February 8: Tate Modern

Today I had class in the morning, then went to the Tate Modern for my Museums class in the afternoon. The Tate Modern is...interesting. It houses some very interesting works. The big exhibit we saw is called Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei. It's composed of zillions of little porcelain sunflower seeds that were hand-painted by artisans in China to be as real-looking as possible. They're just sort of raked into a pile in a huge room. I'm not really sure I liked the work, but I understood the message of the individual being part of something huge and such. I saw a few of Picasso's pieces, which were freaky, but they're very famous. I don't think I found anything there that really appealed to me, with the exception of Monet's "Water-Lilies." There were some picture collages of random living rooms from Malaysia that were pretty neat, and one or two other little things I liked, but I guess the modern stuff isn't really my favorite. The best part of the whole place was the cafe on the top floor, with really pretty views of the opposite bank of the Thames.

After the museum, I poached some chicken breasts and ate them with tomato sauce, sweet corn, and seasoned potato wedges. Then, I bundled up all my laundry and headed over to Metrogate (the headquarters of the program) to get it over with. It took forever! I had to wait 30 minutes for a washer, 40 minutes to wash, then wait 50 minutes for a dryer, then 60 minutes to dry! And it's expensive! Grrr. Oh well, at least I got it done and most of my blogs from Dublin written. I tried to be as thorough as possible, so I won't forget anything.

"Water-Lilies," Monet, 1916

Picasso's "The Three Dancers," 1925