"Well, hurrah!"
(I cannot help but to hear the voice of Hugh Laurie whenever I read this exclamation...)
I got my first English job! (Another one might follow next week.) And it's not just any job: it's documentation work at the geology department of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery. Now some of you might be aware that the English are particularly dexterious in coming up with impressive names for not-so-impressive objects, but this one's a real pretty, honestly. It's a nineteenth century museum in a "purpose built" palace in Queen Street (where else), founded to commemorate (the death of) Prince Albert halfway the century. Actually, the project included the city library, the Exeter School of Arts (now part of Plymouth University) and even the ancestors of our own University. The entire city community donated money and objects, as did many excentric adventurers and noblehumans. Now they/we have a very broad collection "of regional, national and [even] international importance", encompassing a potpourri of archaeology, history, geology, biology, ecology, visual arts (both "fine" and decorative) and ethnology. Everyone coming to Exeter should visit it, because there's something for everyone of you. Reconstructed Roman baths (the Greek didn't conquer the British isles, I'm afraid), jurassic rocks, Egyptian mummies (though I am not sure whether they suffer from artrose; and I still have to visit the British Museum, dus dat houd je nog tegoed Y!), medieval wooden houses, romantic paintings, modern ceramics, a gigantic taxodermitised giraffe, Oceanic masks, Baroque keyboards and clocks, a quite gezellig café and a shop scaling everything down into nicely portable and affordable objects. But the most wonderful is the presentation: they have kept everything in a pre-World War (II), rariteitenkabinet kind of state, with labyrinthic chambers, oak display cabinets and as much stuff in one room as they could manage (which is why they are able to display 10% of 1.5 million artefacts in one tiny building...). Oh, and the head of the geology department is Roger Taylor. What more could a human wish for... (Well, actually, money would be nice: but as things are I am still a volunteer.)
So, I'll show around everyone I can, and for the rest: http://www.exeter.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2650 !
I got my first English job! (Another one might follow next week.) And it's not just any job: it's documentation work at the geology department of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery. Now some of you might be aware that the English are particularly dexterious in coming up with impressive names for not-so-impressive objects, but this one's a real pretty, honestly. It's a nineteenth century museum in a "purpose built" palace in Queen Street (where else), founded to commemorate (the death of) Prince Albert halfway the century. Actually, the project included the city library, the Exeter School of Arts (now part of Plymouth University) and even the ancestors of our own University. The entire city community donated money and objects, as did many excentric adventurers and noblehumans. Now they/we have a very broad collection "of regional, national and [even] international importance", encompassing a potpourri of archaeology, history, geology, biology, ecology, visual arts (both "fine" and decorative) and ethnology. Everyone coming to Exeter should visit it, because there's something for everyone of you. Reconstructed Roman baths (the Greek didn't conquer the British isles, I'm afraid), jurassic rocks, Egyptian mummies (though I am not sure whether they suffer from artrose; and I still have to visit the British Museum, dus dat houd je nog tegoed Y!), medieval wooden houses, romantic paintings, modern ceramics, a gigantic taxodermitised giraffe, Oceanic masks, Baroque keyboards and clocks, a quite gezellig café and a shop scaling everything down into nicely portable and affordable objects. But the most wonderful is the presentation: they have kept everything in a pre-World War (II), rariteitenkabinet kind of state, with labyrinthic chambers, oak display cabinets and as much stuff in one room as they could manage (which is why they are able to display 10% of 1.5 million artefacts in one tiny building...). Oh, and the head of the geology department is Roger Taylor. What more could a human wish for... (Well, actually, money would be nice: but as things are I am still a volunteer.)
So, I'll show around everyone I can, and for the rest: http://www.exeter.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2650 !
posted by Anna P.H. Geurts | 11:41 pm
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