clever people, poetic space

So i went to the restructured Ashmolean Museum on Saturday, its first day of opening. It was a crisp winter day with bright, low sun and fiery trees. We walked through Jericho and it felt like part of a city scaled to eye-bite size, promising and personal. I remember the Ashmolean from visits stretching way back. It was always impressive and dark. I once tried to cram a gaggle of fifty teenagers in for a visit, having promised their teacher culture to the max, only to be turned away by gallery attendants; angry that so many people actually wanted to see their museum on a weekend, not to mention the fact they weren't in tweed. The kids were pleased and ran off to familiar high street signs, and I didn't blame them. The Egyptian tombs were frighteningly grand but the rest of the place was dingy and reluctant.

Since the closure and reopening it's like a different place: the building has been extended back, knocking down old structures to make way for pale, new walls. Massive sheets of glass frame glimpses of Oxford's alleys as you walk up zig-zaging stairs that overlap other walk ways and steps. Each spot you stand on presents a view of paintings, pots, and statues lit up so the old (far far off old) copper, glazes and stone looks as striking as it can ever have; and then, sidetracked, you navigate your way to the stark blue object, only to get lost and quickly distracted by the complicated pictures without perspective, or a collection of scarabs like jewels.

It's quite moving. The setting is so contemporary and deft at teasing you around the layout, and the relics pretty special reminders of ingenuity (forget iphones - give me that ivory box carved with little-finger nail sized fighting elephants, or the symmetrical repetitions of Arabic wall decoration anyday) that you're left with that 'ooh i need to make things feeling'; or a belief you would survive just by looking at these things. If you could hold hands with the architect. I heard a guy say it was like a Germaine Greer to Lauren Lavern culture revamp, stockings up and smiles...