Having a very well-traveled mother brings big advantages--like being able to corral her to submit items for your blog. Since she's been to many places farther afield than me--Russia, Morocco, South Africa--she has a much more eclectic top ten list than my earlier one. Hope you enjoy it. And, um, thanks Mom!
1. Ephesus Museum, Selcuk, Turkey, has exhibitions by
local artists in a side room. Area suffered a severe
earthquake since. (museumgeek comment: The statue of Cybele/Artemis is wild. The area may have been settled by Amazons, a tribe of female warriors.)
2. Galerie Damgaard is Essaouira, Morocco. Owner of this
"museum-shop" came here, I believe, from Denmark and
never left. Promotes work by local artists. Extremely
colorful, fanciful work. Interesting article in Travel & Leisure here.
3. Musee de Marrakech, Morocco, temporary exhibitions on
contemporary art and heritage museums. Hosts concerts,
theatre, films, etc. Musical instruments, hamman,
workshops, library, cafe.
4. Sculpture and theme gardens around back side of Table
Mountain in Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa. Garden
for the blind, water pathways garden, sculpture
garden. Takes all day. Concerts held.
5. The Drostdy Museum, Swellendam, Western Cape, South
Africa. The Drostdy was built by the Dutch East India Company in 1747.
6. Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens, on a winding
street. of apartment-like housing. It may have a # on
the building, but is hard to find. A gem. Spiral
staircase goes up 5 floors, 3d is the Holocaust part.
Upstairs 4 & 5 to establishment of Israel. Very well
done, just a counter or two to shop; a prayer corner,
just so well done. tele. 47.73526568.
7. I thought I remembered a Holocaust Museum in an old
fort near the water in Oslo where you wound thru a
horrific underground museum, but all I can find on the
internet is the Jodiske Museum in Trondheim, and it
looks just like a large building. ????
8.Back to Greece, Athens - The Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry
Museum. Yes, it would be nice to link to something in order to see the jewelry, but the links are being persnickety.
9. Villa Imperiale, ancient Roman villa at Casale at
Piazza Armerina. Sicily. Incredible mosaics, room
after room. You follow a "boardwalk". Lightly visited,
but so gorgeous. Makes you feel you were right there.
10. A marvelous and refreshing modern art museum right
next door to the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia,
Palazzo Abatellis Museum, Palermo, Sicily, in a large
square. Everyone else in our group went to the big
museum; I found this jewel by the chance opening of a
door.
11. Newark Museum, NJ. Great collection of Chinese art,
beautifully painted Tibetan Temple blessed by Dali
Lama; Japanese art, American art and traveling
exhibitions, like the Aztec ball park; also the
restored Ballentine home, Victorian (just like my
Nana's house).
*Okay, like mother, like daughter. She listed 11. Now I will do my daughterly duty and try and find links for those entries!
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
And now for something completely different...
As an alum of the Time Inc. magazine empire and of the Time-Life Alumni Society, I get an occasional newsletter with news of what ex-Time Inc.-ers are up to. A recent newsletter noted that a former person from Time magazine's editorial side, Ina Saltz, has published a book called Body Type: Intimate Messages Etched in Flesh, which is described as "the first book on typographic tattoos." (Hey, it's still art, just of a different sort. And on skin. Hmm.) The item also mentioned that she signed books at the "Inkslingers Ball," the world's largest tattoo convention. As a financial journalist, I know all about The Predator's Ball, the book by Connie Bruck, (who has a great article about microcredit in this week's New Yorker), but this event sounds far, far more interesting, if, perhaps a little scary for a non-tattoo type, whatever that means. If that isn't worthy of a New Yorker Talk of the Town piece, I don't know what is!
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Thanksgiving in Prague
A friend of mine has started a brilliant tradition of taking international trips every Thanksgiving. Last year it was Vienna, the year before it was Berlin, and this year it is Prague. Work permitting, I may join her and report back. Does anyone have favorite museums to recommend, large or small, or churches with art of sculpture that blows them away? Any great outside urban art that shouldn't be missed? Smaller art/photo galleries that you like?
