1.
Oil painting
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Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, the choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium, the oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages, Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. In recent years, water miscible oil paint has come to prominence and, to some extent, water-soluble paints contain an emulsifier that allows them to be thinned with water rather than paint thinner, and allows very fast drying times when compared with traditional oils. Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the subject onto the canvas with charcoal or thinned paint, Oil paint is usually mixed with linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits, or other solvents to make the paint thinner, faster or slower-drying. A basic rule of oil paint application is fat over lean and this means that each additional layer of paint should contain more oil than the layer below to allow proper drying. If each additional layer contains less oil, the painting will crack. This rule does not ensure permanence, it is the quality and type of oil leads to a strong. There are many media that can be used with the oil, including cold wax, resins. These aspects of the paint are closely related to the capacity of oil paint. Traditionally, paint was transferred to the surface using paintbrushes. Oil paint remains wet longer than other types of artists materials, enabling the artist to change the color. At times, the painter might even remove a layer of paint. This can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a time while the paint is wet, Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is usually dry to the touch within a span of two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be varnished in six months to a year, art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old
2.
Art Institute of Chicago
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The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879 and located in Chicagos Grant Park, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Recognized for its efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 million guests annually. The growth of the collection has warranted several additions to the museums original 1893 building, the Art Institute is connected to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a leading art school, making it one of the few remaining unified arts institutions in the United States. In 1866, a group of 35 artists founded the Chicago Academy of Design in a studio on Dearborn Street, the organization was modeled after European art academies, such as the Royal Academy, with Academicians and Associate Academicians. The Academys charter was granted in March 1867, classes started in 1868, meeting every day at a cost of $10 per month. The Academys success enabled it to build a new home for the school, a stone building on 66 West Adams Street. When the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the building in 1871 the Academy was thrown into debt, attempts to continue despite the loss by using rented facilities failed. By 1878 the Academy was $10,000 in debt, members tried to rescue the ailing institution by making deals with local businessmen, before some finally abandoned it in 1879 to found a new organization, named the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. When the Chicago Academy of Design went bankrupt the same year, in 1882, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts changed its name to the current Art Institute of Chicago and elected as its first president the banker and philanthropist Charles L. Also in 1882, the purchased a lot on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue. By January 1885 the trustees recognized the need to provide space for the organizations growing collection. The city agreed, and the building was completed in time for the year of the fair. Construction costs were met by selling the Michigan/Van Buren property, on October 31,1893 the Institute moved into the new building. For the opening reception on December 8,1893, Theodore Thomas, from the 1900s to the 1960s the school offered with the Logan Family the Logan Medal of the Arts, an award which became one of the most distinguished awards presented to artists in the US. Between 1959 and 1970 the Institute was a key site in the battle to gain art and documentary photography a place in galleries, under curator Hugh Edwards and his assistants. As Director of the museum starting in the early 1980s, James N. Wood conducted an expansion of its collection. He retired from the museum in 2004, in 2006, the Art Institute began construction of The Modern Wing, an addition situated on the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe. The project, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, was completed, the 264, 000-square-foot building makes the Art Institute the second-largest art museum in the United States
3.
Atlantic slave trade
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The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through the 19th centuries. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires, the Portuguese were the first to engage in the New World slave trade in the 16th century. In 1526, the Portuguese completed the first transatlantic voyage from Africa to the Americas. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants, like coming from England. By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a caste, they and their offspring were legally the property of their owners. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, the major Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empire. Several had established outposts on the African coast where they purchased slaves from local African leaders and these slaves were managed by a factor who was established on or near the coast to expedite the shipping of slaves to the New World. Slaves were kept in a factory while awaiting shipment, current estimates are that about 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, although the number purchased by the traders is considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate. Near the beginning of the century, various governments acted to ban the trade. In the early twenty-first century, several governments issued apologies for the slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade arose after trade contacts were first made between the continents of the Old World and those of the New World, between 1600 and 1800, approximately 300,000 sailors engaged in the slave trade visited West Africa. In doing so, they came into contact with societies living along the west African coast, historian John Thornton noted, A number of technical and geographical factors combined to make Europeans the most likely people to explore the Atlantic and develop its commerce. That leadership later gave rise to the myth that the Iberians were the leaders of the exploration. Slavery was practiced in parts of Africa, Europe, Asia. There is evidence that people from some African states were exported to other states in Africa, Europe. The African slave trade provided a number of slaves to Europeans. The Atlantic slave trade was not the slave trade from Africa, although it was the largest in volume. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique, The African continent was bled of its resources via all possible routes
4.
