Been awhile since I did this one. Tell me about the best museum visit you had this year. I was thinking of excellent exhibits, but if there was something else that made for an awesome experience, that’s fine too.
I got to visit several museums with Doper friends and their company made for an exceptional experience, but I have to go with two others–both art museums–for my tops.
Let me preface this by saying I’m not a very learned art fan. I love art museums, but I’m a dilettante when in comes to art. I like what I like, and blow by the rest. I don’t have any scholarly reason for liking what I like. Anyhoo, both if these “tops” had me admiring art I didn’t like before.
#1: The National Gallery had an exhibit of Frederick Remington’s “Nocturnes.” They are night paintings, depicting scenes from the old west as was his usual subject matter. No one had brought them all together for an exhibit like this before, and the Gallery did a fabulous job. They painted the walls a deep blue-purple (it inspired me to get the interior of my house painted later this year) and lit the paintings beautifully. They were really breathtaking. I’m not a big Remington fan (well, the sculptures I like, less so the paintings), nor a big western art fan, but it was hard to tear my eyes away from these things.
#2: Then, my husband and I visited The Kreeger museum in DC. It’s a private museum, off the beaten path, so neither of us had been there before. It’s a private residence whose owners builts it to show off their art collection, with the intention to leave it as a museum after their deaths. It was neat seeing great art in that setting, but in the library I was blown away. The security guard had opened the door to the patio to let in a breeze. I found myself looking at a Picasso, no one else around, in complete natural light, with the sound of birds singing and a breeze in the trees. I have never been really fond of Picasso’s style–any of his styles–but I found myself really liking this painting. I think seeing it as it was meant to be seen was one thing. And it was the singularity of the experience. I like museums but they are a sterile way to view art.
I’m hoping the most memorable will be tomorrow, which is (ahem) my birthday. Rather than sitting around waiting to be feted, I decided to organize an outing for a whole passel of friends – we’re going to go to the Mutter Museum (medical oddities, associated with the College of Physicians), then down to South Philly for pizza. This should kick everything else in the butt for “fun.”
“Sublime”? A little moment – sitting on the main stairway at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (a place I know every nook and cranny of), waiting for a friend, looking – really looking – at the huge Calder mobile there, something I’ve seen approximately a billion times.
Is he the Remington who did the little sculptures?
Best thing I’ve seen at a museum in ages was Ron Mueck at The Museum of Contemporary Art which is well worth your time. They have an exhibit of Tracey Moffatt’s photos on now, replacing Wim Wenders.
Sometimes they have the building full of crap but usually there is some fascinating stuff. It’s a much ignored part of Sydney. Enter the site, go to search and just enter a.
Dino Birds at the Natural History Museum in London.
Several very important and fascinating fossils from China were loaned to said Museum for a special exhibition on - basically - how birds evolved from a feathered group of dinos (known as theropods to their friends!).
2. The Science Museum’s “Lord of the Rings” exhibition.
WOW!!! Well worth the £10-odd to get in!! The exhibition had EVERYTHING any fan of the films could ever wish for!!!
Next up is a trip back to the NHM for the TRex: The Killer Question exhibition…
By far my favorite museum trip this year was on October 18: The Vatican Museum. The Sistine Chapel was of course the piece de resistance, but the rest of the place was, in a word, awesome.
The second favorite was in Florence, don’t even remember the name of the museum, we just went in to see the David. Snapped my picture in front of him, that was pretty much it. But it was cool to see him in real life, he’s just HUGE!
Musée D’Orsay in Paris this summer. They had an exhibition about early photography. Also, contrary to other art museums where I feel overwhelmed, this was just the right size. I was able to see things I liked without getting a visual overdose.
Earlier this year I went to the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, and I liked it.
And last Sunday I went to the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, but not to see the art. They had a bomba (typical Puertorican music) presentation. Great performance, I loved it.
Cincinnati’s newly constructed Contemporary Art Center is fantastic, and its opening exhibit was just stunning. I went back over and over. They don’t have any permanent works, so the stuff I loved, I’ll now probably never see again.
My favorite was a sound installation- a room containing only about a hundred speakers, each installed on a stand at about mouth level. They were playing one of those complicated pieces of renaissance religious music, and each speaker projected the voice of one singer. So you could stand in the middle and hear this stunningly beautiful music, or you could walk slowly around the room, your ear near the speakers, and hear each individual voice and how it fit into the whole.
