Monday July 28, 2014

Many museums here are closed on Mondays, but the Imperial War Museum is open every day and it has one of our paintings on display.  On our last visit the painting wasn’t on display.  So that was our target of the day.  The museum had been closed so it could prepare a special exhibition for the Centennial of World War I.  We didn’t go to the special exhibition because there was a very long line.  The museum has only been reopened for a couple of weeks, so we’ll have another chance to see it.  The painting exhibition was of paintings and drawings by soldiers and about WWI.  The British War Ministry actually commissioned artists and sent them to the front to record the war.  This was one of the best exhibitions I’ve ever seen.  These paintings were able to convey how terrible the slaughter was in WWI.

Sue had read about the Grant Museum of Zoology that was very close to the apartment so we went.  The inside looks like it hasn’t changed since Darwin’s time.  It is crammed with specimens, skeletons, bones, etc.  It is interesting in a kind of weird way.  Some of the items are still used for instruction.  We spent the rest of the evening planning our driving trip in Italy.

July 28, 2014 London