an art museum, and a day of life
Jun. 25th, 2009 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraToday I woke up and got pretty much the necessary word count for the day, and then I went out.
I hadn't been there for a while, and while some of the exhibits had changed, others hadn't. There are rooms in that museum that scare me, and I have to admit I would have been happier if it had been a time when there were more people in the museum, so that it wasn't just me standing there rereading a plaque on the wall, trying to decide if I was going to walk through the room that freaked me out or not, while the museum guard paced through the rooms. (I did, by walking through quickly, and it wasn't as bad as I'd thought.)
The new exhibit was The Quick and the Dead. The website says it's an exhibit of conceptual art, and "as Sol LeWitt asserted in 1969, conceptual artists are 'mystics rather than rationalists.'" There were some pieces of art that I thought were awesome. Other pieces were not so awesome, but all right. The sound pieces were mostly the ones that freaked me out or startled me or were creepy. Again, I deliberated on whether or not to enter a room, and was profoundly unhappy, this time, that I chose to enter it. It's quite possible I would have enjoyed it more with other people around.
Upstairs, there was an exhibition of one Tomás Saraceno. The exhibit's called "Lighter than Air", and the pieces were large and all-encompassing and SFnal and profoundly delightful. A very large change from The Quick and the Dead, and one that I was very very happy about. (I would recommend this exhibit, for people in the Cities. It's two rooms and an outside terrace, but it is lovely.)
And then, having seen new things that scared and delighted me, I went down to the lower floors of the museum, where they keep their permanent collection, and had fun there, too. I can't remember if I have talked in this LJ before about Dolphin Oracle II. It's awesome. I ask it questions in German, because its answers to questions in German are much better than its answers to questions in English. I got to indoctrinate a teenage boy (at the museum with his mother) into the wonders of Dolphin Oracle II; as they left, he said, "Man, I could ask that thing questions for hours!" It's addictive.
Museum'd out, I wandered across the street to the sculpture garden. I also love the sculpture garden. When I was smaller I thought it only went to the Spoon and Cherry sculpture. Now my favorite parts are past that: the forest of trees with windchimes hanging in them; the walkway of flowers, chosen for their looks and not their scents; the gazebo with its roof flung high above in joined wire frames, hanging from it alphabet magnets--numbers, letters, a zigzag of lightning, Pi--and stone sculptures, a turtle, a chair, a ladder.
When I got home, I had a package of books on the doorstep: a present for my mother's birthday (I don't know if she reads this, but if she does, I would hate to find out that she does by spoiling what her present is) and Palimpsest for me. So I curled up in a chair and read Palimpsest, and now I am perfectly content, perfectly happy, with the sun and the early summer breeze coming through the window, and I am writing this post.
I hadn't been there for a while, and while some of the exhibits had changed, others hadn't. There are rooms in that museum that scare me, and I have to admit I would have been happier if it had been a time when there were more people in the museum, so that it wasn't just me standing there rereading a plaque on the wall, trying to decide if I was going to walk through the room that freaked me out or not, while the museum guard paced through the rooms. (I did, by walking through quickly, and it wasn't as bad as I'd thought.)
The new exhibit was The Quick and the Dead. The website says it's an exhibit of conceptual art, and "as Sol LeWitt asserted in 1969, conceptual artists are 'mystics rather than rationalists.'" There were some pieces of art that I thought were awesome. Other pieces were not so awesome, but all right. The sound pieces were mostly the ones that freaked me out or startled me or were creepy. Again, I deliberated on whether or not to enter a room, and was profoundly unhappy, this time, that I chose to enter it. It's quite possible I would have enjoyed it more with other people around.
Upstairs, there was an exhibition of one Tomás Saraceno. The exhibit's called "Lighter than Air", and the pieces were large and all-encompassing and SFnal and profoundly delightful. A very large change from The Quick and the Dead, and one that I was very very happy about. (I would recommend this exhibit, for people in the Cities. It's two rooms and an outside terrace, but it is lovely.)
And then, having seen new things that scared and delighted me, I went down to the lower floors of the museum, where they keep their permanent collection, and had fun there, too. I can't remember if I have talked in this LJ before about Dolphin Oracle II. It's awesome. I ask it questions in German, because its answers to questions in German are much better than its answers to questions in English. I got to indoctrinate a teenage boy (at the museum with his mother) into the wonders of Dolphin Oracle II; as they left, he said, "Man, I could ask that thing questions for hours!" It's addictive.
Museum'd out, I wandered across the street to the sculpture garden. I also love the sculpture garden. When I was smaller I thought it only went to the Spoon and Cherry sculpture. Now my favorite parts are past that: the forest of trees with windchimes hanging in them; the walkway of flowers, chosen for their looks and not their scents; the gazebo with its roof flung high above in joined wire frames, hanging from it alphabet magnets--numbers, letters, a zigzag of lightning, Pi--and stone sculptures, a turtle, a chair, a ladder.
When I got home, I had a package of books on the doorstep: a present for my mother's birthday (I don't know if she reads this, but if she does, I would hate to find out that she does by spoiling what her present is) and Palimpsest for me. So I curled up in a chair and read Palimpsest, and now I am perfectly content, perfectly happy, with the sun and the early summer breeze coming through the window, and I am writing this post.
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Date: 2009-06-27 03:59 pm (UTC)