Thursday, January 10, 2008

Art gallery

Mini culture-vultures at the Art Gallery of NSW - this was an interactive school holiday program about Australian Aboriginal music. The kids were engrossed and engaged and enjoyed participating.

Yesterday it was the National Gallery of Victoria International, today the Art Gallery of NSW. Both have lots to offer, but one thing I noticed was that the Victorian one (what's with National and International? The National Gallery of this country is in Canberra....) combines what is split in NSW - here, if you want to see decorative arts, furniture/textiles/glass etc, that's in the Powerhouse Museum, a separate institution. I'm not arguing either system is better or worse, just different.

From a quilting point of view, I always look at the textile books section in the gallery shops, just to see what they have. And am usually disappointed. I don't expect an art gallery's book selection for quilting to be one how-to book of fairly bog-ordinary designs. Hello.... there are lots of interesting quilt/art quilt books out there which would be much better as representing quilting in this context. If you've got to have a how-to, what about Simple Contemporary Quilts: Bold New Designs for the First-Time Quilter by Valerie Van Arsdale Shrader? It's got designs from a bunch of different art quilters of high esteem. One would assume Quilt National books would be a given, if you want representations of current work, and then a couple of good books on quilt history, if you want to round out a bare-bones selection.

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