Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The best stuff for non-specialists is in room 140, where you'll find work by the
Wiener Werkstätte and the Omega Workshops, Clarice Cliff crockery, a Suffragette
tea-set and Communist ceramics. The contemporary pieces in room 141 range from
manga to mad, while room 142 features one-off modern pieces by everyone from
Picasso to Grayson Perry. And for a global overview of ceramics through the ages,
continue to room 145, which has everything from Greek black-figure vases to
Victorian de Morgan tiles.
Finally, if you persevere, you'll make it to the museum's fabulous new
Furniture
galleries (Level 6, rooms 133-135), which tell the story of furniture over the past six
hundred years. The most famous exhibit is the Great Bed of Ware, a king-sized
Elizabethan oak four-poster designed to sleep twelve, and which gets a mention in
Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night
. But there's plenty of modern stuff here, too, from an
Isokon bookshelf and the UFO-like 1960s Garden Egg Chair to contemporary
designers like Stephen Richards and the computer-aided designs of Jeroen Verhoeven.
18
Science Museum
Exhibition Rd • Daily 10am-6pm • Free •
T
020 7942 4000,
W
sciencemuseum.org.uk •
!
South Kensington
he
Science Museum
, which broke away from the V&A in 1914,
is undeniably
impressive, filling seven floors with items drawn from every conceivable area of science,
with hands-on galleries that appeal to adults and kids. The spectacular
Wellcome Wing
dragged the museum into the twenty-first century, and by 2015 pretty much all the old
galleries will have been swept away, replaced by new galleries on science, space,
communications and climate change. The museum will also have a more arresting
exterior, thanks to the planned Beacon - a glowing bulge in the museum's Neoclassical
face on Exhibition Road.
INFORMATION AND TOURS
Tours and events
Your first stop should be the
information desk, in the Energy Hall, where you can pick up
a museum plan and find out about the day's events and
demonstrations; you can also sign up for a free guided tour
on a specific subject. The museum's Dana Centre (165
Queen's Gate;
T
020 7942 4040,
W
danacentre.org.uk)
puts on free talks, discussions and events aimed at adults.
Exhibitions
The museum stages populist special
exhibitions (for which you have to pay), often timed to
coincide with the latest special-effects movie, and has
flight simulators and a 3D IMAX cinema (£8).
Eating
Refreshment pit-stops include the
Revolution Café
off the Energy Hall, and the funky
Deep Blue Café
in the
Wellcome Wing, plus several picnic areas.
The ground floor
The largest exhibit in the
Energy Hall
, by the entrance, is the bright red Burnley mill
engine, whose enormous wheel used to drive 1700 looms and worked
in situ
until as
late as 1970. To the side is an exhibition on
James Watt
(1736-1819), the Scot who
was instrumental in kick-starting the Industrial Revolution in Britain. As well as
inspecting examples of his inventions, you can view the perfectly preserved garret room
workshop that Watt used in his retirement.
Beyond lies the
Exploring
Space
exhibition, which follows the history of rockets from
tenth-century China and Congreve's early nineteenth-century efforts, through the V-1
and V-2 wartime bombs, right up to the Apollo landings. There's a great, full-size replica
of the Apollo 11 landing craft which deposited US astronauts on the moon in 1969.
Beyond,
Making the Modern World
displays iconic inventions of modern science and
technology. These include
Pu
ng Billy
, the world's oldest surviving steam locomotive,
used for hauling coal in 1815, and Robert Stephenson's
Rocket
of 1829, which won the
competition to haul the Manchester-Liverpool passenger service. Other ground-
breaking inventions on display include a Ford Model T, the world's first mass-produced
car, and a gleaming aluminium Lockheed 10A Electra airliner from 1935, which
signalled the birth of modern air travel. Less glamorous discoveries, such as the brain
scanner, occupy the sidelines, along with disasters such as the drug thalidomide.