Hiroshige and Ancient India at the British Museum

I feel it is a terrible waste to go to a museum on a sunny day. And don't want to go in torrential rain where I drip around a gallery. So today was the first time in ages there was a "perfect" museum day - not actually raining but extremely overcast. Time to make use of my British Museum membership by catching the two exhibitions on currently, starting Hiroshige.

Hiroshige was a 19th century Japanese artist who produced a vast number of designs for woodcuts. The exhibition was delightful. Not too large, displaying not only his works but also with videos showing how his paintings were turned into woodblocks and then printed for a large audience in Japan and abroad. One inspired a Van Gogh painting)

Here is a thing I never knew. There was a craze in Japan in the 19th century for tea and bird display parties

This was an interesting insight into mass print making. Same print, but different colours, so one is birds in snow in the morning, the other birds in snow in the evening

A bowl of sushi. Inspired me to seek out my local sushi restaurant for lunch. Only to find it had shut down.😢

The Great Court

The Reading Room of the old British Library

On to the second exhibition - Ancient India Living Traditions. This examined ancient artefacts from Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, starting with a statue from each religion below

A Yaksha - a sort of natural spirit figure

Cobra god. Divine snakes were supposed to ward off evil spirits

Pot bellied God with head of an elephant. I was going to say you couldn't make this up, but of course that is exactly what someone did

The exhibition ended with showing the "living traditions" bit. This golden statue of Ganesh was commissioned for a modern wedding. I am sure this exhibition was supposed to leave me with a better understanding of other cultures, but one can't really ignore the "elephant in the room" (and I am not talking about Ganesh here). Jesus people have believed (and still believe) in such a total load of bollocks...😀