I have been working for the last 3 days on various art presentations for the National Gallery and I also have to organize art lectures for the various schools who ask us to come in to give a talk.
It's a lot of work but I do enjoy it. I am trying to pick works of art in the Gallery that could be interesting to people. As for the school program this year I want to talk about Abstract Art and Surrealism. One teacher would like me to talk about the Renaissance again this year. I will try to convince him otherwise. The Renaissance as a topic is far too large for a 50 minute presentation. Come on how can you cover 250 years in 50 minutes and most of it is religious art. We have PC guidelines and religious art is a no go area. Also the kids have very limited knowledge of history, geography, art, the world and anything before 1995. So you can see the problem with a period covering 1297 to 1550, a little far for them to grasp.
As for this music interlude, well Haendel was of the Baroque period, nothing to do with the Renaissance. Please don't say, Oh he is so Victorian, we do that a lot in Canada.
Though it all gets all mashed up together a bit like World War I and II, not the same but most people think it is as I found at this Summer at the other Museum and war painting exhibit.
