January 11

The British Museum was a breath of fresh air after the previous two days. Being able to explore at our own pace was pretty pleasant. The first thing we found was the Rosetta Stone, which was much larger than I had expected it to be. It was such an incredible sight to behold, something I wasn't expecting at all. The lettering and even the stone itself are both just... beautiful. The Elgin marbles weren't quite as impressive nor awe-inspiring, though I did find the information on the blue dye very interesting. I personally prefer the sculptures unpainted.

I really enjoyed the drawing exhibit. There were a lot of black-on-white abstract drawings that I was very aesthetically drawn to, such as Mehretu and Franz Kline's drawings. I also liked Matisse's figure drawings; they were simple but many times depicted a real woman's body as opposed to an idealized body [something that I had a heavy discussion about with the guard that was monitoring the exhibit :)]. One of my favourite drawings was Kentridge's "Arc Procession 9", which was composed primarily of straight lines, colour, and more lines. The text next to the drawing quoted him: "I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in this work, lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world. It is in the strangeness of the activity itself that can be detected judgement, ethics, and morality."