PEM | Art Museum Libraries Symposium « Events

PEM | Art Museum Libraries Symposium « Events

me with poster. coffee was doing nothing for me

Edward Petherbridge, star of stage and screen, with poet John Betjeman at St. Pancras Station

photos trickling in!

can't do everything on the iPad afterall but i am getting there. Laptop due home from computer vet soon. More photos coming.

British Library, with the gloriously restored St. Pancras in the background

Home again

After a smooth but long journey I'm happy to be back in Natick with cat and husband. I managed to limp through the endless miles of Heathrow - I discovered that the name Heathrow actually comes from the old Anglo-Saxon meaning "must walk nine miles in every direction" - I wish I could foresee a long week with my feet alternately soaking and being massaged but the future looks a lot less sybaritic! Once I get my few pictures downloaded I'll write a final summarizing post and pjt this trip to rest. Cheers a d stay tuned. M

A rainy day in London

Made it back here without much problem. The Academy is not bad, very much what I expected but a far cry from the posh Athenaeum! There is a huge Waterstone's just up the street so I am tryong to restrain myself. Now resting up for a very full day tomorrow. Sorry not to have been able to add pictures so far but I do have a few to add when I get home. Pip-pip, etc. TAFN...

planes, trains, and taxis

After a very pleasant evening in Copenhagen it was up early and on to the next adventure for us. We got on to the right train and chugged off across the water to Sweden. This method of travel had been suggested by one of my colleagues and probably was great for someone on a vacation. For us, it was long and fairly torturous. We saw some pretty countryside and I even saw a beautiful deer standing in a field. Ok, been there, done that. We got to Borås after changing trains for the last hour of the trip and it was pouring. As we de-traiined (?) the two waiting taxis zoomed off. We huddled under a bridge with four other travelers who were clearly natives. They loaded themselves into the first taxi that appeared and with some advice to us to go knock on the door of the taxi office, which was part of the train station but looked abandoned, they roared away laughing merrily and leaving us to our fate. Ha, bloody ha! When we finally were able to rouse a taxi driver we were pretty fed up with the whole thing and soaked to the skin as well. Bear in mind that it is now about 1:00pm and the conference is due to start at 1:30. We get to the hotel, Michele runs in with her bags while I hold the taxi hostage. We splash into the conference venue at about 1:40, do the registration thing and dripping gently into the linoleum we squelch off to the welcome session. I take motes but don't have much sense of what he was talking about except that icebergs came into it. At 2:45 or so there is a break and we are desperate for caffeine. The coffee is fiendish but seems to perk us up. I go up to the room where our presentation is to be to get the powerpoints loaded. There doesn't seem to be anybody around to help so I open dropbox and start downloading my slides. While I'm doing that a student comes in and seeing that the projector isn't on pushes a button which shuts everything down. Oh swell. I'm wet, I'm tired and I've been in the same clothes since yesterday. Very nice. In the end whatever she did proved to be un-doable and we had to change rooms. This involved further delay while all four presenters loaded their slides from thumb drives. By the time we started a good 20 minutes had already elapsed. The moderator never asked the presenters. to be conscious of the time and the first three took their time and gassed on and on. You don't want to cause an international incident at these things, but really it was painful sitting there knowing that we would have about 7 minutes while all these other bozos -er, distinguished speakers, were taking their full 20 plus. And so the great adventure ended, not in a burst of glory, but a short sputter and sigh. Our slides were great, the talk was fine, what there was of it. Abiut three minutes into the talk, a great noisy crowd of participants started clomping into the room expecting the last talk of the day and I found myself having to talk over them. Well, I guess that is life on the international conference circuit. We got there, showed our slides, the paper will be published, and who the hell will care? A lot of traveling for a seven minute finale. Anyway, trying not to be bitter.

The day ended with a pleasant group dinner at the local kulturhaus and some exquisitely performed, incredibly depressing Jacques Brel songs (in Swedish). The whole thing just getting too surreal for me. Michele went off to see the library and I retreated tomy hotel room and went to bed.

The next day I was able to attend the first sessions of the day before I had to depart for the airpoort and my return trip to Copenhagen. I did meet and tallk to some very interesting peoople including a woman from New Zealand, several colleagues from Australia, my old pal Jim from Canada, and two young women from Namibia I think. Was the whole thing worth it? Hard to say at this point. It was great traveling with Michele and we actually got some work done and the conference paper isn't bad, so who knows.

I took a plane back to Copenhagen having had enough of trains, and had a restful evening catching up on emails and the blog. Now I'm about to pack up and head off to the terminal for a flight to London and the last lap of the trip. I'm meeting my friends in London tomorrow afternoon and seeing a show called War Horse (highly recommended by Edward P.) tomorrow night. And THEN home sweet home...

How I spent my birthday in 2010

Our last breakfast at the club but alas the cook had suffered some kind of dreadful accident(not specified) and the hot breakfast was OFF. We took a cab to Paddington Station where we managed to get ourselves on to the right train for Heathrow and on to the plane for Copenhagen. I was booked into a middle seat which I hate so Michele switched seats with me not realizing that her seat was in what passed for first class on this small plane! This meant that I got an airline version of a cream tea (don't even think about comparisons) and Michele got a beverage. I felt so guiilty that I mentioned to the steward that my friend had given me her seat because it was my birtjday. He went back and got her and moved us to two empty seats in 1st class and offered us champagne! We didn't take him up on that but it was nice to spend the rest of the trip together in modified splendour.

