Hiroshige's sketchbooks

Recently wonder | wander | women saw the British Museum's exhibition of Utagawa Hiroshige, and were so impressed by his virtuosity and artistic sense that one post was not enough to talk about this wandering artist.

Evening Cool at Ryōgoku, 1847-8

Hiroshige: artist of the open road

Utagawa Hiroshige was, with his contemporary Hokusai, one of Japan's greatest artists. He came from a noble but impoverished samurai family in the last decades of the Tokugawa period, one of the most violent and dangerous times in Japanese history.

The Silk Roads: blood and gold

"No man is an island." Globalism, the interconnectedness of distant cultures, is not as modern a concept as it sounds. For millennia humans have been sharing treasures, ideas, food - and other humans, which is far less spoken of when reminiscing about the romantic past. 

First part of the exhibition: China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia

We cannot forget that the brutalism of the ancient world always accompanied its greatest beauties. That is one of the threads woven into the story of Silk Roads, the new exhibition at the British Museum.

hanging out at the British Museum

wonder | wander | women are endlessly fascinated by the British Museum. We're very aware of the dark history of the museum and how many of the objects simply state that they are "acquired" without telling the full story: captured from conquered nations, stolen from tribes, bought for a song from invading officers, or even pocketed in passing during expeditions. 

main entrance

East looks West: Orientalism (part 2)

Last year wonder | wander | women talked about the Western perspective in the British Museum's Orientalism exhibition. Western artists went to Istanbul, Morocco and other Near Eastern cities to capture their beauty and atmosphere, and create a special world from their visits and visions. But many Islamic diplomats and nobility were also travelling and learning in the West, and Islamic artists produced visions of their own.

Artist's depiction of French court dress,
exaggerating the cuffs, wigs and flared coats

Inspired by the East: Orientalism at the British Museum (part 1)

"Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow." Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978)

In the Madrasa by Ludwig Deutsch (1890)

wonder | wander | women couldn't wait to see the new exhibition co-curated by the British Museum and the Malaysian Islamic Arts Museum. 'Inspired by the East: How the Islamic world influenced Western art' is more than an exhibition of Orientalist art - it's a dialogue between cultures of mutual influence.

Manga Month at the British Museum

Being a fan of Japanese comics or manga is different from being a fan of movies or an avid book reader. It can be isolating. There is a language barrier, a cultural barrier - even reading the books involves reading from right to left, undoing your Western reading habits. But despite this difficulty, or maybe even because of it, the manga fan community thrives all over the world.

Cosplay Parade at British Museum

London: buried civilisations and thriving nightlife

Last week wonder | wander | women were thrilled to meet a friend we hadn't seen in person for 10 years. Like last time, we met at the British Museum, but some things had changed since we first went!

Visitors now have to be guided through gates instead of overwhelming the open courtyard. We had paid tickets to the exhibitions, so we were led through quickly, but we had to stop for a coffee and snack at the food trucks.

sharing London, part 2

This week the wonder | wander | women read an interview with travel writer Pico Iyer on Pure Life Experiences, a travel magazine. Pico Iyer lives in Nara, one of the most beautiful cities in Japan, and grew up in Santa Barbara, California, where his mother still lives.

He says:

"When I’m at my desk or traipsing off to the health-club or paying my bills, I often sleepwalk through my life, barely aware of the beauties around me.  

"As soon as a friend visits me in either place, I’m newly attentive to what’s wondrous about my hometowns, and newly excited about them. And the minute I’m in a place I think of as foreign, I start watching everything around me, so that even the smallest details become something curious and fascinating."

sharing London, part 1

This month the wonder | wander | women have been unusually blessed with a steady stream of visitors! Our London contingent has had three different guests in as many weeks, and it's fun to go back to my first years here.

View of the Thames from the upper-floor cafe of the Tate Modern