A random walk through Brussels in the closing days of 2007. The journey takes in the districts of Ixelles & St Gilles in the south with their combination of Art Deco, Art Nouveau and other architectural styles. A fine example of Art Nouveau is the house built for the industrialist Edouard Hannon with its frescos by Boudouin, which today houses the Espace Photographique Contretype.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The 18th century parkland of Bretton Hall is, like any urban space, a man-made landscape – modeled and transformed to suit the tastes of it’s owner. Today as the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the grounds of the estate provide an environment for the exhibition of contemporary sculpture. A recent addition is work by Andy Goldsworthy – a permanent exhibition of ‘Hanging Trees’, embedded in the remains of a derelict Ha-Ha – part of the original fabric of the Bretton estate.
Fragments of Roman Arles
The collection of artifacts in the city museum of Arles is to trace a journey through a changing spiritual and social landscape from the 1st to the 4th Century. This was the time of Arles pre-eminence as a Greco-Roman city, a period richly described in Lawrence Durrell’s last book, ‘Caesar’s vast ghost’ – a part travelogue, part personal reminisce.