On the down side, we had been so delayed in London that we knew before we took off that we were not going to make our connection to the train to Gotenberg/Borås. So as we sat there we worked out Plan B. We went to the railroad station (actually right there at the airport) and found out when we could get a train on Sunday that would get us in before the conference started and then staggeered over to the Hilton to see if we could get a room for the night. After successfully negotiating this hurdle and getting settled we decided to brave the Metro and go into town for dinner. It was still daylight, even though it was after 8 pm and the light was beautiful. We went to King's square and got out right in front of the royal theatre which despite the surrounding mess of construction was beautiful. We then found the restaurant recommended by the concierge at the Hilton - Zeleste - where we had a delicious and completely leisurely meal. A much nicer way to end my birthday than with a five hour train ride!

In the next installment I will recount the dazzling performance we gave at the conference and conclude my adventures to date,

Looking back at London (pt. 2)

As you can see by the date some time has passed. I'm now in the airport Hilton in Copenhagen between flights on my way back to London. The conference is behind me and soon will be a dim memory. So let me finish telling you about my second museum day in London.

We went from the National to the V&A. By this time my feet were in agony and I ached in every joint up to and including my hips. Just the walk from where we got off the Tube through the tunnel to the museum entrance seemed endless. Sorry, I don't mean to turn this into a monolog about my feet or go on and on about how out of shape I am. We'll take that as read and go on shall we?

The V&A has long been at the top of my list of world's great museums. There is no way to do it justice really. We decided to concentrate on the newly renovated Medieval and Renaissance Galleries. They were spectacular! The galleries are light and airy and each object seems to float in its own space suggesting the original context yet letting you focus on it in detail. The techniques used in the displays are particularly interesting. Some panels appear to be glass or transluscent marble others are left blank to suggest where other pieces related to the object ought to be. After the clutter of Soane's museum this offered serenity and bounty together.

We had a lovely ramble through the gift shop and the book shop. I got to see the clever house made of books which I loved. Pictures will follow after I get home. That is something I haven't yet figured out how to do with the iPad. Speaking of which I have loved having it along instead of the laptop! I've used the currency converter, the notebook, the various readers, the email, the dropbox, and of course the web browser. Booked a flight back to Copenhagen while listening to a presentation on library science education in India (please don't repeat that!). I've learned how to make an apostrophe without changing keyboards and lots of other cool tricks. Still making a lot of typos as my fingers adjust to the size of the keyboard but practice makesmperfect...

So, back to our last day in London. After the V&A we were off to tea at the Dorchester Hotel. This was a special pre-birthday treat from Michele and it was wonderful. It was served in a little room that is part of the spa and was all white and pink and soft chairs. The tea included sandwiches, clotted cream and jam and fresh scones, a selection of pastries and a fruit tart! How wonderfully decadent we felt. When we were completely stuffed we went back to the club for a short rest. Michele went out to a nearby Boots to get blister plasters for my poor unmentionable feet. Then we spent a couple of hours in the club's non-smoking smoking room working on our presentation. We got talking to one of the club members who turned oit to be quite kmowledgable about the museums we had seen that day which was entertaining especially as he kept working his way through what can't have been his first bottle of the club wine.

At last to bed to rest up for the next stage of the trip. To be continued.

London part one

For the blog

August 7th, 2010
The first London leg of this trip has been all about museums and my sore feet. Our first day we saw the Soane Museum and the Sargent show at the Royal Academy. The first one fabulous the next less so. Sargent's sea paintings were done before. he had really finished his training and they lack the elegance and finish of his later work. The shop was, of course rather good.

Thursday night we went to the National Theatre's production of The Habit of Art. The second cast was in but they were excellent. The Auden / Britten connection is one I only knew a little bit about from my interest in early British documentary. This was fairly typical Alan Bennett, well-made play with a lot of men and boys angst. He manages to engage the audience in the characters despite their rather unattractive personalities and he also gets to make comments by making it a rehearsal of a play do so we have the actors commenting on their parts as well. It was so exciting to see the crowds and all the activity there. As a special treat we ate dinner in the mezzanine restaurant after the show. Michele is even more of a night person than I am.

Friday we took our time getting out and took a leisurely stroll up to the National Gallery. We ate a lovely breakfast there and then went to see the show about the technology behind painting analysis. It was fascinating. Some paintings were identified as fakes after complex analysis, some were acknowledged as contemporary but not by the hand of the master, and a few, including a personal favorite, the Ucello of St. George and the Dragon, were vindicated and confirmed as originals.

More to come...

wonderful but very long day

after recording in great detail the events of the day i managed to lose the whole thing so will take this up again tomorrow. Bear with me. my feets hurt!

London gorheous as ever

After a great flight over we git to the hotel safely and went out and found a nice italian restaurant right across from the Haymarket Theatre for a late dinner. Fell into bed. This morning we spent going through the Soane Museum which is beyond belief. I'll wrie more later. We are heDing back out to see an exhibit at the Royal Academy of Sargent watercolors. Pictures to follow.

Next adventure starts tomorrow

All packed and starting to feel the anxiety! Tomorrow I'm off to present a paper at IFLA with my boss, Dean Cloonan. We're stopping in London first since I've been having severe London withdrawal symptoms for some time now. Looking at my itinerary it looks like the trip is mostly about traveling and not so much about staying anywhere for long! But now that I have an iPad I plan to stay in touch as often as I can along the way.

Here's the abbreviated version:
Aug. 4-6 LONDON
Aug. 7 Travel from London to Copenhagen by air, train to Gotenberg, and on to Boras
Aug. 8 Present paper (knock their socks off!)
Aug. 9 Back to Copenhagen (minus the Dean)
Aug. 10 Back to London
Aug. 12 Back to Boston

see what I mean? Lots of trains, planes and automobiles...
We do plan to see at least one show, have high tea at the Dorchester, and I'm planning to have a visit with my friends Edward and Emily - so that's the preview, now just stay tuned.