Portrait
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A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person, for this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, nonetheless, many subjects, such as Akhenaten and some other Egyptian pharaohs, can be recognised by their distinctive features. The 28 surviving rather small statues of Gudea, ruler of Lagash in Sumeria between c.2144 -2124 BC, show a consistent appearance with some individuality. Some of the earliest surviving painted portraits of people who were not rulers are the Greco-Roman funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypts Fayum district. These are almost the only paintings from the world that have survived, apart from frescos, though many sculptures. Although the appearance of the figures differs considerably, they are considerably idealized, the art of the portrait flourished in Ancient Greek and especially Roman sculpture, where sitters demanded individualized and realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of a symbol of what that person looked like. In the Europe of the Early Middle Ages representations of individuals are mostly generalized, true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in tomb monuments, donor portraits, miniatures in illuminated manuscripts and then panel paintings. Moche culture of Peru was one of the few ancient civilizations which produced portraits and these works accurately represent anatomical features in great detail. The individuals portrayed would have been recognizable without the need for other symbols or a reference to their names. The individuals portrayed were members of the elite, priests, warriors. They were represented during several stages of their lives, the faces of gods were also depicted. To date, no portraits of women have been found, there is particular emphasis on the representation of the details of headdresses, hairstyles, body adornment and face painting. One of the portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vincis painting titled Mona Lisa. What has been claimed as the worlds oldest known portrait was found in 2006 in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000 years old. Profile view, full view, and three-quarter view, are three common designations for portraits, each referring to a particular orientation of the head of the individual depicted. Such terms would tend to have greater applicability to two-dimensional artwork such as photography, in the case of three-dimensional artwork, the viewer can usually alter their orientation to the artwork by moving around it
5.
Genre art
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Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on. Rather confusingly, the meaning of genre, covering any particular combination of an artistic medium. Painting was divided into a hierarchy of genres, with painting at the top, as the most difficult and therefore prestigious. But history paintings are a genre in painting, not genre works, the following concentrates on painting, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th century onwards. Single figures or small groups decorated a huge variety of such as porcelain, furniture, wallpaper. Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known member of his family. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. Genre themes appear in all art traditions. These were part of a pattern of Mannerist inversion in Antwerp painting, giving low elements previously in the background of images prominent emphasis. The generally small scale of these paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book. The merry company showed a group of figures at a party, other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities, or soldiers in camp. In Italy, a school of painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer in 1625. He acquired the nickname Il Bamboccio and his followers were called the Bamboccianti, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti, Antonio Cifrondi, jean-Baptiste Greuze and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting. Spain had a tradition predating The Book of Good Love of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition, practiced by many of its painters and illuminators
6.
