My 'Grand Tour'

"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose."

- Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

In a little over a month I will be leaving New Zealand. Travelling via L.A, Las Vegas, San Diego and New York, I will base myself in London to explore all that Europe - the birth place of western art and civilisation - has to offer. 

This will be my Grand Tour. It is a Pilgrimage, and the art masterpieces of the world are some of my key destinations. 

This blog will be my journal. I will study in depth one work every weekday, as I have done. The difference being that I will have the privilege of seeing these great works in person, a fact that will doubtless alter my view on them.

Before my departure I feel the need to anticipate the galleries and world-class collections I will be seeing first-hand. Over the past week I have explored five works from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I will continue this 'preparation' by looking at pieces in other American and European galleries. This week I plan to write-up five artworks from the collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Effectively homeless until I find a job and a flat in London, the vast and stable world of Art will become my home - simultaneously a mirror and a window onto the world.