London : January 10th 2011

Today we met at the V & A Museum to have a tour by Glen Adamson. My question for Glen Adamson was what did he think about the outsourcing jobs while creating your artwork? While Glen Adamson was giving us a tour he told us a few facts about the V & A, like how they were the first museum to show art to the middle class and the first to have electricity and a cafe. We then looked through the casts courts, which was a room of casts of sculptures and architecture, which was built over 130 years. These casts were important for learning because even though they weren't the originals they were more intact than their originals. We also walked through the ironwork gallery, which showed the history of craft by people being able to look and study the materials.  Then we walked through the ceramics galleries, which was one of the biggest i have seen. They also had a very unique set up for a ceramic artist to work inside along the ceramics exhibits. Anyone can go see Phoebe Cummings work in ceramics while she is doing her residency. Many potters have complained about this fish bowl-like studio, saying that you wouldn't put a painter on display like that in the Tate Museum.

While at the V & A Museum we also saw the Camera-less Photography Exhibit. To me this was one of the best and most interesting exhibits we went to. I couldn't imagine what kind of exhibit this was going to be, because i still thought of photo-grams as the thing you do when you are first starting out in photography. But they totally proved me wrong, they had models of women whose bodies were contorted and posed to have different effects with what would come out darker or lighter in the photo-grams, creating shadows on light sensitive surfaces.

At night we went to see Black Watch at the Barbican Theater.  This was a story about Scottish soldiers helping the Americans during the war. The first thing i noticed was how the seating was different and that we would be very close to the actors performing. I thought this was odd at first but it turned out to be better because you were so close to the action you felt more involved and into the story.