The Museums
London's museums are magnificent; particularly those that were built at the height of Empire. The Natural History Museum; the V&A; and the British Museum are all enormous even by American Standards and each have additional annexes and related buildings outside of London.
Perhaps the most spectacular is the Natural History Museum.
Natural History Museum
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The Central Hall features a statue of Charles Darwin. This was restored to this position to celebrate the bicentennial of Darwin's birth in 1809 and the publication of his The Origin of the Species in 1859; arguably the most influential scientific book ever written.
The museum has an illustrious history; initially it was simply an attempt to collect and catalogue every animal and plant on the planet. This collection has serendipitously supported ground breaking research across almost every aspect of biology, anthropology and zoology; with special expertise in the study of insects, parasites and tropical diseases.
The museum has expanded since I last visited. The architecturally modern Darwin Centre annex was completed in 2009 with new laboratories and the latest equipment for DNA analysis and genetic research. I didn't see the labs but they reportedly house some 200 research scientists and significantly increases the capacity and capabilities of the institution.
Like the smaller but similar natural history museums in Sydney; Melbourne; Canberra; and even in Darwin; its public face is about teaching children about nature; in the context of the evolution of life on Earth.
I'm not sure that it does this better than a smaller more concise explanation - the gallery in Darwin, for example, is most informative. In London I find myself distracted by the sheer majesty of the building and the inevitably disjointed nature of the exhibits. This leads to pockets of childish excitement, for example around the dinosaurs, but little or no interest in the science or in the actual progress of evolution; even when it came to the development of hominids; including modern humans.
Neanderthal - informative but it had no audience - they were all at the dinosaurs
Science Museum
Around the corner is the Science Museum.
The Science Museum features applied science; from the industrial revolution until today. For a period Britain was the principal player in the commercialisation of new scientific knowledge; helping to make the British Empire pre-eminent for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The central hall features a large red working steam engine - double expansion - of the kind that once drove the lay shafts in factories.
The big steam engine
There are also models interestingly demonstrating the development of the steam engine and its increasing efficiency. But again I was slightly disappointed; Britain is the home of so many original scientific, technological and industrial breakthroughs and I wanted the World's best.
I couldn't help comparing it to Sydney's Powerhouse that has at least a dozen working steam engines demonstrating this progress; starting with a huge Boulton and Watt engine all the way through to a (non-working) Parsons turbo-alternator that once lit the street lamps in Sydney's Hyde Park; almost all of them originating in England.
The London museum has an original Parsons turbo-alternator prototype and an original Whittle gas turbine aircraft engine. Very nice, but the curators seem to be prouder of the provenance of the objects than of the science they incorporated and proved practical.
These two alone are singular British inventions that now provide the world with around 90% of our electricity; and power most of the world's aircraft. I found the descriptions accompanying the objects quite inadequate to explain the science; or the enormous importance to society of each breakthrough.
Charles Parson's Prototype Steam-turbine and Alternator Set 1884
So I set about looking for information about ground-breaking British research in nuclear power generation; her position as the second nuclear capable country and a significant contributor to the US programs. It's a big museum but I couldn't find it; nor any reference to Britain's successful atomic bomb tests in Australia.
I did like the rocket engines developed for the British 'Blue Streak' ICBM program at Woomera. Blue Streak technology was later used to carry Australia's only fully domestically launched satellite. But the public seemed more interested in space program objects donated by NASA; similar to those in Sydney and elsewhere; than in the British inventions.
Don't get me wrong, the collection is unique and the Museum is an Aladdin's Cave of technology; its just that I wanted more science and practical demonstration. In many cases the objects are actual prototypes built by the very hands of the inventors; or one-off 'originals' like the actual model used by Watson and Crick to define the DNA double-helix; Essen & Parry's first successful atomic clock (based on excited caesium atoms) without which GPS navigation would not be possible; and Stephenson's 'Rocket' - the first practical steam locomotive.
Stephenson's Rocket - the original steam locomotive 1829
The National Railway Museum annex in York, discussed later, has a number of the successors showing the, largely British, development of this technology.
At the moment there is an excellent educational exhibit entitled 'Who am I' to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project. This explores aspects of the colony of cells that is us: evolution; genetics; inheritance; growth; environment; disease; phobias; and brain structure; all the way through to genetic profiling; all in simple everyday language. Brilliant!
