One of our favourite pastimes is visiting galleries and museums and we have been lucky enough to spend our time wandering around some very inspiring places over the years. A few we go to regularly, such as the Arnolfini Bristol and Tate St Ives; others, although wonderful places, we will probably never visit again such as MoMA, New York and Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Apart from the experience of seeing some of the world's most renowned paintings and iconic designs, what we also enjoy is just taking in the atmosphere of the actual buildings in which they are housed, looking up at the often amazing ceilings and down from the balconies and windows to view the spaces below.
The photos below the view from Tate St Ives cafe on the top level, looking out towards the Island and beautiful Porthmeor beach below. This is a bird's-eye view that we have seen numerous times, but it never ceases to take our breath away. You can clearly see how the combination of blue sky, abstract rooftop shapes, sea, and beach inspired St Ives artists like Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost and this will always be our favourite place, with many years of happy memories, including our wedding day! Tate, St Ives has also inspired the way we have lived over the past 25 years, from our choice of dining room furniture, interior colour scheme, door fittings, bathroom fixtures and the contemporary Cornish art on our walls from artists such as Henrietta Dubrey, Jessica Cooper and Mary Ford.
There is something very special about being in a large open plan space, with high ceilings, neatly painted, neutral walls and softly echoing voices that gives us the same feeling of happiness that we had as a child when entering the swimming baths. The lovely typical gallery smell, a heady mix of creativity and coffee, is also instantly relaxing and very comforting! Once you are through the doors, the feeling you get is generally the same - an atmosphere of calm, with a bit of chaos thrown in; people stood staring at the gallery map or milling around looking for the toilets, cloakroom, shop or cafe and mottled sounds echoing serenely around a cavernous foyer. After depositing our coats and bags we tend to find a quiet space to sit down and look up, as there is so much to see on the ground floor from this perspective. Recently we have seen some delicate metal and glass domed roofs, with bold stone and concrete structures, casting patterns of light and shade on the buildings floors below. Mixing the drama of the outside skyline to the interiors' aesthetics creates an exciting but soothing atmosphere with a strong boundary and identity.
Gallery and museum collections are generally either housed in beautiful historical buildings, such as palaces, railways stations and mansions or in stylish, modern buildings, designed by some of the best architects of their time. Many older buildings have had new contemporary entrances added like the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Louvre Pyramid Paris, combining the best of both. Creative places like these also nearly always have great cafés too, so we take our time to enjoy the atmosphere by relaxing with a coffee and a brownie for at least an hour each visit! Some more recent 'roof' photos: clockwise from left - Musée d'Orsay Paris; Maritime museum, Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam and the Louvre Museum Paris.
After much walking around and climbing staircases, we usually find another quiet place to sit down to reflect on what we've seen, followed by a balcony or top floor window to look out of to view the inside and outside spaces from a different perspective.
Like these beautiful gallery buildings and museum interiors, you could say that our beautiful, wooden ring boxes share many similar elements and attributes, but just on a much smaller scale; such as geometric shapes, clearly defined dark and light patterns, a tactile smoothness of their surfaces, accuracy of construction and high quality fittings.
All the photos shown above were taken on our recent visits to galleries and museums in St Ives, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, The Hague and Paris.
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