As you may have guessed I love museums, art galleries, country houses etc. A lot. Like a whole heap of a lot. I make my living working in museums and heritage and as an historian of Irish dress. Naturally, I like to visit museums both at home and abroad both to fuel my love of museums as well as provide interesting reading matter for those interested in my blog.
As mentioned in my previous blog post I visited ‘The Art of Wallpaper – Morris & Co’ exhibition at the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh in May of this year. To say that this was one of my favourite exhibitions I have seen recently is an understatement – I came away wanting to decorate my future house with everything and anything William Morris designed and made!
In April of this year I had the great good fortune to visit the ‘Mainie Jellett (1897-1944): Translation and Rotation’ (October 2021-May 2022) exhibition at the Ulster Museum, Belfast. This exhibition focused on the work of Mainie Jellett, an Irish artist, who is credited with introducing Modernism to Ireland after looking to European art movements for her artistic inspiration.
In my last post I mentioned that I recently visited the Mariano Fortuny museum in Venice in April of this year. This museum had been on my museum bucket list for quite sometime and to say I was not disappointed was an understatement; the museum blew my mind and I would go back again and again.
In April of this year I had the great good fortune to visit the Fortuny Museum in Venice, Italy. The Fortuny Museum or ‘Museo Fortuny’ in Italian is housed in the Palazzo Pesaro a 15th Century Venetian palace. Fortuny or Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (11th May 1871, Granada Spain – 3rd May 1949, Venice Italy was an early twentieth century Spanish couturier based in Venice and is perhaps most famous for his ‘Delphos’ dresses (pictured above) of finely pleated silk with Murano glass beads on a silk cord to either side of the waist of the dress to way the dress down.