Discover Sir John Soane’s Museum from anywhere with this virtual visit
October 15, 2024
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In honor of Archtober 2024, we’re looking back at a webinar created in partnership with the organization – a tour of architect Sir John Soane’s home.
Sir John Soane’s Museum in London is the extraordinary house of British Neoclassical architect Sir John Soane (1753–1837), who is best known for the impressive domed interiors at the Bank of England and designing the world’s first purpose-built exhibition space – Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Sir John Soane’s Museum has been referred to as one of the most atmospheric museums in London. Soane left the building – his house and its contents – to the public and stipulated that it had to remain untouched and preserved as an architectural time capsule from his time of death.
In this video, the Museum’s Director, Bruce Boucher, gives us a tour of the house through key rooms, shares information about Soane, as well as stories behind key architectural features and objects on display.
We start by learning about the impressive exterior. Soane believed that a building’s exterior is like the cover of a book – it should give a sense of what you’ll find inside. At the time, It was criticized for drawing attention to itself, but that’s exactly what Soane intended for it to do.
As we move into the house, we enter the Library and Dining Room and immediately get a sense of Soane’s personal style – modernism meeting classicism. He believed there was a common theme embracing architecture, art and theology in the ancient world, across the globe. You can see this demonstrated with works from different places and ages on display together throughout the museum.
Next we step into the Breakfast Room which is a perfect miniature of the impressive domed interiors he created for his most famous public work at the Bank of England. Soane is known as the master of space and light – in the video, you can see how he uses mirrors and colored glass to play with light.
As we transition into the Academy, which would have been the stables originally, we see it is a prototype of the architecture he created at Dulwich Picture Gallery. This domed area in the heart of the museum is full of the architectural fragments Soane had collected and became the reference library for him and his pupils. He’d ask his students to draw these items because he believed, like Michelangelo did, that to be a good architect you needed to be a good artist. When the house was turned into a museum, Soane had his bust put in the center here as a permanent record of his presence. He’s accompanied by great statues and as you look across the open Crypt, below is his most prized possession, the sarcophagus of the Egyptian Pharaoh Seti I.
There’s a brief stop at the Picture Room before we head to the Drawing Office. The first thing you see, as his students would have, are the four classical orders at the top of the stairs. This was the study area surrounded by inspirational plaster casts. Bruce Boucher talks you through a few of the architectural models on display here before taking us through to the Drawing Rooms, pointing out the autobiographical artworks along the way.
The North Drawing Room walls are covered in watercolors of Soane’s projects as well as a noteworthy Turner painting Soane had bought directly from the Royal Academy as a peace offering to the artist. The South Drawing Room is a brilliant yellow and set out as it would have been in Soane’s day, known because he had a watercolor made of every room he completed. We remain in this room as Boucher shares more about the history of Soane’s family and why Soane decided to leave his house as a national museum, before settling in for the live webinar questions and answers. Make time to watch the webinar now to learn more about John Soane and his home.
This tour was first available as a webinar in the Archtober festival, hosted by the Center for Architecture. It was part of the virtual Travel To series created in partnership with Bloomberg Connects. You can find out more about Archtober 2024 with their guide.
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