London, Museum of

We visit the Museum of London. It was very crowded.

I think the coolest moment of the day was walking out of the foyer and into the covered courtyard of the museum.  The lighting and space was really different than any room I had ever been in.  Also, this statement is really embarrassing when you see what we got to see next.

Rosetta Stone!! It is so cool to see things that everyone has to read about in history class.  It's incredible how important this stone is, and that it's just out there for any one to look at.

There was also really cool Greek art from THE Parthenon.  A morally questionable part of museums is that they are essentially filled with the plunder of nationally sponsored looting campaigns.  The Musuem of London included some posters where they talked about the conflict of Greece wanting their things back (for the last 180 years).

The debate (over-simplified and misrepresented by me) is: are the artifacts really Greek in the sense of belonging to the current civilization, or is Greece (of today) just as removed from ownership as anyone else? If they belong to the world, than the Museum of London has them displayed in appropriate context. And, they would argue that by taking them they 'protected' them.

This blog and my brain aren't the tools to really get to the bottom of this...

Me and Russell smiling in front of a victorious Centaur who has just murdered Lapith.

Sumerian (or Babylonian?)

A cool display in the Museum was a giant library with many small objects and old books in the glass bookcases.

Old and accurate model of the solar system for university lectures

 And, as always, I found the propaganda art really cool.  Shown below is the modern imitation of Russian porcelain propaganda, which was made to commemorate an anniversary of a utility provider.  The original (which was also in the room) was commissioned by the USSR to celebrate the opening of certain power plants.  One of the current execs from the aforementioned power plants visited the Museum of London a few years ago, thought the art was interesting, and again commissioned art as a homage to the history of the plant. (all paraphrased, but pretty much that was the story as I remember it).

And this was more diamonds than I have ever seen in one place at one time: