Culture and a Three Year Old
Dec. 4th, 2011 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dream1 - We went to the Princely Treasures exhibition. The byline is European Masterpieces 1600-1800 from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Pearl’s take away: It has an outstanding play area. (Which it does. Some inspired genius has built a mini-Versailles cubby house complete with hall of mirrors and a chandelier. Also amazing costumes. And crowns. Also Marie Antoinette wig.)
2 - We also checked out Extraordinary Stories from the British Museum, the free exhibition at the museum.
The museum’s blurb: The exhibition will be filled with some of the British Museum’s most important objects, rarely lent to other museums, representing many of the 54 Commonwealth countries. Individually and collectively they tell extraordinary stories about the world's people, who we are and where we've come from – taking visitors on a 1.8 million year journey around the world.
Pearl’s take away: There is a seriously scary sculpture of a dinosaur in the foyer. Scary! Very very scary.
Also, we went out to the cafe afterwards.
3 - The WA Indigenous Art Awards.
Pearl’s main impression was that there was a Trevor Nickolls picture showing a man stuck in a prison tree, like the Derby prison tree. I can’t find an online image of it, but it is striking.
Pearl repeated that he was stuck and this was very bad. He was stuck and somebody should get him out. Perhaps with a rope, because he needed help, because - stuck.
She mentioned it three or four times, and I was surprised at the strength of her reaction. The expression of the man in the tree is not terribly anguished and I expected she would interpret it as the man climbing the tree.
I found it hard to respond because of the Police connection. I think I could have explained that some people are silly and are mean to other people because they are a different colour, but I want her to trust the Police and to go to them if lost so I don’t want to instill the message that sadly the Western Australian Police have a long tradition of racist brutality referenced here, very strongly, with reminders of the practice of chaining Aboriginal prisoners by the neck and the Derby prison tree.
Pearl’s take away: It has an outstanding play area. (Which it does. Some inspired genius has built a mini-Versailles cubby house complete with hall of mirrors and a chandelier. Also amazing costumes. And crowns. Also Marie Antoinette wig.)
2 - We also checked out Extraordinary Stories from the British Museum, the free exhibition at the museum.
The museum’s blurb: The exhibition will be filled with some of the British Museum’s most important objects, rarely lent to other museums, representing many of the 54 Commonwealth countries. Individually and collectively they tell extraordinary stories about the world's people, who we are and where we've come from – taking visitors on a 1.8 million year journey around the world.
Pearl’s take away: There is a seriously scary sculpture of a dinosaur in the foyer. Scary! Very very scary.
Also, we went out to the cafe afterwards.
3 - The WA Indigenous Art Awards.
Pearl’s main impression was that there was a Trevor Nickolls picture showing a man stuck in a prison tree, like the Derby prison tree. I can’t find an online image of it, but it is striking.
Pearl repeated that he was stuck and this was very bad. He was stuck and somebody should get him out. Perhaps with a rope, because he needed help, because - stuck.
She mentioned it three or four times, and I was surprised at the strength of her reaction. The expression of the man in the tree is not terribly anguished and I expected she would interpret it as the man climbing the tree.
I found it hard to respond because of the Police connection. I think I could have explained that some people are silly and are mean to other people because they are a different colour, but I want her to trust the Police and to go to them if lost so I don’t want to instill the message that sadly the Western Australian Police have a long tradition of racist brutality referenced here, very strongly, with reminders of the practice of chaining Aboriginal prisoners by the neck and the Derby prison tree.
