Museum Mondays - Part 4

This week we went to the National Gallery. No pictures, sorry. I was in the middle of a day long brain fart when I left so the fact that I managed to get to the museum and didn't take a tube trip out to Upminster was enough of a success for me, never mind bringing the camera too.

We did the "60 minute audio tour" of the museum. I put that in quotes because 60 minutes is a misnomer, but more on that later. The tour covers 40 of the greatest works in the museum, from the 13th century up through the early 20th century. The tour costs £3.50 and it comes with a map/guide that lists the 40 works. We weren't initially handed the map so we were a bit confused as to how the tour works, and then we figured out we needed the map to get started. Yeah for us!

This being my first visit to the National Gallery I was taken by the amount of art, namely mind blowingly famous art in the museum. At one point we were sitting in a room that was half devoted to Rembrandt. One of the final pieces we saw was one of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers." We also went through a room filled with paintings by Monet and Manet. The Gallery houses a truly extensive and impressive collection of art from throughout history.

One of the nice things about the Gallery is that there are quite a few benches and places to sit in the galleries. This came in handy since the "60 minute audio tour" took us about one hour and 45 minutes. And it's not as though we spent five minutes discussing each piece. We took the tour seriously and plowed through the different galleries, seeing each and every artwork listed. And it still took us 45 minutes longer than the title suggests. What slows the tour down is that you have to find each piece in the respective room. The guide shows a picture of each of the 40 works, and what room it's in, but some rooms hold 20+ artworks so you have to scan the walls looking for the right one. And it's a big museum so we were trekking from room 15 to 21 to 19 to 31 to 42 back to 35. I think they need to rename the audio tour to something more realistic like "cannot be done in 60 minutes unless you cheat and don't see all 40 artworks but that's a waste of money you slacker" audio tour. It was worth the £3.50 to learn about some of the art and the history and to see some famous pieces, however I think if we hadn't been together and set on finishing it even if we had to spend the night in there, we all probably would have skipped some stuff to make it go faster. So buyer beware. OR don't follow our lead and just see 30 or 20 pieces and lie about missing the rest. Your call.

Next Monday - Tate Modern.