Royal Academy of Arts
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The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. The Royal Academy of Arts was founded through an act of King George III on 10 December 1768 with a mission to promote the arts of design in Britain through education and exhibition. Supporters wanted to foster a national school of art and to encourage appreciation, fashionable taste in 18th-century Britain was based on continental and traditional art forms, providing contemporary British artists little opportunity to sell their works. From 1746 the Foundling Hospital, through the efforts of William Hogarth, the success of this venture led to the formation of the Society of Artists of Great Britain and the Free Society of Artists. Both these groups were primarily exhibiting societies, their success was marred by internal factions among the artists. The combined vision of education and exhibition to establish a school of art set the Royal Academy apart from the other exhibiting societies. It provided the foundation upon which the Royal Academy came to dominate the art scene of the 18th and 19th centuries, supplanting the earlier art societies. Sir William Chambers, a prominent architect, used his connections with George III to gain royal patronage and financial support of the Academy, the painter Joshua Reynolds was made its first president. Francis Milner Newton was elected the first secretary, a post he held for two decades until his resignation in 1788, the instrument of foundation, signed by George III on 10 December 1768, named 34 founder members and allowed for a total membership of 40. William Hoare and Johann Zoffany were added to this list later by the King and are known as nominated members, among the founder members were two women, a father and daughter, and two sets of brothers. The Royal Academy was initially housed in cramped quarters in Pall Mall, although in 1771 it was given temporary accommodation for its library and schools in Old Somerset House, then a royal palace. In 1780 it was installed in purpose-built apartments in the first completed wing of New Somerset House, located in the Strand and designed by Chambers, the Academy moved in 1837 to Trafalgar Square, where it occupied the east wing of the recently completed National Gallery. These premises soon proved too small to house both institutions, in 1868,100 years after the Academys foundation, it moved to Burlington House, Piccadilly, where it remains. Burlington House is owned by the British Government, and used rent-free by the Royal Academy, the first Royal Academy exhibition of contemporary art, open to all artists, opened on 25 April 1769 and ran until 27 May 1769. 136 works of art were shown and this exhibition, now known as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, has been staged annually without interruption to the present day. In 1870 the Academy expanded its programme to include a temporary annual loan exhibition of Old Masters. The range and frequency of these exhibitions have grown enormously since that time. Britains first public lectures on art were staged by the Royal Academy, led by Reynolds, the first president, a program included lectures by Dr. William Hunter, John Flaxman, James Barry, Sir John Soane, and J. M. W. Turner
7.
Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS was a leading English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. He was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper, at the age of ten, having moved to Bath, he was supporting his family with his pastel portraits. At eighteen he went to London and soon established his reputation as a painter in oils, receiving his first royal commission. He stayed at the top of his profession until his death, aged 60, self-taught, he was a brilliant draughtsman and known for his gift of capturing a likeness, as well as his virtuoso handling of paint. He became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1791, a member in 1794. Lawrences love affairs were not happy and, in spite of his success, at his death, Lawrence was the most fashionable portrait painter in Europe. His reputation waned during Victorian times, but has since been partially restored, Thomas Lawrence was born at 6 Redcross Street, Bristol, the youngest surviving child of Thomas Lawrence, a supervisor of excise, and Lucy Read, the daughter of a clergyman. The couple had 16 children but only five survived infancy, Lawrences brother Andrew became a clergyman, William had a career in the army, sisters Lucy and Anne married a solicitor and a clergyman. Soon after Thomas was born his father decided to become an innkeeper and took over the White Lion Inn and next-door American Coffee House in Broad Street, Bristol. It was during the familys stay at the Black Bear Inn that Lawrence senior began to make use of his sons precocious talents for drawing and reciting poetry. Visitors would be greeted with the words Gentlemen, heres my son – will you have him recite from the poets, among those who listened to a recitation from Tom, or Tommy as he was called, was the actor David Garrick. Lawrences formal schooling was limited to two years at The Fort, a school in Bristol, when he was aged six to eight, and he also became accomplished in dancing, fencing, boxing and billiards. But once again Lawrence senior failed as a landlord and, in 1779, he was declared bankrupt, from now on, Lawrence was to support his parents with the money he earned from his portraits. The family settled at 2 Alfred Street in Bath, and the young Lawrence established himself as a portraitist in pastels, the oval portraits, for which he was soon charging three guineas, were about 12 inches by 10 inches, and usually portrayed a half-length. His sitters included the Duchess of Devonshire, Sarah Siddons, Sir Henry Harpur, Warren Hastings, sometime before his eighteenth birthday in 1787 Lawrence arrived in London, taking lodgings in Leicester Square, near to Joshua Reynolds studio. He was introduced to Reynolds, who advised him to study nature, Lawrence set up a studio at 41 Jermyn Street and installed his parents in a house in Greek Street. In the Royal Academy exhibition of 1788 Lawrence was represented by five portraits in pastels and one in oils, a medium he quickly mastered. Between 1787 and his death in 1830 he would miss two of the annual exhibitions, once,1809, in protest about the way his paintings had been displayed and once, in 1819
