V&A

A block away from the Natural History Museum is the V&A, an art and design museum more along the lines of where M and I envisioned spending our day. Quiet and serene, the V&A was church-like in comparison to the NHM we had just left. I love the museum’s entrance with its large, modern, green-blue chandelier-type ornament hanging from the ceiling. Its shape recalls the image of deep-water vegetation on an ocean floor. Behind the hanging ornament is the Hereford Screen, dated 1862 and made in England. Its enormity is striking; weighing in at eight tons, the metal screen displays the figure of suffering Christ. Arches, columns, and mosaic tiles decorate the quartz and copper screen. I read that the Christ figure was made of electroformed copper, a method of making metal objects using electricity. M preferred looking at the collection of medieval sixteenth and seventeenth-century wrought iron, steel, cast iron, and brass keys and locks. While he studied the ways in which the keys and locks were engineered, I wistfully peered through the cutaways in the floor at the Southeast Asia exhibit below us. Later, we both marveled at Gronling G.’s “The Stoning of Saint Steffen” (1680-1710), a limewood carving that depicts the stoning of the saint in an outdoor courtyard. M loved the sculptor’s ability to create “a deep sense of perspective” and was impressed by the level of detail in the carving’s trees. Worth a re-visit, the V&A exhibits a wide enough range of objects to engage the right and left-brained sides in all of us.

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