I have a print of this at home, it’s titled “Cow eating grass.”
I’m not sure where it is now, but the Wadsworth Atheneum has a spectacular Hudson River School collection that is on tour now. I hate modern art as much as a hate modern architecture (and I want to piss on LeCorbustier’s grave), and it was the best collection I ever saw.
Seconding the Birminham Museum of Art. They hosted the traveling Pompeii exhibit a couple of years ago, and they have a wonderful Wedgewood collection.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has been renovating, but they have an extensive collection from ancient to modern times. Plus Faberge Eggs!
Yeah, I keep trying to go to other museums when I get to New York, but it just doesn’t happen. Holy incredible collection, Batman. And I do mean holy. Practically a spiritual experience when, on my third visit, I turned a corner and saw this face to face after falling in love with it in an art history text many years ago.
To keep on the topic of the thread, if I need to wean off MoMA and see something else, which museum in NYC next, and why?
Balboa Park has plenty of “real art” in its museums. As I recall, the Timken and the San Diego Museum of Art had quite a bit of it.
The mouse is my favorite piece in the SAM! But yes, the rest of the SAM is pretty mediocre. The one I hate the most is the checkerboard tiles they have on the floor next to the glass room. None of the tiles are bolted down so every time I go, I knock one out of place just to see how long before it gets put back.
Oh, don’t get me started on Le Corbusier. Most of what he said makes no sense whatsoever (it’s universally agreed that a farm silo is more beautiful than a cathedral? In what universe?), and what little he said that did make sense (the bit about how buildings should be functional), he proceeded to completely ignore in his actual designs.
Yeah, you know, Faerie poop.
What is the mouse called? I think I found it on a youtube video–it’s a bit shaky, but it looks like what it was described. The youtube video described it as KRL Mouse.
I’m not sure about world-wide, but I’m sure the US trend toward “stunt” art exhibits is due to tax policies that favor cheaply bought art that can be “propelled to fame” by such exhibits, thus running up the “assessed valuation”, letting the supposed “donor” make money at the expense of the public. The museums go along with this fraud because if not for absurd donations, they would get even less, and thus could not sustain requests for funding.
It’s instructive that commercial art galleries, having no outside funding, are usually more fun to visit than museums, but their space is so limited you can’t make much of an outing out of a visit. Even then, the artistic merit takes a back seat to financial greed. If you admire a work they will try to tell you that it would be grand as an investment in your storage locker, not quite what the original artist was hoping for.
It’s called Mann und Maus by Katharina Fritsch
Looking at the link posted to the SAM I see that they are displaying Inopportune. That is the shittiest exhibit ever so I feel you on that, but some modern art is very, very cool. At the DMA I saw an exhibit where the sculptor did a lot of stuff in beeswax including a sculpture you could walk around inside of just so that you could be surrounded by that magical smell. It was awesome! The MOMA here gives me access to all sorts of awesome exhibits (except for the basketball in an aquarium which was also pretty dumb) and then I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for my need to be surrounded by ancient and classic art.
Re Austin, judging by stuff I see around the university and the airport, there’s a bit of emphasis on Hispanic Studies Social Realism that isn’t much too my taste.
Thanks! It’s awesome.
I wouldn’t judge a city by its airport art, but Austin seems to have a pretty good assortment at Austin-Bergstrom. Including an exhibit honoring the history of Bergstrom AFB–hardly “Hispanic Studies Social Realism.”
Nor is that unusual genre especially noticeable at the University gallery. There’s a Francisco Matto show, but he was a member of Uruguay’s famous El Taller Torres-Garcia. Again: Not Social Realism.
Which specific exhibits offended you?
San Antonio is still ahead of Austin. SAMA has a wide-ranging collection. Housed in a wonderful old brewery building, its Western Antiquities may be the best in Texas. But, oops–there’s also an extensive Latin American collection.
The Flint Institute of Arts has a Chihuly exhibit right now, plus an ancillary art glass exhibit with some lovely and provocative pieces.
Oh yay! I was poking around FIA website and learned the big Chihuly pendant in the lobby is an acquisition, not a loaner.
I like MoMA, but my favorite musuem in New York is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yes, it’s gigantic, but that’s because it’s got so much great stuff. I always leave full of awe. Of course, I can never see the whole thing in one visit.
Here is one painting by Rembrandt that I could look at for ages.
Nothing “offended” me, of course, but the stuff I encounter just reminds me that intellectually Austin tends to slide toward a bit of purse-lipped self-congratulation over its “arts” and its self-proclaimed “we’re not like the rest of Texas” liberalism, neither of which would be the tiniest blip on the radar in any city of comparable or larger size outside of Texas.
When I finally do piss on his grave I will send you a video. 