Sunday, October 22, 2006
What are your Top Ten (or Twelve) museums?
Here is a Museumgeek Top 10*
1. Borghese Gallery, Rome
2. Villa Farnesina, Rome
3. The Frick Museum, New York
4. The Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice
5. The Metropolitan Art Museum, New York
6. The Barnes Collection (in its original building)
7. The Victoria & Albert Museum, London
8. Musee d’Orsay, Paris
9. Topkapi Palace, Istanbul
10. Museum of Modern Art, New York
11. The Getty Museum, Los Angeles
12. And since I’m already over my limit: The American Visionary Art Museum, in Baltimore, MD
*Okay, it’s 12. And it’s certainly not in order because I love them all for different reasons. The list is inevitably shaped by facts like—I have only been to Barcelona in Spain (loved the rooftop sculptures at the Miro Foundation) and so have not seen the Museo Nacionale del Prado, and the last time I went to the Louvre was far too long ago. Same for San Francisco, which might qualify with its modern art museum. Also, this is missing many great Washington, D.C. museums like the Renwick Gallery, the National Gallery, the Phillips Collection, and so on, but I had to be ruthless. Please write in with your Top Ten (or Twelve).
Next up: Top Ten Museums Yet to Visit
1. Borghese Gallery, Rome
2. Villa Farnesina, Rome
3. The Frick Museum, New York
4. The Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice
5. The Metropolitan Art Museum, New York
6. The Barnes Collection (in its original building)
7. The Victoria & Albert Museum, London
8. Musee d’Orsay, Paris
9. Topkapi Palace, Istanbul
10. Museum of Modern Art, New York
11. The Getty Museum, Los Angeles
12. And since I’m already over my limit: The American Visionary Art Museum, in Baltimore, MD
*Okay, it’s 12. And it’s certainly not in order because I love them all for different reasons. The list is inevitably shaped by facts like—I have only been to Barcelona in Spain (loved the rooftop sculptures at the Miro Foundation) and so have not seen the Museo Nacionale del Prado, and the last time I went to the Louvre was far too long ago. Same for San Francisco, which might qualify with its modern art museum. Also, this is missing many great Washington, D.C. museums like the Renwick Gallery, the National Gallery, the Phillips Collection, and so on, but I had to be ruthless. Please write in with your Top Ten (or Twelve).
Next up: Top Ten Museums Yet to Visit
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Goldsworthy in Gotham
Here is the tongue-in-cheek Goldworthy story I threatened to throw up here in my latest post. Be forewarned that it's a little long, especially because I'm doing something wrong with the paragraph breaks. Please write back with your own ideas for urban artworks a la Goldsworthy.
"Good art keeps you warm." -Andy Goldsworthy
"...I prefer works that are fashioned by the compromises forced upon me by nature, whether it be an incoming tide, the end of a day, thawing snow, shriveling leaves or the deadline of my own lifetime." -Andy Goldsworthy, in Time magazine
"Good art keeps you warm." -Andy Goldsworthy
"...I prefer works that are fashioned by the compromises forced upon me by nature, whether it be an incoming tide, the end of a day, thawing snow, shriveling leaves or the deadline of my own lifetime." -Andy Goldsworthy, in Time magazine
Earthworks artist Andy Goldsworthy has been called the Christo of the woodlands. The Scottish artist with the engineering background is a master at framing the world around him in new and inventive ways. But in some ways, he is also the anti-Christo, relying on natural materials near at hand for his transformations of the mundane into the marvelous. Rather than lobby for 10 years to wrap the Reichstag in burlap or to outline an island in pink nylon, Goldsworthy uses a day to painstakingly create an elaborate layored whorl of twigs on a riverbed, only to see the sculpture/structure lifted up and carried away hours later by the rising tide.
