Tate Modern vies for best museum, a wowzer bridge and a stop for tea and armor

Have you been to the Tate Modern? If not, put down that burrito (okay I'm being very presumist, perhaps you are more of a chicken salad person, but whatever you're eating put it down) and get thee on an airplane (or boat) to come check it out. As I walked through the galleries, I'd see one piece and proclaim it best art of the day, but then another vied for the title. Here are some candidates:

• This artist called Juan Manuel Echavarria created a beautiful set of double image prints, the kind where you see one image when standing to its left and an entirely different one on the right. They were capturing two moments: the graves over a period of months of unidentified bodies buried by villagers in its small-town cemetery in Colombia. First, the bodies are marked NN for "Nomen Nescio", which means No Names or Unknown. Then, some of the villagers rename the NNs with names of their own deceased relatives. The images show the transformation of these unknown graves.
• Then there's the artist Mark Dion. He spent the year 1999 digging out treasures from the banks of the Thames river. Hundreds of specimens were excavated. And THEN, he curated these treasures (bottle caps, toys, shoes, teeth (!!), ceramic shards, credit cards (??), and more into collections that are displayed in archival museum drawers and cases. It is a spectacle, a living, touchable memory, a literal treasure box. 
• And then, there was the installation by Sammy Baloji, who used objects to depict the violent history of colonialism in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The work features archival photographs documenting the scarification of the body used in some African initiation rites, and large bronze, pocked sculptures, all inscribed with the scarification patterns. And living, growing, green plants consume the middle of the installation, referencing the landscape. 

Oh and don't forget all of the other individual works, including one from Yves Kelin (who won art of the day back in 2017 in Nice). So who wins? I think we all do. That's the answer. How lucky we are to have creative minds and museums to hold our collective inspiration. Thanks Tate Modern. There’s also a Tate British museum and I hear that there is also a Tate Sugar-Free in the works.

After Tating, Mom and I walked across the Millenium Bridge. It's been beautiful weather, and viewing the city from the bridge over the Thames highlighted its spectacular mix of new and old, all jumbled up together. We then visited Lush, the bath bomb and other delights store, where George works at Mall of America (we didn’t actually visit MOA - that would be a lot but instead a London version). George wanted to see some of the products sold in the UK that aren’t available at home. So we had a little video call with the boy, still in bed at home, and he shopped the store. Bath bombs are now travel companions for the duration.

Fianlly, tired and gimpy, we found ourselves taking tea at The Wallace Collection (more about said collection in a moment). Oh, tea. What a great treat you are, all warm and gingery and elderberry-y. The Brits have quite the thing going on with tea time. We shouldn't have dumped all that tea out in Boston. Perhaps we'd have a tea culture at home. Ah well. Revolutions and all that. After tea, we made a quick tour of Wallace's collection of all things refined or ready for battle. Loads of china in sophisticated patterns battled with extravagant armor for the biggest spectacle in the museum. We, again, were the winners. 

At last we have now climbed the stairs to our London cocoon, and we sit watching Miss Marple on TV and putting feet up. Tomorrow we museum even more and take tea even morerer.