Any other business

A couple of days after seeing Hans Krása's Brundibár , at the Opéra Comique , I set off on a 10-day 'roadtrip' in the UK (which is why my article about the opera appeared so late). As usual, the trip was by car because we were travelling with Olga, the cocker, so off we drove via Calais and the Channel Tunnel. I'd already planned to visit my sister and her family in Wales, when I found out from Isaac Lythgoe that he would be showing some of his work in a group exhibition in Leeds. To be able to catch the show, I added a day to our itinerary, and by taking in Leeds, we were able to visit Chester (much improved by pedestrianisation since I was last there) on the way, and Chatsworth afterwards. The neatly-curated exhibition, called Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age , was at the Henry Moore Institute. Its aim was 'exploring how digital technologies are reshaping what sculpture can be, and how it can be used to tell stories about our past, present, ...

In May, I went to the Louvre Lens to see an exhibition called Par-delà les Mille et Une Nuits. Histoires des orientalismes . I was interested in the subject-matter, but in the event was disappointed by the show, which is why I didn't make a whole post about it. As with  the V&A's Epic Iran , perhaps, the organisers had bitten off more than could easily be chewed in a single event. Par-delà les Mille et Une Nuits of course displayed numerous exciting artefacts, including some truly magnificent Kashan carpets from the 16th century. But as it could only skim the surface of each iteration of orientalism (or orientalisms, plural, as the curators would have it), came over rather as Orientalism for Dummies , supposing such a book should ever be published, or, at any rate, to seem less unkind, orientalism for beginners. Numerous school parties were indeed there. I was drawn to Lens (two hours north of Paris by car) in particular by a new painting, commissioned by the Louvre for th...