It takes a unique talent to do things like fuse icicles into shimmering loops using nothing but your imagination, cold hands and warm breath. But as an earthworks artist, Goldsworthy has it kind of easy. When you live in a quiet Scottish town, as he does, natural materials are abundant. Find a pile of twigs and you're set for the afternooon. Have a yearning to get creative using sheep's wool? Just walk on down the road to your friendly neighborhood sheepfarmer.
What if you're an earthworks artist in Manhattan? Sure, there's Central Park, not to mention nature preserves in the outer boroughs. Even there, though, the forces we contend with when we want to create Goldsworthy's kind of art in Manhattan--the Police, Central Park groundskeepers, the occasional potential mugger, aggressive vagrant or simply obnoxious passerby--are more intrusive than tides, and the consequences can, unlike Goldsworthy's often ephemeral creations, be lasting (say, resulting in an arrest record, injury or long-lasting hit to one's wallet via a fine).
That said, we have our own abundant resources to tap in our great city. Here is one urban earthwork artist's plan to make use of the natural abundance of objects found on New York streets and subways.
Abundant resource No. 1: Those circular metal Metropolitan Museum of Art entrance tags. Over years of visits, of having friends give me their tags and of picking up fallen tags in and around the Met, I have 120 tags in colors ranging from deep red to seafoam green.
The canvas: The grand staircase leading into the Met, of course. But 120 tags don't go as far as you might think, since they're less than an inch in diameter. With no natural fixative at hand to glue a parade of tags in a solid line up and over the steps I simply place the tags, one on each stair, in a stepping pattern--one on the right, then on the left on the step above it, and so on. I follow the color spectrum, with navy tags first, then the greens, the pinks, the oranges, the bronze, and on through the final light yellow tag.
Like Goldsworthy, I start early--my tags are in place by 8:00 am and I've photographed my work for posterity. It is now time to watch the human tides sweep my art away as visitors climb the steps to the museum.
Abundant resource No. 2: Cigarette butts, the urban equivalent of leaves.
The canvas: Central Park's Great Lawn, where the butts will be placed end to end to create a giant spiral, perhaps reminiscent of whirling smoke, or snails, or of curling into a protective fetal ball.
Like Goldsworthy, I am working against time. My foes: Central Park groundskeepers in golf carts, insistent and indignant would-be athletes, and vagrants who appreciate my efforts but appropriate the larger cigarette butts. That, however, is part of the natural decay of the sculpture and thus fitting. It would just be nice if they'd wait until I was done. At 9:00 pm, when a large crowd of rowdy young men assemble around me and the sculpture I decide that an oncoming tide would be far more reassuring than an oncoming wave of hyperactive teenagers and leave the park.
Abundant resource No. 3: Advertising inserts from the New York Times. These, it seems, are a growing resource. With the help of a few of my new homeless friends and one of their large wheeled canvas laundry bins, I quickly acquire a prodigious mound of inserts.
The canvas: Again, Central Park's Great Lawn, but this time the stand of majestic elms that line the lawn. Using water from the pond beneath Belvedere Castle mixed with the backwash left in soda and beer cans found throughout the park, we create a paper mache meduim with which to cover the bottoms of the trees. The liquid left in the cans and bottles is human sap; the inserts are being reunited with the form from whence they came. It is a beautiful thing.
Alas, the Central Park groundskeepers do not see it this way. Nor do the policemen who ask about permits. My helpers have scattered like the wind, so I alone disassemble the work--again completing a cycle of life and death.
It takes a unique talent to do things like fuse icicles into shimmering loops using nothing but your imagination, cold hands and warm breath. But as an earthworks artist, Goldsworthy has it kind of easy. When you live in a quiet Scottish town, as he does, natural materials are abundant. Find a pile of twigs and you're set for the afternooon. Have a yearning to get creative using sheep's wool? Just walk on down the road to your friendly neighborhood sheepfarmer.
What if you're an earthworks artist in Manhattan? Sure, there's Central Park, not to mention nature preserves in the outer boroughs. Even there, though, the forces we contend with when we want to create Goldsworthy's kind of art in Manhattan--the Police, Central Park groundskeepers, the occasional potential mugger, aggressive vagrant or simply obnoxious passerby--are more intrusive than tides, and the consequences can, unlike Goldsworthy's often ephemeral creations, be lasting (say, resulting in an arrest record, injury or long-lasting hit to one's wallet via a fine).