There were other wonderful things, but that was my favorite.
Although I didn’t see what I had really wanted to see, I saw extremely amazing and beautiful things at the Louvre in Paris during a two-hour long search for the Code of Hammunrabi exhibit, which turned out to be closed that day. I was absolutely amazed at their collection of Greek and Roman artifacts and sculptures.
I know it’s corny, but there it is: I went with my wife to the Louvre, and it really is incredible. Not the Mona Lisa (take it or leave it), but some of the incredible exhibits of Phonecian art. There was one with the eyes outlined, still, from more than six thousand years ago. The sheer antiquity of it. That long ago, and people spent the equivalent of lifetimes making art.
I’m not much of a museum goer, but this past year I had the pleasure of visiting the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. If there are any dopers that live within driving distance, I urge you to make it there. The exhibit offers a timeline of the difficulties faced by blacks living in the south post slavery.
Honorable mentions to the Book Depository in Dallas and the Lyndon B. Johnson museum on the UT campus.
Two for me: seeing the Chagall exhibit at SFMOMA with a good friend from school, and spending hours just talking about what we were looking at.
And, going back to see Chagall with my lovely wife and spending a long time in the Diane Arbus exhibition.
We also spent a wonderful afternoon in the Art Institute of Chicago, saw a lot of early modern stuff from Picasso and Matisse and stuff. Saw Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein after spending a lot of time reading and talking about Stein. It was awesome. and not to be Chagall-centric, but i could look at his stained glass exhibit at the Institute every day.
I have gone to two museums this year: the New York State Museum in Albany, New York and the Brookshire’s Museum in Tyler, Texas. The NYSM was fun, but since I’d gone there often as a kid it didn’t really stand out in my mind. The Brookshire’s Museum, on the other hand, is just a Hall of Dead Animals that the owner/founder of the Brookshire’s grocery store chain shot on one expedition or another. I suggest visiting it in concert with the Caldwell Zoo, also in Tyler, so you can compare examples of several of the African animals both living and dead.
There’s a few very amusing poses caused by poor taxidermy or simple poor planning; one scene intends to show some sort of gazelle being attacked by a lion, but the gazelle was stuffed first in a standard calm standing mode, staring peacefully off into the distance while the RAGING SCREAMING JUMPING LION hovers two inches off its butt in a rather lewd pose…
I caught a few hours of the Riksmuseeum (sp?!) in Amsterdam. We didn’t have much time, so we spent a few euros on the “greatest hits” headphone tour, which was absolutely fabulous. Most paintings in the “gotta see it big painting gallery” (I’m not sure about the rest of the museum - part of it was closed and as I said we had not much time) had a number, which punching in called up a bit on the painting on the headset, and then it would say something like “To learn more about Dutch politics in the 17th century, press 174. To learn more about still life, press 146. To learn more about the artist, press 173.” It was really well done, and their sheet of “20 Essential Pantings” was excellent.
And then we went to the Anne Frank museum, which was… difficult.
I must say that the freaking enormous gay pride parade on the canal outside the Anne Frank museum added a lot to the experience that was quite relevant.
I got to see a complete set of Presidential portraits on loan from the National Portrait Gallery at the VA Historical Society, and also saw the Virginia Treasures from the National Portrait Gallery exhibit. I’m looking forward to the Van Gogh/Gauguin exhibit that’s coming in March.
I spent the day at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, England and it was unclviny heaven! (sadly there was a large fire a few months later damaging or destroying over 600 bikes, many were one off’s or historic machines).
My wife and I were in Chicago this past summer and hit a lot of galleries and museums.
The top three were the Field Museum, which had an absolutely amazing Northwest Indian exhibit among other wonders; the Museum of Contemporary Art (which strikes me as something of an oxymoron), where I saw an amazing show by photographer Thomas Struth; and the Art Institute, which had the best Impressionist collection I’ve seen in the U.S. along with tons of other amazing stuff (one side room was devoted exclusively to Man Ray, Duchamp, and dada in general).
Of the three, I think my favorite was the Art Institute; we gave it four hours and I felt hugely rushed. I could have spent the entire day there, easily.
