Do you visit museums and art galleries? Do you have a favourite?

[vernon]

While on a walking holiday on Vancouver Island I visited a museum of Native American history in Victoria, which was really excellent and absolutely inspired me; I learned so much about the history of America before the white man and have never forgotten the amazing tableaux they had created, really stunning and atmospheric.

I found it to be the opposite and underwhelming. Entering the room with a plethora of banners and audio visual aids to teach how to say 'hello' in 68 native dialects confirmed the superficiality of it all for me. It's a pretty ambitious subject to cover successfully and I found most of it to be eye candy and of very little substance. There's only so many totem poles that I can cope with...

The Blackfoot tribal museum in Montana is a bit more successful.

 

[Markymark]

My wardrobe is a museum to fashion of bygone eras.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I'd like to go to those, & the Sun Records Studio...

Sun Studio's is great too, it's the same today as it was 60 years ago.

Apart from Elvis has left the building.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Sun Studio's is great too, it's the same today as it was 60 years ago.

Apart from Elvis has left the building.

I'm not really interested in many of his recordings, after he left the building, anyway

Some classics recorded there;
Good Rockin Tonight
That's Alright
Baby Let's Play House (Dave Edmunds recorded a superb version)
Blue Moon Of Kentucky

Not sure if you've seen the biopic 'Walk The Line', but there's a good section devoted to Cash at Sun

Trailer

 

[mjr]

Others have mentioned most of my favourites - V&A, London and Fitzwilliam - so I think that just leaves me to add the Black Country at Dudley. Sadly not free, but the £16 tickets are valid for a year, they do put a fair amount on without extra charge pre-booking and it's signposted by bike from the Baker Street / canal Old Main Line bridge, which I think avoids the crap cycle lanes on the A road outside.

The Museum of London is good but a bit claustrophobic, it will have half as much space again when it moves to Smithfield.

When's that then?

 

[Oldfentiger]

Just remembered the Lakeland Motor Museum.
Lovely little museum, including a decent section section devoted to Donald Campbell.

Haynes museum always worth a visit.

 

[Tim Hall]

Musee d'Orsay, Paris. So there I am, wandering round an old railway station with the masses and Boom!, right in front of me is Whistler's Mother.

Tate Modern. Some right nifty stuff, some tosh. I went there when they had Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project in the turbine hall. Breathtaking. At the time I thought if I had done that I wouldn't need to do anything else, ever.

I once visited the sardine canning museum in Stavanger. That was nice. The bloke who took me there's mother used to work there, back in the day when it was a real cannery. Old phone on the wall from the 1920s, made by Erriccson. I wonder what happened to them...

(edit)
Barbara Hepworth studio in St Ives. Better than the branch of the Tate that's down there.

 

[growingvegetables]

Huddersfield Art Gallery - small, but a remarkable collection of 20th century works. On the top floor of the Library. [And the roof leaks. So many of these tiny gems under threat - http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/can-kirklees-avert-cultural-crisis-9885169]

 

[growingvegetables]

An incongruous setting, & a damned awful building, but it does give a wonderful perspective to the 14th Century Chantry Chapel

Aye .... but they have a stock of bike repair tools at reception! Redeems it in my book .

 

[stephec]

If you like military stuff then The Muckleburgh Collection is worth a visit, as is the already mentioned Eden Camp.

 

[Globalti]

I took a Nigerian distributor and his teenage son to the Manchester Museum, which is a scaled-down version of London's Natural History museum. Hanging from the ceiling in the main hall is a whale skeleton. Mike, my distributor (imagine Shrek with his ears moved down and brown instead of green) rocked back on his heels and exclaimed: "Aaaah.... that is a BIG crocodile!"

Once we had finished and were heading for a curry in Rusholme I asked him what he had though of it all. His reply?

"It's all fake! Everybody knows the world was created in six days about four thousand years ago and that on the seventh day the Lord rested."

"So what about all those fossils, Mike?"

"They are put there by God to test our faith in the bible!"

What can you say?

 

[palinurus]

Picked up a lot of tips from this thread, going to need a week off.

Plus, thinking about galleries in general, reminded me that I wanted to visit Leicester for this

 

[palinurus]

I often used to visit Troyes (France, Champagne region- Ms. P has a friend who lives there) and I'd always fit in a visit to the Musée d'art Moderne de Troyes. Pretty special for a regional art museum, they have some great paintings including Seurat's banlieue.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Ah, I forgot my favourite places as a kid - I lived in Oslo until I was 7, so the Ship Museum, which has Viking ships and Thor Heyerdal's Kon-Tiki, and the outdoor sculpture museum, Vigeland's Park...

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Just remembered the Lakeland Motor Museum.
Lovely little museum, including a decent section section devoted to Donald Campbell.

Haynes museum always worth a visit.

There used to be 'The Cars Of The Stars' museum in Keswick too (PackHorse Yard, I think?), but that's long gone now. Sadly