Who am I - exploring how our genetics and brain structure combine to create our unique identity
But on the top level the interactive exhibition on the environment left me cold and was almost devoid of an audience. This is a pity as it must have cost a fortune.
The interactive environment exhibit
Victoria and Albert Museum
Across the road is the V&A.
The Victoria and Albert Museum known to all as the V&A bills itself as the world’s greatest museum of art and design. It fills that niche between high art and low engineering and technology but much of it can be summed up in a single word: 'fashion'. While for some this is everything in life, I need to take it in small doses.
V&A Sculpture Gallery - high art?
I am impressed by skill in craft and often more amazed at what people spend their time making than in the object itself. I'm reminded in a ten foot model of Sydney Harbour Bridge I once saw made, in fine detail, entirely out of matches. The V&A has a simply marvellous collection of lace doilies and old clothes.
Fashion is often given as the explanation for the completely useless objects some people will buy; perhaps they are used clothes once owned by someone famous; a doodad to put on a mantelpiece or to decorate a hallway; or perhaps even a small square of printed paper, once stuck to an envelope or package as evidence that a fee had been paid for its delivery to somewhere else.
Another part of the V&A
The V&A had a massive tribute to David Bowie pop and fashion icon when I visited. But I was most intrigued by those pieces that drifted above craft into art; and those that fell below, into the sordid world of practical engineering and industrial design or architecture. I particularly like the tea rooms.
V&A Tea Rooms
There is a meta-data thing going on. How do the curators decide what goes into the V&A and what goes into say the Science Museum, the British Museum or an Art Gallery? For example the Science museum has collection of historical industrial designs like tea-making alarm clocks and 'neck' massagers.
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They are complex mechanisms and mass produced; but so are the clocks that seem to make it into the V&A. In fact a lot of things in the V&A are mass produced, particularly ceramics, like Spode cups and saucers. If ceramics are hand made and/or very old they seem to be in the British Museum. If sculpture is new and unique it seems to be in the Tate.
I suspect it is a class thing. Fashion is something indulged in by people who have gone beyond achieving simple survival or who have time on their hands. While it is increasingly indulged in by dependent young adults and those on welfare; it has traditionally been the province of the truly rich and aimless. Thus the V&A is a repository for those things that once denoted 'class': certainly not alarm-clock tea-makers. What are servants for? As for the other: they are probably classless; but best kept hidden in the draw beside the bed.
British Museum
Perhaps the most interesting of all, the British museum chronicles the development of human civilisation. It houses a vast archaeological collection. Although there are many such collections worldwide; in New York, Paris, Moscow, Cairo and so on; this is generally considered to be the greatest. Amongst its treasures are the Rosetta Stone that enabled the decoding of Egyptian Hieroglyphics and thus thousands of years of invaluable records; many of which are also held here.
The Rosetta Stone
This knowledge was lost when early Christians took over the temples of the older religion; and reputedly put to death its priests. They also set about 'defacing' images of the older deities as can be seen in many sites in Egypt today; one of the early expressions of iconoclasm that has gripped the Christian religion from time to time.
A bust of Ramesses II (Ozymandias) is also here;
Ozymandias
as are the disputed Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens. These were legally purchased from the Turks with a removal cost of around £70,000 when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire. They formed part of the rubble, mostly from the frieze surrounding the Parthenon, after it had been used to store explosives and had blown up.
The British say that they were abandoned and unlike the missing pieces, no longer surviving, were saved from certain destruction for all humanity. After all, by now most Europeans are the legitimate descendents of Mediterranean people who lived in Greece two and a half thousand years ago. The Greeks say they are stolen national treasure.
Obviously there is a principle here too. If the marbles were returned what precedent would this set for the remainder of the vast collection taken from other countries, including Egyptian mummies and stone age artefacts? And there are large archaeological collections in France; Germany; the US; Russia; and even Australia.
Elgin Marbles (447–438 BCE)
In this one museum you can trace the development of human culture and technology from the stone age before writing; to the iron age and the time of epic poets.
The archaeology reveals development of technology and increasingly complex social structures based on specialisation; driven by competition for territory and competing land use and shows, in particular, the development of religious ideas through increasingly complex religious structures, temples and mausoleums.