That said, we have our own abundant resources to tap in our great city. Here is one urban earthwork artist's plan to make use of the natural abundance of objects found on New York streets and subways.
Abundant resource No. 1: Those circular metal Metropolitan Museum of Art entrance tags. Over years of visits, of having friends give me their tags and of picking up fallen tags in and around the Met, I have 120 tags in colors ranging from deep red to seafoam green.
The canvas: The grand staircase leading into the Met, of course. But 120 tags don't go as far as you might think, since they're less than an inch in diameter. With no natural fixative at hand to glue a parade of tags in a solid line up and over the steps I simply place the tags, one on each stair, in a stepping pattern--one on the right, then on the left on the step above it, and so on. I follow the color spectrum, with navy tags first, then the greens, the pinks, the oranges, the bronze, and on through the final light yellow tag.
Like Goldsworthy, I start early--my tags are in place by 8:00 am and I've photographed my work for posterity. It is now time to watch the human tides sweep my art away as visitors climb the steps to the museum.
Abundant resource No. 2: Cigarette butts, the urban equivalent of leaves.
The canvas: Central Park's Great Lawn, where the butts will be placed end to end to create a giant spiral, perhaps reminiscent of whirling smoke, or snails, or of curling into a protective fetal ball.
Like Goldsworthy, I am working against time. My foes: Central Park groundskeepers in golf carts, insistent and indignant would-be athletes, and vagrants who appreciate my efforts but appropriate the larger cigarette butts. That, however, is part of the natural decay of the sculpture and thus fitting. It would just be nice if they'd wait until I was done. At 9:00 pm, when a large crowd of rowdy young men assemble around me and the sculpture I decide that an oncoming tide would be far more reassuring than an oncoming wave of hyperactive teenagers and leave the park.
Abundant resource No. 3: Advertising inserts from the New York Times. These, it seems, are a growing resource. With the help of a few of my new homeless friends and one of their large wheeled canvas laundry bins, I quickly acquire a prodigious mound of inserts.
The canvas: Again, Central Park's Great Lawn, but this time the stand of majestic elms that line the lawn. Using water from the pond beneath Belvedere Castle mixed with the backwash left in soda and beer cans found throughout the park, we create a paper mache meduim with which to cover the bottoms of the trees. The liquid left in the cans and bottles is human sap; the inserts are being reunited with the form from whence they came. It is a beautiful thing.
Alas, the Central Park groundskeepers do not see it this way. Nor do the policemen who ask about permits. My helpers have scattered like the wind, so I alone disassemble the work--again completing a cycle of life and death.
Abundant resource No. 4: Abandoned plastic subway Metrocards
The canvas: the Metropolitan Transit Authority river. Yes, there is a river that snakes its way throughout our city. It is the unsung subway track waterway, that narrow tributary nourished by rain and urban fluids on whose banks we stand every morning.
After collecting Metrocards off of the floor and from the tops of the broken card-reading machines, I use gum scraped off the 86th St. & Lexington Avenue subway station floor as a natural fixative and connect these once valuable Metrocards in a chain that I set upon the river. It is reminiscent of leaves wending their way down a river, at least for a brief moment before it snags on a wadded up gum wrapper.
This final artistic effort ends in near-tragedy. One person ventures from the river's edge into the river itself, seemingly driven mad by the beauty of my long daisy chain of Metrocards. The police arrive, confiscate the artwork and myself and introduce me to a new urban environment: a holding cell. I'm sure I'll find stuff here to work with.
The canvas: the Metropolitan Transit Authority river. Yes, there is a river that snakes its way throughout our city. It is the unsung subway track waterway, that narrow tributary nourished by rain and urban fluids on whose banks we stand every morning.
