CultureLine – Connecting East London Culture

Everyone knows that most Londoners are obsessed with transport (usually we’re complaining about it!) but the new Overground East London extension has brought some positive PR for TFL.

Establishments in the newly connected areas anticipate a significant increase in visitor numbers and with East London being a thriving artistic hot spot, the cultural economy is bound to benefit. In celebration of this fact comes CultureLine, a grouping of 10 museums and galleries which can be found along the length of the rail road.

Everything Comes To An End

Opened in October 2009 The Museum of Everything proclaims itself to be ‘London’s 1st ever space for artists and creators living outside of modern society’. After hearing the radient reviews and accaldes in praise of the innovative collection of art on display I decided to take a stroll across Regent’s Park and enjoyed a gander around this old dairy building turned exhibition in Primrose Hill.

Museum of Everything, Exhibition No. 1

Exhibition no. 1 is still showing and presents a selection  of works chosen by leading artists, curators and cultural figures. Contributors include the likes of music legends Jarvis Cocker and Nick Cave to leading artists such as Annette Messager, Grayson Perry, Eva Rothschild, Ed Ruscha and Richard Wentworth. Works were chosen from the extensive holdings of Musuem founder James Brett and were installed in the space to produce an often bizarre display of more than 200 drawings, paintings, sculptures, objects and installations.

Outside Art Collector James Brett

In an interview with The Art Newspaper Brett explained, “This project developed simply because there is no other museum or gallery in the UK devoted to this kind of marginal or discovered art…bringing interesting people and objects together and looking at what happens when these things collide.” Ultimately Brett hopes that The Museum of Everything will become the home for a broad range of work from the untrained, work that for some reason just doesn’t fit anywhere else.

The museum’s current exhibition only runs until Valentine’s Day so, if you haven’t already done so you might want to take advice from the website…’get your act together and come visit before the market crashes again’.

Ashmolean Museum Gets a Makeover

It’s Britain’s oldest public museum but thanks to a £62 million redevelopment, museum director Christopher Brown and his architect Rick Mather have dragged Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum into the 21^st Century.

Mather’s subtle extension actually doubles the museum’s display space which now boasts six floors – one underground – and no fewer than 39 new galleries, including four for temporary exhibitions. The museum is set to reopen on 7^th November and is expected to engage with a wider public audience than ever before. In the Guardian today Jonathan Glancey describes gushes of the work; “While Mather’s Ashmolean addition is a magical combination of cool stone, oak floors, spruce plywood, polished plaster, steel, glass and zinc, all its elements have been brought together with a lightness of touch… he result is a building in which every last inch is hard at work, while giving the opposite impression.” Read the full article.