however by the ever-intriguing shop at the Design Museum, filled with all kinds of designery knick knacks. It could easily be extended to twice its size or more and still be successful.