Get on the museum trail!

Tea, anyone?

Tea, anyone?

It may be January, but that’s no reason to sit at home.  I’ve already seen my first snowdrops of the year but, if you don’t like the cold and the great outdoors, there’s plenty of entertainment to be found in museums.  My Monday walk Beside the Tees took me to a local favourite, Preston Park.  Best known for its Victorian Street, the museum is also packed full of titbits of history.

It’s quite fascinating to wander through your past.   My childhood was unexceptional but I rediscovered, with delight, a hand puppet of Muffin the Mule, and cardboard cutout dolls that kept a younger me engaged for many happy hours.  Baby dolls were so ugly in those days, with their nubbly heads and screwed up faces!

The rag rugs were all too familiar from our hearthside, and that modern contraption, a television set, had me chuckling.  The wavy lines on the screen just about made identifiable images, yet I remember being glued to a similar wiggly picture(or even the test card!)  Of course, you younger people won’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

Victorian cutout doll
Does Muffin look familiar?
Or maybe you had a bike like this?
Or perhaps this record collection?

Many a parent was engaged in the ‘how and the why’ of the exhibits, and I was not the only one to exclaim in joy over a recognition.  I featured many of the museum pieces in a previous post, so I won’t dwell too long on the past.  What I do want to show you is the exhibition space.

This is devoted to the Cleveland College of Art and Design and I found it fascinating to view the screen sets and the student’s work.  This intriguing creature greeted me at the entrance.

What a work of imagination and craftsmanship!  Step inside with me.

Isn't this backdrop lovely?

Isn’t this backdrop lovely?

The detail was beautiful
There was a lady friend for our ‘horse’ too
And then some miniature screen sets
Absorbing in their detail
And a little offbeat
With amazing intricacy

With amazing intricacy

I hope that you like what you’ve seen so far, but now it’s your turn.  You must have a local museum or two?  I’d love to see inside.  After all, I can’t hang about in the open all Winter, now can I?

You might have seen A little something extra?  It gave all the details of Cleveland College of Art’s connection to the museum.  Some of the work is amazing.

Well, I’m off out into the cold again now.  See you soon!

72 comments

  1. I have written posts about Cleveland’s many museums, along with the Columbus Art Museum, Jo. I focused in on Paul Simon’s newest exhibit of musical wonders and his memorabilia, even a postcard from his partner, Art Garfunkel who wrote him at camp while in middle school (This can be found at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My favorite 2014 post about an exhibit was the treasured “tomes of yore” found at the University of Dayton exhibit. It had the Q’uran and Mark Twain, along with Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”…. I don’t post photos, since I go to the library, don’t have a cell phone connection, etc. I feel I use my words and try to ‘develop pictures in the minds of my readers.’ I enjoyed your photos and the words you used to describe such a wild, wonderful collection of museum finds, Jo!

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    1. I remember reading one of your posts on the Paul Simon exhibits, Robin. I don’t use my phone for photos so long as my camera is at hand, but I agree that photos can be distracting. I try to use my words effectively too. 🙂

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  2. Happy New Year Jo! Preston Park looks fascinating. Talking of old TVs – do you remember that when you switched them off the picture would decrease to a small dot in the centre of the screen which would take about 30 seconds to disappear completely. Beats a lot of the stuff you see on TV nowadays 😀

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    1. Have you been back long enough to be riveted by the TV, Robin? How was the trip, and did you see Queen and Adam Lambert seeing in the New Year? That was my kind of entertainment 🙂
      Happy 2015 to you!

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      1. The trip was wonderful Jo, can’t recommend it highly enough. I produced a few notes offline but not a complete diary – I just hope I can maintain the standard 🙂
        Pam is the Queen fanatic so she has watched it on iPlayer – I heard it through the wall but didn’t see it 😀 – too busy at the keyboard.

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    1. It’s only half hour away,by car, but I rarely go. We sometimes do the riverside stroll but never think about the museum. In March, Butterfly World will reopen so I’ll have to go have a ‘look see’. 🙂

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  6. I love it! Yesterday, my wife and I went to the De Young museum in San Francisco. We been making an effort to get to one museum/art gallery a month. We’re lucky to have a number of those in our area.

