Sunday 16 October 2016

Opus Anglicanum exhibition

I was very keen to see the Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the V&A in London and my daughter was keen to see the 'So You Want a Revolution' exhibition covering the years 1966-70.  At the same time, there is another exhibition on about the history of underwear so we decided to make a day of it and see all three.
We set off on the 6.53am train from Malton arriving in London at 9.45am giving us plenty of time to get to the V&A for our first exhibition at 11am.  We saw the underwear first as this was the smallest of the three and we really enjoyed it considering it was more of a time filler for us.  There are plenty of exhibits to look at covering both mens and womens underwear.  We then had a nice lunch in the cafe and headed a few minutes early for our 1.30pm slot at the Opus Anglicanum.
I cannot stress how amazing this exhibition was.  They have collected embroideries from all over Europe, including the Bologna Cope and the Toledo Cope along with many others.  The lighting is necessarily low which makes some of the descriptions hard to read, especially after about an hour of it but I would have still liked to have seen more information about the saints and popes that were represented in the embroideries.  My daughter and I did enjoy trying to identify them but there were a few we didn't know (especially the popes).  I am nit picking a bit as the work is out of this world.  I have never seen such fine stitching, so fine you actually struggled to see it at all.  It is amazing how well preserved these pieces are.
We then moved on from medieval days to 1966.  You were given a headset of recorded music and it was amusing to see people of a certain age nodding away to the sound.  To be fair, most of the younger people were nodding too.  This set of rooms was very busy after the first two but it was really interesting.  Lots of comments like 'I remember that' going around and I said to my daughter that I didn't want to admit to how many of the LP covers on display (and there were a lot) had either been in our collection or were still there.  After a bit of retail therapy in the gift shop we left the museum at 5pm and headed back to Kings Cross for our train at 6.30.  I have to say that York station was appalling with lots of groups of people who had been out drinking in York during the day and were heading home.  There was quite a security guard presence though and the connection is quite tight so we didn't have to wait long.
Altogether a really enjoyable day.