Hi Umlaut,
Thanks for the art tourist tips for Madrid. I shall look forward to searching out some Antoni Tapies and Velazquez as well as Picassos' Guernica.
I read your comments on your visit to Manchester with interest especially since that was my home town and its Museum has always been one of my favourite places. Victorian Museums, the buildings as well as their contents are museum pieces in themselves and I feel should be kept as close to the Victorian original ideal as possible.-a time capsule. Ideally with contemporary extensions by Herzog and De Meuron. I visited the natural history Museum in London a couple of years ago (somewhere that also USED TO BE a favourite place) and was shocked and traumatised to find in place of pickled creatures and countless drawers of irredescent insects we were instead presented with over-bearing fluorescent and plastic illuminated displays in exhibitions entitled such things as Creepy Crawlies with about two proper exhibits in the whole room, a moth eaten tarantula and family group of domestic wood louse. I think.... As for the plastic dinosaurs! So, The Natural History museum might be bigger but does Manchester museum have more integrity? However I have not been there for a few years so that might also have slid down the same plastic slippery slope.
I have recently heard rave reports of the Hornimanns museum in London- apparently loads of pickled creatures and the stuffed animals and skeletons in fine fettle.
I