Posts by date: October 2012

Preparations for a new permanent gallery at Discovery Museum

Discovery Museum was recently awarded a grant from the government and The Wolfson Foundation charity to refurbish one of our permanent galleries. It was the second highest award given out across the country! Find out more here   Preparing for… Read more

Pilgrim Street and the Newe House

The other day I was stood at the bus stop in Pilgrim Street, in front of the old Odeon, when the Number 1 bus to Slatyford suddenly transformed into a hay wain pulled by four oxen and two horses… Well,… Read more

Better than JMW Turner? Thomas Girtin’s ‘Morpeth Bridge’ watercolour

Was Girtin a better watercolourist than JMW Turner? Turner himself seemed to say so – after his friend’s early death, Turner remarked, If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved. He was exaggerating wildly, of course, but Turner’s words… Read more

‘The Lamentation’: A Winning Formula

Sometimes if you find a winning formula, there seems little point in changing it. This could be said for certain painting compositions, some of which have been used by artists for hundreds of years. Michelangelo’s Pieta, for example, was so popular… Read more

JMW Turner’s ‘Dunstanburgh Castle’: poetry, imagination and reality

Not so long ago, I went out to Dunstanburgh, near Alnwick, to see how much of the landscape I could recognise in our watercolour by JMW Turner. Turner was only 22 when he visited in 1797, as part of a… Read more