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      1. I’ll be posting about some. Sometimes I do a trip with the idea to document it, but some times a trip like this is just for us to disconnect and get inspired. So, some will get a post, but not all.

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  7. I remeber the test cards too! And the programming lasted a few hours each day and ended with the national anthem every day 🙂
    I once visited the Museums of the City of Buenos Aires and found the exact same china set my grandmother used to have. I ‘love these discoveries.

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  8. I used to love visiting the Victorian museum in York and also took my kids there, but my most recent visit to one was in Canberra which is a fantastically modern building – I will write a post about it as it deserves to be seen, and I loved reading and seeing the history of the colonies and the aboriginal artefacts. There is a little museum here in Ludlow which I confess to not actually having been inside of – I’ll have a look and see if it is worth a mention 🙂 and there is a larger one in Shrewsbury that could be interesting. I MUST visit Hereford cathedral this year and look at the Mappa Mundi exhibition. Now that has to be worth while.

    All your energy makes me feel guilty at staying indoors. 😳

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    1. Rosemay was talking about the Castle Museum in York and I haven’t been there in years, despite many visits to York. It’s on my ‘go back to’ list for this year. You remember Lisa was in York for their wedding anniversary last year? I’m not sure what the plan is for this one but we’ll be in the Algarve at the time, so I might get them flights out for a few days, if they want.

      It’s like that Schoolroom Captain Cook museum in Great Ayton, Jude. I’ve never been inside there either. Also planned for this year. Well- that’s both of us busy with posts for a little while. 🙂 🙂 Enjoy your lazy weekend! I’ll think of you when I’m zumba-ing the Christmas pud off 🙂

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  10. I want to say ‘great minds think alike’ but that might be more complimentary to me than you 😁 we have a mid-January weekend outing planned to take the grandkids to the NEW Colorado History Museum (you won’t believe how technology is now incorporated into dusty old displays!). In February the same museum hosts a traveling exhibit on the decade of the 1960s, and Hub and I are eagerly awaiting that trip down memory lane – turbulent times in the U.S.!!

    As for your vast array of photos – just … WOW. You dazzle indoors as well as you do outdoors!!

    I, too, watched the tv test patterns on Saturday mornings until -finally -the cartoons appeared! I have seen antique spoons used for various art pieces, but never with those intricate painted scenes like the ones you show.

    Thanks, Jo!!

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    1. Ooh- a treat! I shall look forward to your museum posts, Sammy, and thank you for your nice comments. I didn’t get many decent shots because it’s hard taking photos into glass cabinets. And not everyone’s as interested as me. Oh, I did enjoy the warmth too 🙂

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    1. I have a fondness for Barbie, silly though she is 🙂 It’s not her fault that she’s the Dolly Parton of dolls, poor soul. (I like Dolly, too, incidentally, even though she has my share and then some 🙂 ). Mick called those rugs ‘proggy’ rugs, Ad (after the tool used, apparently). I’d never heard the expression, but he showed me it on Google so it must be right 😦

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      1. I also like Dolly. I also wouldn’t mind a bit of what she was blessed with. 🙂 My mom made some of those ‘proggy’ rugs for our colliery house kitchen floor. People were so thrifty and very hardworking in those days.

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  13. wow, what a cool place!! I’m actually going to an art museum tomorrow, one that I haven’t been to since we moved here in 1992. I hope to create a post about it so be on the lookout! Thanks for the great view of the inside of such a cool museum!! and you’re right, it’s the perfect thing to do during winter 🙂

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  14. One of my favourite museums is the Castle Museum in York Jo – I went back there last year on one of my visits home I’ve always loved the Victorian Street there! The students at the Cleveland College Of Art are obviously very talented I love that backdrop too and the costume! 🙂

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  18. Thanks for sharing these amazing photos, Jo. I love going to museums. When I lived in Northern Virginia, it was great to go into Washington, DC and check out the museums on rainy or snowy days. My favorite, the Museum of Natural History. Happy New Year, Jo! xo

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  20. Hi Jo! I had a bike like that!
    I was just going to say I haven’t been to a museum for a while but then I remembered I did yesterday! It will appear soon as part of a longer post on the history of a fairground.
    But for now, the sun is shining and I’m off for a walk in Brighton. I’ll try to document it in photos!

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