Embarrassed maybe a little to admit, but I have been known to become a member of museums to cut lines. I did so with the recent exhibit at the Metropolitian Museum to visit the Alexander McQueen exhibit experiencing record number crowds....and regretted not having a way to avoid three hour lines the year before to visit the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais. Earlier this year I became a member of the National Portrait Gallery to visit the Lucian Freud exhibit and saw on the schedule the exhibit "The Queen: Art and Image" listed to feature six decades of portraits to commemorate the Queen Elizabeth II's Jubilee year. I thought it seemed like a fun theme at the time to view and thought perhaps. Fast forward October 21, the last day of the exhibit and my Partner and I land in London that morning and are at the show by 1pm.
It was also a coincidence that an image by Chris Levine that was featured as the NPG show poster happened to be hanging behind the front desk of the hotel we checked into that morning. The actually piece featured in the exhibit was a hologram portrait.
Another surprise for me was this 2011 portrait by photographer Thomas Struth. It was a large scale C-print and I had already been a great admirer of the artists series of people viewing art in museum subjects and pleased to see this stunning image up close to appreciate in person. Below the artist during the shoot.
The commissioned portrait of the Queen from 2001 by Lucian Freud. This very small painting was not part of the artist's exhibit earlier in the year, but saved for this special
exhibit.
Inspired by the Jubilee year and exhibit, we walked to Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Hyde Park and I will save you those tourist photos, but I will include the following two. The first a ceiling seen from walking at dusk to notice as travel an immense personal source for design and architectural details to inspire and second the grey sky and building color palette I find so beautiful.
Embarrassed maybe a little to admit, but I have been known to become a member of museums to cut lines. I did so with the recent exhibit at the Metropolitian Museum to visit the Alexander McQueen exhibit experiencing record number crowds….and regretted not having a way to avoid three hour lines the year before to visit the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais. Earlier this year I became a member of the National Portrait Gallery to visit the Lucian Freud exhibit and saw on the schedule the exhibit “The Queen: