Papers by Kelly M Freeman
Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London)., Aug 28, 2020
Object 18:1, 2016
built between 1855 and 1860, remains today more or less in its original appearance. On stepping i... more built between 1855 and 1860, remains today more or less in its original appearance. On stepping into the dimly lit entrance foyer and climbing the leaden-grey stone steps, a visitor may be unprepared for the architectural vision beyond the unassuming wooden doors. Natural light pours through the clear glass roof, illuminating the museum's central court. The daylight touches every surface-the specimens, the walls, the floors, corners and crevasses. Numerous stone and iron columns support a roof formed of overlapping glass scales, interwoven with iron cross work, added to which are the skeletons of great leviathans suspended from this extraordinary iron and glass ceiling. The juxtaposition of the cast-iron lancet arches that support the roof with the large curving rib bones of the various whale specimens hanging above creates a remarkable sight. As the bright midday sun reaches its zenith, the bones seem to appropriate the same steely-grey and ochre-yellow patina as the ironwork, making their individual forms, colours and textures indistinguishable from one another (figure 1). This phenomenon of material slippage is striking, and it raises the question as to whether this chromatic conflation of bone and iron was an intentional part of the museum's original design. In the museum, the bone and iron both share the visual attribute of being relatively narrow and long, particularly when considering the rib bones, with their delicately curving processes, echoed in the roof's iron lancet arches. Both materials yellow over time, but they also express many other similar intrinsic properties that had not gone unnoticed by nineteenth-century scholars and academics. 1 They were considered to be ideal building materials, having the shared properties of being both light and incredibly strong. The intrinsic properties, physical
Books by Kelly M Freeman
Ruskin's Ecologies: Figures of Relation from Modern Painters to The Storm-Cloud, 2021
Courtauld Books Online is a series of scholarly books published by The Courtauld. The series incl... more Courtauld Books Online is a series of scholarly books published by The Courtauld. The series includes research publications that emerge from The Courtauld Research Forum events and projects involving an array of outstanding scholars from art history and conservation across the world. It is an open-access series, freely available to readers to read online and to download without charge. The series has been developed in the context of research priorities of The Courtauld which emphasise the extension of knowledge in the fields of art history and conservation, and the development of new patterns of explanation.
Ruskin's Ecologies: Figures of Relation from Modern Painters to The Storm-Cloud, 2021
Courtauld Books Online is a series of scholarly books published by The Courtauld. The series incl... more Courtauld Books Online is a series of scholarly books published by The Courtauld. The series includes research publications that emerge from The Courtauld Research Forum events and projects involving an array of outstanding scholars from art history and conservation across the world. It is an open-access series, freely available to readers to read online and to download without charge. The series has been developed in the context of research priorities of The Courtauld which emphasise the extension of knowledge in the fields of art history and conservation, and the development of new patterns of explanation.
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Papers by Kelly M Freeman
Books by Kelly M Freeman