Nottingham Contemporary Gallery Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Nottingham Contemporary Gallery - Essay Example This makes the area, overall, a better place to live for everybody, while increasing property values. This project examines whether this was the case with Nottingham after the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery came into the area, which had the aim of transitioning the neighborhood from the industry of lace to an area that is more based upon innovation. The results of this project, along with a literature review and conclusion, is the focus of this paper. Literature Review Lace Quarter and Nottingham Contemporary Gallery Then and Now The Nottingham Contemporary Gallery is part of a unique landscape, in that it sits in an area where the alluvial Trent Valley meets a sandstone bluff. Nottingham itself became a part of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, its primary product being lace. According to Matthews (2008), Nottingham became during this period of time the world centre for the lace trade, because skilled engineers were able to make lace machines, and the buildings w hich surrounded the Town Hall became the lace market. This was the area where the merchants could congregate, because it was close to warehouses and sales offices. Mason (2004) writes that during the peak of the lace production, which was around 1810, that there were up to 1,800 frames which were knitting the net that would become known as â€Å"Nottingham Lace.† The major groups of warehouses that created this lace was at Hounds Gate and Castle Gate, and around St. Mary’s Gate (The lace industry waxed and waned during the early part of the 20th Century, and entered a decline in the 1930s (Matthews, 2008). With the decline of the lace industry came an overall decline of the area surrounding the site of the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery. Therefore, there became a need to re-use this site, and the arts centre, and the city living apartments planned around it, was the idea for this new use (Matthews, 2008). Meanwhile, the old buildings which served as lace warehouses du ring the height of the lace era have been re-used as flats, bars, offices and colleges. These are the buildings which remain in the physical core of the Lace Market, and the buildings that remain are large and distinctive, marked by Victorian architecture, an architectural type that came to be valued in the late 1960s, therefore the buildings came to have historical significance (Ferris, Long (2009) states that the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery, which is at the heart of the urban renewal for the area, is a gateway for the city. The NCG â€Å"draws an extraordinarily large swathe of the city into visual dialogue† (Woodman, 2009, p. 12). The Lace Quarter is still visible to tourists and residents alike, and the gallery borders this quarter. The building itself was built in response to another type of legacy, that of contemporary art, which is appropriate, considering that Nottingham has a vibrant art school and a history of performance art. The building itself was designed to reflect the physical character of the site, which means that it would reflect the sandstone bluff and valley upon which it sits, as well as reflect the architecture of the grand buildings that served as the lace warehouses (Administrator, 2009). Moreover, the gallery is not just a gallery – rather, it is an arts centre, with a connection to the local arts community. The curator of public programmes, Rob Blackson, ensures the gallery’

Criminal Law doctrine and women who kill Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Criminal Law doctrine and women who kill - Essay Example Thus when women do not conform to the male-dominated sex role expectations of what it is to be a good wife, good mother and therefore a good woman, they are then considered to be 'doubly deviant' and punished for both their legal infringements as well as their refusal to conform to the female gender behaviour. This becomes all the more relevant while considering that the bulk of female homicides involve the killing of those closest to them that is, their spouses, lovers or infants thereby contradicting all concepts of motherhood, wife and woman. She further writes that when women kill it is typically not to terminate violence on their part, nor to gain any power over their male partners. Instead it is usually an attempt to get some degree of final and desperate control and relief for themselves from their abusive partner especially at that point when they realise that their very life is being threatened. Patricia Pearson, Toronto based author of the hard-hitting book on female violence When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, says women get off the hook for violent crimes because society will not admit they can be predators. According to her some women are getting away with murder simply because they're women. She argues that legal defences, portraying the murdress in a battered-women's syndrome, and misogynistic attitudes are giving some women a social licence to kill and be violent because society considers it too intimidating to admit that women can be capable of ruthless crimes just like men. She writes that society would rather think ofviolent women as hopeless, weak or child-like creatures more likely to have been abused or being simply crazy. To prove her point she gives the example of women like the wicked Karla Homolka, who was guilty of helping to kidnap, sexually torture and kill three teenage girls, including her own sister. However, after winning a plea-bargained 12-year sentence she sat happily in her prison cell reading the books Battered Women and Perfect Victim. "It worries me when people begin to feel entitled to use violence because they've bought so deeply into the idea of their own victimization," Ms. Pearson said during an interview. "The whole idea of learned helplessness is, you're so helpless you can't walk out the door and therefore, somehow, you're able to discover the strength to shoot the guy in the head. I think a larger number of women than we realize get away with murder for a whole number of different reasons." "We don't want to take female violence seriously because I think we have our hands full with male violence and I think that we have an idea of women as being the people that you go to for your shelter. Out there in the mad and dangerous world at least you can go home at night to a sweet and comforting hearth. We can't accept the fact that we can't go home to a safe house." Ms. Pearson is highly critical of some feminists who, according to her, are trying to keep the issue of female violence hidden. This allows society to avoid admitting that women, like men, can commit violence for an elaborate variety of reasons, and not simply on account of madness or in self-defence. This also permits these feminists to continue depicting women as sufferers rather than predators. The silence on the issue, she says, is making sacrificial lambs out of men who are victimized by violent spouses, mothers and other women. "These guys are pariahs because we're