8.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom
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It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas. Soon after his death in 1785, they joined with William Wilberforce, though anti-slavery sentiment was widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nation-states that used slave labour continued to do so. The slave trade had been banned in England in 1102, in a 1569 court case involving Cartwright, who had bought a slave from Russia, the court ruled that English law could not recognise slavery, as it was never established officially. This ruling was overshadowed by later developments and it was upheld in 1700 by Lord Chief Justice Sir John Holt when he ruled that a slave became free as soon as he arrived in England. English colonists imported slaves to the North American colonies and by the 18th century, traders began to import slaves from Africa, India and East Asia to London and Edinburgh to work as servants. Men who migrated to the North American colonies often took their East Indian slaves or servants with them, some of the first freedom suits, court cases in Britain to challenge the legality of slavery, took place in Scotland in 1755 and 1769. The cases were Montgomery v. Sheddan and Spens v. Dalrymple, each of the slaves had been baptised in Scotland and challenged the legality of slavery. They set the precedent of legal procedure in British courts that would lead to success for the plaintiffs. In these cases, deaths of the plaintiff and defendant, respectively, African slaves were not bought or sold in London itself but were brought by masters from other places. Together with people from nations, especially non-Christian ones, Africans were considered foreigners. At the time, England had no naturalisation procedure, the African slaves legal status was unclear until the 1772 Somersetts Case, when the fugitive slave James Somersett forced a decision by the courts. Somersett had escaped and his master, Charles Steuart, had him captured and imprisoned on board a ship, while in London, Somersett had been baptised and three godparents issued a writ of habeas corpus. As a result, Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of the Kings Bench, had to judge whether Somersetts abduction was lawful or not under English Common Law, no legislation had ever been passed to establish slavery in England. The case received national attention and five supported the action on behalf of Somersett. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England, and therefore the black must be discharged. The decision did not apply to British overseas territories, e. g. the American colonies had established slavery by positive laws, Somersetts case became a significant part of the common law of slavery in the English-speaking world and it helped launch the movement to abolish slavery. After reading about Somersetts Case, Joseph Knight, an enslaved African who had purchased by his master John Wedderburn in Jamaica and brought to Scotland. Married and with a child, he filed a freedom suit, in the case of Knight v. Wedderburn, Wedderburn said that Knight owed him perpetual servitude
9.
William Cowper
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William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life, in many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him the best modern poet, whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem Yardley-Oak and he was a nephew of the poet Judith Madan. After being institutionalised for insanity in the period 1763–65, Cowper found refuge in a fervent evangelical Christianity and he continued to suffer doubt and, after a dream in 1773, believed that he was doomed to eternal damnation. He recovered and wrote more religious hymns and his religious sentiment and association with John Newton led to much of the poetry for which he is best remembered, and to the series of Olney Hymns. His poem Light Shining out of Darkness gave English the phrase and he also wrote a number of anti-slavery poems and his friendship with Newton, who was an avid anti-slavery campaigner, resulted in Cowper being asked to write in support of the Abolitionist campaign. Cowper wrote a poem called The Negros Complaint which rapidly became very famous and he also wrote several other less well known poems on slavery in the 1780s, many of which attacked the idea that slavery was economically viable. William Cowper was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England where his father John Cowper was rector of the Church of St Peter and he and his brother John were the only two of seven children to live past infancy. Ann died giving birth to John on 7 November 1737 and his mother’s death at such an early age troubled William deeply and was the subject of his poem, “On the Receipt of My Mothers Picture, ” written more than fifty years later. He grew close to her family in his early years and he was particularly close with her brother Robert and his wife Harriot. They instilled in young William a love of reading and gave him some of his first books – John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Cowper was first enrolled in Westminster School in April of 1742 after moving from school to school for a number of years. He had begun to study Latin from an age, and was an eager scholar of Latin for the rest of his life. Older children bullied Cowper through many of his younger years, at Westminster School he studied under the headmaster John Nicoll. At the time Westminster School was popular amongst families belonging to England’s Whig political party, many intelligent boys from families of a lower social status also attended, however. Cowper made lifelong friends from Westminster and he read through the Iliad and the Odyssey, which ignited his lifelong scholarship and love for Homer’s epics. He grew skilled at the interpretation and translation of Latin, which he put to use for the rest of his life and he was skilled in the composition of Latin as well and wrote many verses of his own. After education at Westminster School, Cowper was articled to Mr Chapman, solicitor, of Ely Place, Holborn, to be trained for a career in law. During this time, he spent his leisure at the home of his uncle Bob Cowper, where he fell in love with his cousin Theodora, whom he wished to marry
10.
