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Showing posts from December, 2008

Happy Christmas to the Old Operating Theatre Museum Mailing list

Dear List Member This is to wish you a happy Christmas from the Old Operating Theatre Museum and staff. Just to share with you the news that the Museum is now clear of all building works for the first time in many months. The interior is looking wonderful, the Church has been fully restored and is now occupied by friendly neighbours. Not only that but they have stopped digging up St Thomas Street and the whole place is vibrant and feels like a million dollars. The building work made the year tough but despite this we managed to provide for 25,000 visitors. We hope therefore to push on next year - improving the displays, the education service, the museum's lease and the working conditions for staff. We will be fundraising to make major improvements. So we will need all your support over the coming year. If you would like to help with the fund-raising I am running a survey to help shape our strategy and I would be really delighted if you could take 2 minutes (honest, that is al

Museum moves - Design Museum and Commonwealth Museum on move?

Southwark may be losing one museum and gaining another. The Design Museum is said to be considering a move to the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington. The Bristol-based British Empire & Commonwealth Museum , is on the short list for the Potters Field site near the Tower of London.

how2fundraise web site

Useful fundraising web site. how2fundraise.org | Home

Boris's Cultural Strategy for London

Here is a link to Boris's Cultural Strategy cultural-metropolis.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Film of the Old Operating Theatre

As part of the medical london book there is a film of the operating theatre museum on the Wellcome web site: Medical London: city of diseases, city of cures: video extras for the walk Life and Death by Water: A walk along the Medieval Thames
Reading an interesting piece in Conservation Bulletin which gives a set of criteria for redevelopment: 'Continuity and context in urbanism and architecture: the honesty of a living tradition' by Hank Dittmar, Chief Executive, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment '...The Prince's Foundation has evolved a series of principles for building in an historic context. These principles were launched by HRH The Prince ofWales at a conference on New Buildings in Old Places. There are five core ideas. • Recognition that sustainability means building for the long term — one hundred years, rather than twenty years. • Because of this, building in an adaptable and flexible manner, reassessing and reusing existing buildings wherever possible. • Building in a manner that fits the place, in terms of materials used, proportion and layouts and _ climate, ecology and building practices. • Building beautifully, in a manner that builds upon tradition, evolving it in response

Gaffer Goodrich and Goody Maud

Nicknames of Henry I and his wife Matilda Her Majesty's Tower Part One - Google Book Search

Renaissance Faces - National Gallery

I was really looking forward to this exhibition as it is one of the subjects I talk about on my National Gallery tours for Elderhostel , but I was very disappointed. The exhibition has virtually no narrative, very little explanation and mostly it seems to bring in paintings you can see upstairs for free downstairs so you can pay £10 to see them. There is very little in the exhibition about how the paintings were done, very little on technique, not much on why they were done and not much social history either. A few clues can be gathered from the film show after the visitors exits the exhibition but otherwise, apart from the great collection of portraits themselves very little is learnt. The paintings are displayed thematically, this room for rulers, that for family, the other for friends but otherwise the labels give little away. There is no narrative for each room except in a free gallery guide, and the painting labels quite often are little more than verbal descriptions of the painti