Oh! I do like to be beside
the Seaside
5th May
2010
For immediate
use
P R E S
S
R E L E A S E
6th July 2010 –
21st October
2010
This is a lighthearted
exhibition to be seen at the height of summer, when
thoughts of lazy days on the beach or on a cruise are uppermost in the mind. It
was not always thus. What we think of as a holiday in the twenty-first century
did not exist until the early twentieth century, and even then a bikini-clad
girl would have been regarded as an alien from outer
space!
This exhibition - on show at
The Fan Museum from
6th July until 31st October 2010 - traces the evolution of
the concept of a holiday by the sea from fans of the Grand Tour in Naples
and Venice (for a privileged few), to the advertising fans of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which show how the development of the
railways makes the seaside accessible to the
masses.
A glance at some of the
mythological fans takes us into the
world of legend when sea monsters devoured (or are about to devour) naked
ladies. Chinese ‘applied faces’ fans depict the reaches of the
estuary of the Pearl River at Canton with its famous pagoda landmark, while
others show this busy shipping port with its ‘hongs’ along
the
waterfront.
On Tuesdays and Sundays tea
is
served in The Fan Museum Orangery. Visitors to the museum may also enjoy
afternoon tea on board a Japanese cruise liner by reading the alarming menu of
delicacies on a fan designed for the Captain’s table in
1936.
The Fan Museum hopes this
‘Bill of Fare’
will be enjoyed by the widest
au
dience!
NOTE FOR
EDITORS
For further
information or photographs please
contact:
Alexandra Moskalenko at The
Fan Museum, 12 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, London SE10 8ER. Tel: 020 8305 1441, fax:
020 8293
1889.
E-mail: amoskalenko@fan-museum.org, or
visit www.fan-museum.org.
The Fan Museum is open to
the public Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 5pm, and Sunday from 12noon to 5pm.
Admission charges: £4.00 (adults), £3.00 (concessions). Free for
OAPs and Disabled on Tuesdays from 2-5pm (except for groups). Free for children
under
7.
