Musuem Crawl, part 2

National Gallery Forming one side of Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery is huge. Housed in a lovely building with tall ceilings, this art collection takes you through paintings from the fourteenth century to the 20th century. Not only British artists have paintings here. It is much like any art museum in any large city, but this does not mean that it's not an excellent place to spend an afternoon (or three).

National Portrait Gallery Just next door, this gallery is all portraits. Much of the collection is old portraits from the Elizabethan era (and even a few from the 15th century), but they also have a growing gallery of portraits of modern artists, actors, scientists, literary figures, politicians, etc. The gallery commissions portraits of people it would like to honor. Each artist has a very unique way of presenting their subject; one artist even collected about a gallon of his own blood, chilled it, and molded it into the shape of his head. It is on display in a glass climate-controlled case.

Tate Britain Devoted to commemorating British artists, or foreign artists who lived and worked in Britain. This is my favorite art museum in London, I think, because of its collection of late19th and early 20th century art. Also, they have on display some massive paintings, filling entire walls of the museum, depicting the apocalypse - imposing, I must say. One gallery is modern art, not as extensive as the Tate Modern, but still impressive. They also always fill the main hallway with a piece of installation art; when I visited, there was a huge, airy, angular, black, metal structure wrapped around the smooth, rounded, white pillars of the hallway. Beautiful.

Victoria and Albert The V&A, as it is commonly known, is the museum of design. With entire galleries of Indian textiles or silver platters or jewelry through the ages or Chinese porcelain, I could spend days and days in there. As it is, I did not see nearly as much as I would have wanted to. By organizing their collection by material and not by era (and not always by geographic location), it's easy to see how the production of one item has changed through the ages, and compare different artists' styles. An absolutely overwhelming and inspiring museum.