Museum of Ancient Art and Ludwig Collection, Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig, Basel, Switzerland Recently, Sister-Chickpea asked me why I’d never ended up writing up a post about the Basel Museum. Honestly, it’s because I’ve had such a backlog of posts to write, I’d forgotten about it. Then I found out that they were closing many of the galleries to…
Museum of Fine Arts, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France Knowing that Lyon is one of France’s most culturally significant towns, I had high hopes for its Museum of Fine Art. The museum is housed in an important former abbey, which has its origins in the 6th century. In 1659, the abbess Anne de Chaulnes began construction of the Royal Abbey…
Ethnographic Museum, Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland You never quite know what you’re going to get with museums in Switzerland. Sometimes they are surprisingly fascinating. Sometimes they’re pretty good. Very rarely are they without any redeeming features, especially if they’re about ethnology. I think it’s probably a bit mean to say that there were no redeeming features in Neuchatel’s…
Confluence Museum, Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France When planning a trip to Lyon, you will be struck by the hype for the Museum of the Confluence. It’s a striking new glass building, opened in 2014, perched on an island on the Rhone, and it has a glossy modernity that promises an attractive museum-going experience. In France, where so many museums…
The Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Medelhavsmuseet, Stockholm, Sweden Clearly if a town has a museum dedicated to the ancient world, I’m there. And I’ll probably be there for a long time. And I was at the Mediterranean Museum for much longer than I expected – and still didn’t see the entire collection. I totally missed the Islamic section,…