"...when we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December, how, In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse The freezing hours away?" asks Arvirargus of his brother Guiderius in Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, before lamenting, "We have seen nothing" Easily solved old boy, a visit to an architecture or design exhibition should not only provide for new, stimulating, impressions but plenty of discourse throughout not only December but for many, many months to come. For all a visit in December
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July was once known as Quintilis, and was the fifth month of the Roman calender. The fifth of ten. "Winter" being but an ill-defined cold and dark period between December and March. And sensible as such as an arrangement sounds, and much as we could live with such an arrangement today, with the rise of the Roman Republic the wise decision was made to divide winter into January and February. Wise not least because it means our contemporary year has 12 months: and thus two extra months in which
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If you are planning visiting an architecture or design museum, anywhere in the world, in 2019, it will be staging a Bauhaus themed special exhibition. Guaranteed. There are literally millions of them lined up. If not billions. Which is no complaint. Or at least not unless they are exhibitions based on formulaic, lazy clichés. Then it is very much a complaint. But if they are exhibitions which take open, honest and unblinkered views on either the institution as a whole or a specific, ideally,
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The Dog Days of summer are with us and, as is traditional, the international curatorial community have removed themselves to the cooler climes of their storerooms, archives and libraries to sit out the heat until autumn's bracing breeze tempts them back out. Which, logically, means a great sparsity of new architecture and design exhibitions opening in July 2018. A sparsity however isn't a nontity and in four of the world's cultural and meteorological hotspots one finds exhibition curators
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"Memphis in June, A shady veranda under a Sunday blue sky, Memphis in June, And cousin Amanda's makin' a rhubarb pie" (Memphis in June, Hoagy Carmichael) Sounds lovely Hoagy, but we'll have to pass, because despite Memphis having some interesting museums, we can't find one opening a new architecture or design exhibition in June 2018. Consequently, and unlike Marc Cohn, we'll not be "Walking in Memphis" this June, but in Düsseldorf, Espoo, Andelsbuch, Rotterdam and San Francisco..... "Anni
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With his two faces the Roman God Janus looks simultaneously forward and backwards, standing in constant watch over transitions, the passage of time, beginnings, ends. The easy connection to make is with January, that month of the year when we are invariably reflecting and hoping in equal measure: the more complex connection to make is with a well-crafted architecture and design exhibition, one which effortlessly links reflections of the past with proposals, visions and excitement for the
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