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INTERPRETATION & EXPRESSION: ARCHAEOLOGY & ART – Peter Dunn

Sketches and paintings produced over the past 10 years by  Peter Dunn archaeological reconstruction artist, whilst working in the UK and overseas. Items from the Museums art collection are also on display, including Sentinel, from Henry Moore’s Stonehenge suite of lithographs, Avebury Restored by John Martin and works by David Inshaw and John Piper.

Peter worked as an artist and illustrator for English Heritage from 1985 to 2008,. His work in archaeology has introduced him to a world as strange, mysterious and complex as any from the imagination. Through archaeological illustrations, reconstruction paintings and drawings of the Neolithic – particularly the monuments and landscape of Stonehenge and Durrington Walls – Dunn considers that he has become involved in something far more exciting and awesome, probably the most engrossing subject of all. The aim of the reconstruction is to use available evidence and theories to create an interpretation that will inform and inspire people, from academics to young viewers, about particular aspects of the past. The results of archaeological excavations are often difficult to visualize when holes in the ground are all that is left of impressive oak posts, or plaster floors are all that survive of houses that have lost their walls and roofs. Landscapes can have changed dramatically over thousands of years, soil moved down hill by erosion and farming, the course of a river changed, there may be woodland where once it was open grassland, modern buildings and roads can confuse the view of the past.

2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the discovery of a hoard of 54,951 coins made at the site of the Roman town of Cunetio, near Mildenhall. A small selection of the coins held by the British Museum, together with the vessel in which they were found from our own collection are on display as part of Peter’s exhibition (until the end of September 2018). More details about the British Museum loan can be found on our News page.

Entry to the exhibition is included in the normal admission price for the Museum.

 

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