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Category Archives: museums and art
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
I could not find the membership table inside – the museum is being renovated so is a little disordered but I was very confused that the ticket guy didn’t want my money. So Titian’s naked ladies will have to wait until my next visit.
My favorites were the Sargents and his peers- Late 19th Century American. Such sharp and shining work. In the past I have discounted him because he’s from Massachusetts, I thought maybe that’s why we liked him. But in fact he’s really good.
There is a creepy buddha gallery made at the turn of the 20th century to be an appropriate home for the appropriated buddhas.
Outside of that there were these beautiful large screen paintings: Showa Sophistication, Japan in the 1930s
"digital art=lazy" thinks carina
still from video "Air Guitar"
Simon Schama= Most Dramatic Deadpan Art Historian
I couldn’t stop watching. I think it’s probably needlessly overdramatized crap, but the paintings are so awesome.
Posted in museums and art, TV Review
Tagged caravaggio, sunday night channel flipping, tv
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
If it’s going to rain and act like April/November all summer, I’m going to check out a lot of museums.
The ICA is in a 2004 Diller/Scofidio/Renfro building directly on the Boston waterfront, adjacent to the Fan Pier. The city has been pouring money into this area and there are a bunch of empty condos, refurbished factories, parking lots- it has an unfinished look to it and it was a strange foggy day. I stood on the large windy deck of the museum and looked down into the Harbor and saw the unmistakable movements of a transparent jellyfish. Then I knew I was in a Swedish movie for the day. (PS. there was also a cormorant. Take that East River!)
I enjoyed the Shepard Fairey exhibit way more than I thought I would- When you look at it all together, the artist’s rabblerousing intentions and mastery of marketing imagery are overwhelming. As a N.E. kid, I’ve been seeing those stickers since they started but had never thought much about the motivation behind them. And the colors, icons and imagery just plug directly into all the little preprogrammed circuits in my brain, pleasing and confusing.
My favorite other piece you can see a still from up there. It’s a short film by Javier Tellez called Letter on the Blind, for the Use of Those Who See. Tellez took a group of blind New Yorkers into McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, with a live elephant. Each person spent some time with the elephant, touching, smelling and hearing it. The filmmaker recorded it in gorgeous black and white, the tentative exploring hands of the people on the rumpled skin of the elephant, with a commentary by each person. So interesting.
Posted in museums and art
Tagged art review, ICA, javier tellez, museums and art, shepard fairey
N.E. Aquarium= Starfish Auschwitz
penguins
Visiting sites of childhood wonder can be a disappointment. The structure is the same. And the joy of seeing anemone and seadragons up close. And the controlled shock from seeing a glassy eyed nurse shark coming round the tank.
But experience reveals other things:
- No one working there looked over 23 years old and they had the dead eyes of strippers as they voiced in monotone the scripts regarding sea turtles and harbor seals, or as they tried to feed the sickly looking penguins, or as they supervised the children squeezing to death starfish and urchins in the “tidal pools.”
- The crush of young parents and children queuing up to pay $20 a head had a startling number of neck tattoos.
- Although the whole place smelled dispiritingly of a public bathroom, what on earth would convince a young mother to diaper her baby on the public floor five feet from an OPEN SHARK TANK!!
Posted in museums and art
The Saint John’s Bible at the Walters Museum
My friend Dr. Kate Gerry co-curated an exhibition at the lovely Walters Museum and gave me a personal tour pointing out all the best bits. The Saint John’s Bible is a new illuminated manuscript on vellum commissioned by a monastery in Minnesota and executed by the best contemporary calligraphers and artists. The new work is on display along with historical manuscripts and examples of calligraphy from a variety of cultures. At right you see a butterfly from the marginalia which is native to the part of Minnesota where the Bible was commissioned. It is an excellent exhibition.
One of my favorite parts was in the children’s area- a video of a contemporary calligrapher in the Turkish style, the scratching of his handmade reed pen on paper the only sound as the letters curved and twirled like figures dancing.
This sort of craftsmanship is not easy to find- in the U.S. today we do not have too many monasteries where you go to learn a particular art. And Kate pointed out that while the scholarly aspects of the medieval monastery are handled fairly well by contemporary academia, they handle the charitable works not at all. Those are left to non-profits. Where you do the work, but without the ideology to excuse the low pay- and without, often, the beauty to balance it. Interesting.
Gardner Museum Report
As instructed, I did not take photos at the museum, but someone on the internet did- so you can see the beautiful courtyard here. This is a wonderful and strange museum. It is very much one woman’s vision and in that way reminded me of The House on the Rock. Many of the galleries were dark and totally packed with treasures with little explanation or continuity. But there were also marvelously light filled galleries- but the paintings I wanted to study were hung rather high- or in the case of the stunning El Jaleo by Sargent
rather low, although in a room designed around it. There is currently a special exhibit on Gardner and Asia- she turns out to have been a bit of a whaddyacallit- Sinophile? Into Asia and Buddhism? But since she was sort of into everything it doesn’t seem like a particular fetish. As per usual I did zero research before museum club, instead allowing the museum to wash over me like part of a documentary found flipping through cable. I think next time I will do more research in order to appreciate the museum better. And possibly be more charming company- although Cathy and I had a lovely time eating old lady food in the little cafeteria.
A note on El Jaleo- this painting is roughly life sized and hits you right when you walk into the museum. Standing right in front of it gave me the feeling of euphoric dancing, as if at your own wedding, where you feel you are absolutely within the perfection of the moment and projecting light from all the pores in your body. You can almost smell the spicy sweetness of the room.
Posted in museums and art
Boston Museum Club
It’s on. This Saturday me and my new friend Cathy and whoever else wants to come will be going to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Maybe the Grenhams, who share my passion for the nytimes audio slide shows, will come and help me make one? They turned me onto the amazing Bill Cunningham’s style pieces. He is your wonderful gay uncle in Manhattan.
Let me know if you want to meet up or if you have special advice on this museum.
