We're a few months into a new routine. After having lunch with Bruce's dad on Sunday, we go to the art gallery or the museum or, as we did last week, to the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art.
Like the Bata Shoe Museum, the Gardiner exists mostly through the largesse of a rich Canadian family and serves as an elaborate storage shed for their hobby. It is open to the public and gaily festooned with the names of donors.
You can tell there is no public money in the Gardiner because there are almost no people in it. The proprietors don't care if it makes a profit. You don't need to buy tickets on the Internet to "skip the line." There is no line.
Inside are nicely appointed galleries showing off the Gardiner's extensive collection of, well, ceramics. And if the people working for the Gardiner Collection describe a piece donated by the Gardiners as a "national treasure", that is their prerogative.
I can spend a couple of hours that don't feel wasted looking at plates and bowls that inspired passion in the hearts of middle class social climbers in the industrial age. But the modern works are what grab me. Something about gold-eyed rabbit saints just really turns my crank.
Thanks for reading!
Next week, dispatches from Edinburgh!
Karen
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