Miniature Museum of Museums by Tara Downs and Bart Sabel

Miniature Museum of Museums

Take the imagination of two Blakes,

Add the wheels and cogs of Newton’s physics,

The electric magic of Frankenstein -

Then secrete the Stroudwater cloth mills,

Within the shadowed drawers of a table;

Take a metaphorical orrery,

Together with a canal-side lock gate,

Alchemize with the music of the spheres

(The delicate harmonies of the cosmos),

Hide this puzzle within a conundrum –

The Holst is then greater than the sum of its parts:

A Lilliputian curiosity

To entrance any curious Gulliver,

On a voyage through reason, time and space.

“Non-fiction uses facts to help us see the lies.

Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.”

See: A book that changed me: Nadine Gordimer helped me see how fiction writing can illuminate reality, by Aminatta Forna, the Guardian, August 20 2013. 

Try and make a trip to Gloucester or Stroud or Cheltenham, as this delightful artwork makes its way across the county through the spring and summer. Tara and Bart ‘s ‘interactive desk’  ‘invites visitors to explore their intriguing inventions through touch, sound and movement’. ‘Ingenuity’ is the ‘connecting thread’ for the three museums in this Friction Project. Fact and fiction: but which is which?

Captivating, ingenious and entrancing; both cerebral and sensual; something for every age group and interest. Don’t miss it!