After collecting Metrocards off of the floor and from the tops of the broken card-reading machines, I use gum scraped off the 86th St. & Lexington Avenue subway station floor as a natural fixative and connect these once valuable Metrocards in a chain that I set upon the river. It is reminiscent of leaves wending their way down a river, at least for a brief moment before it snags on a wadded up gum wrapper.
This final artistic effort ends in near-tragedy. One person ventures from the river's edge into the river itself, seemingly driven mad by the beauty of my long daisy chain of Metrocards. The police arrive, confiscate the artwork and myself and introduce me to a new urban environment: a holding cell. I'm sure I'll find stuff here to work with.
Googling for Goldsworthy
A search for recent news about the artist led to artnet.com, where you can browse Goldsworthy photos, and, if you subscribe, supposedly get information about what his photos sell for. One photo of a project dated January 2006 is pretty cool--it's titled "Elm branches and mud, raining, Townhead Burn, Dumfriesshire." I guess it's good that Goldsworthy doesn't try to come up with more abstract titles for his work, which could risk sounding too precious and cute--sort of like, uh, coming up with post titles like "Googling for Goldsworthy."
Another artist an acquaintance mentioned when I brought up Goldsworthy was Mark Dion. I checked him out on artnet.com and was disappointed. He does these assemblages of household objects that in no way have the resonance and elegance of Goldsworthy's stuff. Creative, yes, but not on the same order, in my opinion. Someone also mentioned Lizzie Farley of Scotland--??
Question of the day: What other artists' work reminds you of what Goldsworthy does? And if you could create a Goldsworthy-type work in an urban setting, what would it be and what would it be made of? I'll share an idea in the next post.
Another artist an acquaintance mentioned when I brought up Goldsworthy was Mark Dion. I checked him out on artnet.com and was disappointed. He does these assemblages of household objects that in no way have the resonance and elegance of Goldsworthy's stuff. Creative, yes, but not on the same order, in my opinion. Someone also mentioned Lizzie Farley of Scotland--??
Question of the day: What other artists' work reminds you of what Goldsworthy does? And if you could create a Goldsworthy-type work in an urban setting, what would it be and what would it be made of? I'll share an idea in the next post.
Welcome to Museumgeeks
If you could quit your job today and do whatever you wanted to do, what would it be? My easy answer to that question: travel the world and discover its museums, large and small, quirky and established, roadside or mansion-sized. I want to start a site here where we can all share our discoveries on our travels, in the U.S. and overseas.
I also hope we can get creative ourselves, in mapping out and sharing our own suggested itineraries of museums. Why stick to the guided tour? We can come up with our own itineraries for tracing Diego Rivera's work and influence in New York, or for tracking Andy Goldsworthy's progress across the American museum landscape (last I saw of him was his permanent creation at the National Gallery in Washington). Or pick and map out a theme from a few suggested by a friend who will be helping with this site:
-The Top Ten Homeliest Daughters of Wealthy Art Patrons
-The Top Ten Best Pictures of Artist Mistresses
-The Top Ten Pictures that Got Their Creators in Deep *&!$%!
-Great Paintings: The Re-Dos (pictures that were rejected and had to be redone because of unhappy patrons, an outraged art world...)
Want to share an idea for a theme? Post away! And thanks!
I also hope we can get creative ourselves, in mapping out and sharing our own suggested itineraries of museums. Why stick to the guided tour? We can come up with our own itineraries for tracing Diego Rivera's work and influence in New York, or for tracking Andy Goldsworthy's progress across the American museum landscape (last I saw of him was his permanent creation at the National Gallery in Washington). Or pick and map out a theme from a few suggested by a friend who will be helping with this site:
-The Top Ten Homeliest Daughters of Wealthy Art Patrons
-The Top Ten Best Pictures of Artist Mistresses
-The Top Ten Pictures that Got Their Creators in Deep *&!$%!
-Great Paintings: The Re-Dos (pictures that were rejected and had to be redone because of unhappy patrons, an outraged art world...)
Want to share an idea for a theme? Post away! And thanks!
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