Ira Aldridge
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Ira Frederick Aldridge was an American and later British stage actor and playwright who made his career after 1824 largely on the London stage and in Europe, especially in Shakespearean roles. He was especially popular in Prussia and Russia, where he received top honors from heads of state and he was married twice, once to an Englishwoman, once to a Swedish woman, and had a family in England. Two of his daughters became professional opera singers, Aldridge was born in New York City to Reverend Daniel and Luranah Aldridge on July 24,1807. At age 13, Aldridge went to the African Free School in New York City, established by the New York Manumission Society for the children of black people. They were given an education, with the study of English grammar, writing, mathematics, geography. His classmates at the African free school included Charles L. Reason, George T. Downing, Aldridges first professional acting experience was in the early 1820s with the African Company, a group founded and managed by William Henry Brown and James Hewlett. In 1821, the built the African Grove Theatre, the first resident African-American theatre in the United States. Aldridge made his debut as Rolla, a Peruvian character in Richard Brinsley Sheridans Pizarro. He may have played the male lead in Romeo and Juliet, as reported later in an 1860 memoir by his schoolfellow. Confronted with the persistent discrimination which black actors had to endure in the United States, Aldridge emigrated to Liverpool, England, during this time the Industrial Revolution had begun, bringing about radical economic change that helped expand the development of theatres. The British Parliament had already outlawed the trade and was moving toward abolishing slavery in the British colonies. Having limited onstage experience and lacking name recognition, Aldridge concocted a story of his African lineage, by 1831 he had taken the name of Keene, a homonym for the then popular British actor, Edmund Kean. Aldridge observed a common practice of assuming an identical or similar nomenclature to that of a celebrity in order to garner attention. In addition to being called F. W. Keene Aldridge, he would later be called African Roscius, on October 10,1825, Aldridge made his European debut at Londons Royal Coburg Theatre, the first African-American actor to establish himself professionally in a foreign country. He played the role of Oroonoko in The Revolt of Surinam, or A Slaves Revenge. According to the scholar Shane White, English people had heard of the African Theatre because of British actor and comedian Charles Mathews, bernth Lindfors says, hen Aldridge starts appearing on the stage at the Royalty Theatre, hes just called a gentleman of color. But when he moves over to the Royal Coburg, hes advertised in the first playbill as the American Tragedian from the African Theater New York City, the second playbill refers to him as The African Tragedian. So everybody goes to the theater expecting to laugh because this is the man they think Mathews saw in New York City, an innovation Aldridge introduced early in his career was a direct address to the audience on the closing night of his engagement at a given theatre
11.
