Bridges of beauty and utility
On the “Bridge” exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands…
We’re heading west along the river on a bright June morning. Towards the prow of our Thames Clipper, under the aegis of the Museum of London, an excitable Dan Cruickshank is singing the praises of a city both divided and united by the Thames – and marvelling at the bridges that leap from shore to shore. “Audacious interventions”, the architectural historian calls them. He’s not wrong.
For by what other method might we walk on water? You could swim across a river if you had to; you could take a ferry boat, too: but it’s hard to carry anything while you doggy-paddle, and as for ferries, if the weather’s bad or the river ices up, you’re stuck. As we cruise towards Vauxhall, the MI6 building squatting glassily on the south bank, Cruickshank points out the spot where the remains of London’s earliest bridge were found: timber piles dating back to the Bronze Age, 3,500 years ago. A millennium and a half had passed before the Romans built the first real London bridge. “Without that crossing, there would be no London,” he says.
So it’s fitting that the newest exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands is simply called “Bridge”. Following on from the success of last year’s“Estuary” show, “Bridge” will be the largest art exhibition ever to be staged at the museum and is a showcase for its remarkable collections and original commissions. It is a reminder, too, that bridges are those rarest of industrial constructions: works of utility that are nearly always beautiful and quite literally uplifting for those who encounter them.