A night at the Museum

Monday, 10 May 2010

Victorian garden at MERL

On Saturday 15 May, the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) is opening at night to display its new colourful exhibition that will explore our stunning landscape.

From 7pm-9pm visitors will be able to enjoy the wonderful collection that makes up ‘Looking at landscape: colours and contours' as well as listen to live music.

MERL's first ever evening opening provides the perfect opportunity for those who might not usually be able to visit during normal opening hours, as well as offering regular visitors the chance to enjoy MERL in a different light.

The new exhibition is a bright and colourful display featuring paintings, photographs, maps, and much, much more. It encourages the visitor to explore the landscape by different means and to consider the diverse ways in which the land around us has been depicted and understood.

This special late opening is part of Culture 24's National Museums at Night campaign, which showcases the unique and vibrant museums, galleries, heritage sites, libraries and archives in the UK.

Julia Shelley, Acting Learning Manager at the Museum said: "Having held successful family sleepovers for the last two years as part of the Museums at Night campaign, we thought it would be good to do something special just for grown-ups this year. Visitors can visit the exhibition and museum and enjoy a drink while listening to the Oxford band Velvet Trio. Guests can also take a leisurely evening stroll around the beautiful MERL garden."

Highlights of the exhibition include original hand painted illustrations produced for Ladybird books published in 1959 and 1961, paintings by numerous artists-local and otherwise-including material on loan from Reading Museum, a range of fascinating maps showing land use, geology, soil science, and other ways of visualising the world around us, and a whole host of prints, books, and artefacts from the MERL collections.

Exhibition curator, Ollie Douglas, said: "This vibrant new exhibition provides an opportunity to look at many ways in which people have attempted to capture and portray landscape over the last century. It is purposefully colourful and offers content that is visually stimulating and culturally significant. The displays try to set different media alongside one another in order to create inspiring juxtapositions and hopefully encourage visitors to think about the land and what it means to them.'

This free event takes place from 7 to 9pm on Saturday 15 May at the Museum of English Rural Life. Visitors will be able to buy a variety of alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks and snacks from our bar. For further details visit www.reading.ac.uk/merl