Dublin
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Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Dublin is in the province of Leinster on Irelands east coast, the city has an urban area population of 1,345,402. The population of the Greater Dublin Area, as of 2016, was 1,904,806 people, founded as a Viking settlement, the Kingdom of Dublin became Irelands principal city following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire before the Acts of Union in 1800, following the partition of Ireland in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State, later renamed Ireland. Dublin is administered by a City Council, the city is listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network as a global city, with a ranking of Alpha-, which places it amongst the top thirty cities in the world. It is a historical and contemporary centre for education, the arts, administration, economy, the name Dublin comes from the Irish word Dubhlinn, early Classical Irish Dubhlind/Duibhlind, dubh /d̪uβ/, alt. /d̪uw/, alt /d̪u, / meaning black, dark, and lind /lʲiɲ pool and this tidal pool was located where the River Poddle entered the Liffey, on the site of the castle gardens at the rear of Dublin Castle. In Modern Irish the name is Duibhlinn, and Irish rhymes from Dublin County show that in Dublin Leinster Irish it was pronounced Duílinn /d̪ˠi, other localities in Ireland also bear the name Duibhlinn, variously anglicized as Devlin, Divlin and Difflin. Historically, scribes using the Gaelic script wrote bh with a dot over the b and those without knowledge of Irish omitted the dot, spelling the name as Dublin. Variations on the name are found in traditionally Irish-speaking areas of Scotland, such as An Linne Dhubh. It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. Baile Átha Cliath, meaning town of the ford, is the common name for the city in modern Irish. Áth Cliath is a name referring to a fording point of the River Liffey near Father Mathew Bridge. Baile Átha Cliath was an early Christian monastery, believed to have been in the area of Aungier Street, there are other towns of the same name, such as Àth Cliath in East Ayrshire, Scotland, which is Anglicised as Hurlford. Although the area of Dublin Bay has been inhabited by humans since prehistoric times and he called the settlement Eblana polis. It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duibhlinn, beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. The subsequent Scandinavian settlement centred on the River Poddle, a tributary of the Liffey in an area now known as Wood Quay, the Dubhlinn was a small lake used to moor ships, the Poddle connected the lake with the Liffey. This lake was covered during the early 18th century as the city grew, the Dubhlinn lay where the Castle Garden is now located, opposite the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle
12.
Tate Britain
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Tate Britain is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and it is the oldest gallery in the network, having opened in 1897. It is one of the largest museums in the country, the gallery is situated on Millbank, on the site of the former Millbank Prison. Construction, undertaken by Higgs and Hill, commenced in 1893, however, from the start it was commonly known as the Tate Gallery, after its founder Sir Henry Tate, and in 1932 it officially adopted that name. As a consequence, it was renamed Tate Britain in March 2000, the front part of the building was designed by Sidney R. J. Smith with a classical portico and dome behind, and the central sculpture gallery was designed by John Russell Pope. Tate Britain includes the Clore Gallery of 1987, designed by James Stirling, crises during its existence include flood damage to work from the River Thames, and bomb damage during World War II. However, most of the collection was in storage elsewhere during the war. In 1970, the building was given Grade II* listed status, the museum stayed open throughout the three phases of renovation. Completed in 2013, the newly designed sections were conceived by the architects Caruso St John and included a total of nine new galleries, with reinforced flooring to accommodate heavy sculptures. A second part was unveiled later that year, the centrepiece being the reopening of the buildings Thames-facing entrance as well as a new spiral staircase beneath its rotunda, the circular balcony of the rotundas domed atrium, closed to visitors since the 1920s, was reopened. The gallery also now has a dedicated entrance and reception beneath its entrance steps on Millbank. The front entrance is accessible by steps, a side entrance at a lower level has a ramp for wheelchair access. The gallery provides a restaurant and a café, as well as a Friends room and this membership is open to the public on payment of an annual subscription. As well as offices the building complex houses the Prints and Drawings Rooms, as well as the Library. The restaurant features a mural by Rex Whistler, Tate Britain and Tate Modern are now connected by a high speed boat along the River Thames, which runs from Millbank Millennium Pier immediately outside Tate Britain. The boat is decorated with spots, based on paintings of similar appearance by Damien Hirst, the lighting artwork incorporated in the piers structure is by Angela Bulloch. The main display spaces show the permanent collection of historic British art, the gallery also organises career retrospectives of British artists and temporary major exhibitions of British Art. Every three years the gallery stages a Triennial exhibition in which a guest curator provides an overview of contemporary British Art, the 2003 Tate Triennial was called Days Like These
