Plenty.

After I left SH in the hotel room working and dropped off my suitcase at the hotel desk, I visited the Millennium Gallery.

They have the exhibit “John Ruskin: Art & Wonder” to celebrate the bicentennial of Ruskin’s birth. The exhibit showed how Ruskin observed nature minutely to discover its essence, its form, and its beauty. The exhibit consisted of Ruskin’s own sketches and paintings with quotations from his writings and works by artists whom he admired (Turner) or whom he inspired (Kate Greenaway, Tania Kovats, Dan Holsworth).

Ruskin thought that drawing trained the scientist to see and thus think. He also said many scientific debates could be avoided if scientists drew their diagrams more accurately. He writes in a time where drawing was only means of recording something– at least until the invention of photography.

The most unusual and exceptional piece in the exhibit was Holdsworth’s “Acceleration Structures.” This mesmerizing film of geometrically rendered landscapes takes the viewer through the topography of three different glacial valleys.

Next I visited the Graves Gallery housed in the fourth (and top) floor of Sheffield’s library. The small collection had works from the seventeenth century to present day.

They did have a Pissaro of women working in a field and a Sisley landscape and a Courbet wall with flowers. But the highlight was Burne-Jones painting of “The Hours.” This representation of the hours of the day shows six figures engaged in six different activities from waking to sleeping. Burne-Jones seems to have had an obsession with painting the same female archetype over and over again.

Another painting that caught my eye was James Barry’s huge canvas of Juno seducing Jupiter so the Greeks would start winning against the Trojans. Juno is totally in control of this encounter with her direct gaze and fingers framing her nipple. Jupiter has no chance.

After viewing the collection, I decided to avail myself of the facilities and found a special surprise.

Walking back toward Sheffield city center, I passed a little sandwich shop and decided to pop in for a bite. I settled for the “Twisted Buttie” or bacon with Brie and mango chutney on a granary bun. So yummy!

And now I await SH sitting outside in the sunshine on a wicker settle.

Oh?

What was the surprise in the Graves Gallery’s loo?