Museums update

CJ loves museums (obvious enough if you read these pages). The Met in NYC is one of my all time great experiences. No change after our recent return visit although I didn’t feel the sheer overwhelming pleasure of our first visit. But the pieces are all so impressive and the breadth so wide that my breath is still taken away. Visit a room of numerous Rembrandts and you have the idea.

This time we visited the American Museum of Natural History and I was distinctly underwhelmed. We saw an incredible special video display in the Planetarium on dark matter / dark energy. It’s AV but impressive. Gems / minerals was good (some incredible crystal and gem samples and the Star of India sapphire); paleontology was informative (and my eye doesn’t identify casts from real skulls); the dinosaur skeletons were impressive. Otherwise, I got the feeling this was mostly AV and models which is mostly available on the Net. And it felt strangely out-of-time with models of peoples of different cultures, but (did I miss them?) no Euros. We visited the Guggenheim Museum. It’s famous for its snail-like design by Frank Lloyd Wright and I understand its core collection is of the French impressionists. We saw a selection of this era, most spectacularly Picasso's Woman Ironing. The main space was given over to an exhibit of Italian Futurists and that’s a movement I’ve wondered about; interesting. We also visited the Frick Collection. Frick was another art-collecting industrialist who donated his house and collection to the city. Not a big museum, but a gem. One room particularly stood out (the Living Hall), but all had impressive or stunning works. Lots of recognised images here. Apart from furniture, the Living Hall displays Bellini’s St Francis in the Desert, Holbein’s pair of St Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, El Greco’s St Jerome and a pair by Titian, Pietro Aretino and Portrait of a man in a red cap. That’s just the paintings. Otherwise, Piero della Francesca, Goya, Gainsborough, Rembrandt, including another self portrait, Renoir, Vermeer, Turner, Whistler. I was particularly taken by a Fontana Workshop Majolica dish of the judgement of Paris, a small enamel plaque by Limousin, thought to be of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, and a wonderful table described as “Italian or French, Long Center Table with Columnar Supports and Animal Masks, 16th and 19th century”. There’s more but you get the drift. A stunning collection, nicely accessible and a short visit.

My take at this stage of NYC museums visiting: Met, unmissible; MOMA and Frick, do it; Pierpont-Morgan, impressive; Guggenheim, for lovers of Impressionism; Natural History, especially for the kids. The pics are a mix from the Met and Natural History Museum, except Giovanni Bellini, St Francis in Ecstasy, 1480-85, from http://collections.frick.org/Obj360$369 via WikiCommons.

Museums

We also have a great love of museums and this trip was an opportunity to visit a few of the world’s great collections. Nothing was much planned and there was limited time and some museums unexpectedly disappointed while others were stunning bliss to walk through. In Washington DC, I was bowled over by the National Gallery of Art and the Air and Space Museum and I loved the quirky little Folger Shakespeare Library with its world’s largest collection of First folios (4 on display on the day). The National had very good collections of mediaeval/enlightenment European paintings and modern portraiture. In the foyer alone of the Air and Space museum were John Glenn’s Mercury capsule, the Gemini capsule used for the first space walk, the Apollo 11 command module, the first private spacecraft, Goddard’s pioneering rocketry and much more. And you touch a bit of moon rock. Stunning. You can touch Mars rock in the Natural History Museum. I was disappointed by the American History Museum and the American Indian Museum was an unusual offering that was enlightening through a unique approach.

NYC was just MOMA and the Met, although there was so much more. MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) was stunning, of course, with famed pieces around each corner, sculptures that seem to recur (how often have I seen one or more burghers of Calais?) and a fascinating temporary exhibit on interfaces and design. The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) was just a day lost in bliss. Incredible collections that were as much archeological as artistic. It means nothing to say I was stunned by the Egyptian, Roman, Greek and Mediaeval collections. The American collections, the Art Deco, the Middle East were less known to me but wonderful. A feature are the many rooms that have been purchased and rebuilt here: two from Pompeii, from Florence and Gubbio, Frank Lloyd Wright, many others, and a whole Egyptian temple that was saved from the Aswan Dam and gifted to the US. We spent ~8 hours and just touched the surface of this superbly presented and incredibly rich collection.

We were lucky to catch a string quartet playing at a cafe in the Met. It was led by Beryl Diamond Chacon (violin) with Nelson Palgett (piano), Regis Iandiorio (violin) and Makisol Espada (cello). We heard the first set of waltzes and pleasantries, although there were some less common pieces there: J Strauss but also Friml and DeLibes. Beryl was offering more substantial music later but the collections called. These were capable players. Beryl spoke lightly of studying at Julliard years before, and her offsiders were no slouches. Lovely music in a stunning environment.

And the architecture is another beauty. Just one pic of two favourite buildings in NYC: the American Radiator Building and the canonical Empire State Building.

This is CJBlog post no. 700.