Today, Monday 18 May, is the International Museum Day. It's a day celebrating art and craft gathered for the benefit of all. Many museums have closed down during the coronavirus crisis and remain closed even now. Some museum are reopening (see https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/museums-reopened-coronavirus/index.html) and hopefully many more will reopen soon. While we can visit a few museum online or virtually (https://www.timeout.com/travel/virtual-museum-tours or https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/mar/23/10-of-the-worlds-best-virtual-museum-and-art-gallery-tours), a radio host rightly said today that it may be the most we can do now, but it somehow looks like looking at a tourist guide, or a beautiful photo book of a marvellous place. While it's an incredible experience, it's never the same as being immersed in it.
In our Friday Art Club, as Monday is the day for planning, why not having a look at your favourite painter, artist, piece of art and craft and get some inspiration from it? Why not reproducing it, or making it in your own style. It may be a piece of art and craft which resonates in you, it may be because of the colours, of the shape, of the feelings you had when you saw it in that museum. It may be just because you like it. Whatever this piece of art brings to you, why not use it as a source of inspiration for this week's project if you have not chosen a theme yet?
One of my preferred pieces of art is a small hippopotamus figurine from the Louvre Museum. An Egyptian antiquity, it is of a beautiful blue colour and some "tatoo" of water plants (https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/hippopotamus-figurine). It represents "rebirth", as the hippopotamus emerges from water. There are several of these figurines around the world, of varied sizes. Hippopotamuses have long disappeared from Egypt, as well as the fascinating Pharaohs. But their art survives and it takes us back to them every time.
