Museum of Angels

Artist Guidebook / Performative Tour
Tim Brennan (2003)
Gli Ori, London

Format:
Hardcover | Black and white throughout | 96pp | 19.5 x 11.43 cm

Overview:

Produced during Tim Brennan’s 2003 artist residency at the British Museum, Museum of Angels is a compact, poetic guidebook that takes the reader-walker on a performative journey through the museum’s vast holdings. Commemorating the institution’s 250th anniversary, the guide leads visitors through ten departments in search of winged messengers—both heavenly and heretical.

Blending historical scholarship with performative script, the work documents over 70 angelic artefacts and images, many of which had never before been connected or compiled. Whether curious tourist, esoteric scholar, or contemporary flâneur, the reader is guided through ages and empires, encountering the angelic in ancient Mesopotamia, Babylonia, classical sculpture, and Renaissance alchemy.

With contributions by:
Tim Brennan, including a foreword on angels as conceptual messengers and symbolic disruptions
James Putnam, curator and cultural historian, offering an afterword on museological angelologies

Contents include:

• A walking itinerary through the British Museum

• Over 30 black and white illustrations

• Quotations for recital in situ from religious, literary, and magical texts

• A full index of angels and winged entities across the collection

• Reflections on art, memory, and the presence of the invisible

A beautiful object and a rare archive, Museum of Angels is essential for those interested in psychogeography, curatorial practice, and embodied performance.

Condition:
New / Mint / From the artist’s archive

Price: £10 + P&P (UK / International)
(Limited availability — rare original copies direct from the artist.)