November 2010 - National Museum Volunteers

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I arrived in Berlin one week ahead of the conference to visit as many museums as possible, using the 19- euro, 3-day card, including the dream of every museum buff, the Museums Insel. I had visited Potsdam and the elegant San Soucci when I lived in Germany over a decade ago, so, skipping those, I headed first for the Charlottenburg Palace, the first treasure trove of the arts for this trip to Berlin, housing collections of the then-fashionable chinoiserie, such as blanc-de-chine Dehua Gwanyings and blue and white Qing porcelains, and lacquered cabinets and harpsichords. Then to the Brohän’s collections of jugendstil (art nouveau) glass, ceramics and painting. Next, on the museum island itself, beginning with the Bode, one can start with Byzantine sculpture, ivories, and mosaics, and the sumptuous medieval German stone works and altar pieces and sensuous wood carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider. For the next two years the Bode is also featuring the treasures from the Cathedral of Hildesheim, some from as far back as the 11th century episcopate of Tilman Riemenschneider’s musicians, 15-16th C, Bode Museum Portrait busts of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, plaster, 1340 BCE Bishop Bernwards, one of my personal heroes and renaissance man before the Renaissance. Under his eye, bronze casting reached a height of refinement not seen since the fall of Rome. These dazzling treasures highlight the epitome of medieval ivory and enamel-on-gold and bejeweled evangeliar covers, crosses, chalices, monstrances, reliquaries, statuary, pyxes, and portable altars, all much influenced by Byzantine and Islamic arts. You can then proceed to the Pergammon Museum as I described earlier, or go on to the Neues Museum to browse ancient papyri, whose pages move electronically at the push of a button, and the busts and mummies of pharaohs, and come face-to-face with the world’s most beautiful woman, Nefertiti herself, with all her lovely wrinkles and stress marks showing her strength. Though made only of stone and gypsum, she is also the most expensive 20 . Newsletter National Museum Volunteers . November 2010 .
lady in the world, insured for 5.2 million euros, whereas that other lovely lady Mona Lisa is worth a mere 3.2 million. By comparison, King Tut’s inner mask is worth 4 million because of its material value – there is that much gold in it – and not for any aesthetic reasons. Master works by the old German and other European painters are on view at the Alte Nationalgalerie; and at the Altes Museum, Etruscan works are presently on view as the Graeco-Roman pieces are being gradually being moved out to their new home in the Pergammon. The three-day ticket is also good at the museums of the Kulturforum near the Tiergarten Park, including the Neue Nationalgaleire which hangs mostly German expressionism and very “now” shows. I spent a whole day soaking up the collections of European Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neo-Classical paintings at the Kulturforum’s Gemäldegalerie, and another whole day for the glass, pottery, metal, wood, and other world crafts of the Kunstgewerbemuseum and the musical instruments from ancient to modern in the Musical Instruments Museum, including many a beautifully lacquered chinoiserie harpsichord and huge pipe organs. But for enthusiasts of the arts of the orient, there is nothing like the Asian Arts collections of the Dahlem (included in the 3-day ticket), a 20- minute walk from the conference venue, where I spent most of my lunch breaks – and stayed overtime. Standing Bodhisattva, Gandhara, 2nd-3rd CE, schist, Dahlem Museum The Dahlem’s SEA collection is small, but diverse and of high quality, with about 20 rare pieces of Ban Chiang pottery and some small bronzes from the same site and Dongsong. They also hold a fair representation of Thai Buddhist sculpture periods, Thai illus- . November 2010 . Newsletter National Museum Volunteers . 21
Page 1 and 2: NEWS Bangkok No. 11 November 2010 N
Page 3 and 4: IN THIS ISSUE CONTENTS 2 Calendar &
Page 5 and 6: MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Dear Mem
Page 7 and 8: FROM THE LIBRARY Call for volunteer
Page 9 and 10: AT HOME At Home with Ajahn Bill Tha
Page 11 and 12: INTRODUCTORY LECTURE SERIES 65 th I
Page 13 and 14: RECENT HAPPENINGS EXCURSION TO PAK
Page 15 and 16: And he will be doing it in a very s
Page 17 and 18: Höhle geschafft und wir wurden mit
Page 19 and 20: Hongsa confronted at vase sipping e
Page 21: ence, England’s Ian Glover, a fac
Page 25 and 26: The Dahlem used to be called the Mu
Page 27 and 28: This statue of King Mongkut is now
Page 29 and 30: longest reign of a Chakri monarch.
Page 31 and 32: The bronze statue of King Rama I wa
Page 33 and 34: Monument of King Taksin, (1953) by
Page 35 and 36: EXCURSION NMV WEEKEND EXCURSION Chi
Page 37 and 38: EXCURSIONS POLICY Participating in
Page 39 and 40: NMV STEERING COMMITTEE Patron: MR C

November 2010 - National Museum Volunteers

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