St. Louis Reborn

Saturday November 28 2009

Clocking in at more than eight hours, the drive from Ann Arbor to St. Louis is longish.  But imagine the delight to pull off the road for a pit stop in Ashley, only to learn that it is the self-proclaimed home of the Smiley Face, as witnessed by its civic water tank.  I took a photo so our own Berkshire Grown Ashley can see how a small Indiana town has commemorated her.

After a few days off of the museum treadmill, I started playing catchup yesterday.  It was a balmy 60 degrees and sunny in St. Louis, the perfect climate for visiting the miraculous City Garden in downtown St. Louis.  Located on two blocks between 8th and 10th (? or 6th and 8th?  I'm not driving so I didn't pay attention), there are several dozen Very Classy pieces of sculpture, mostly contemporary but a few early 20th century (Malliol, F.Leger). 

Here's the  F.Leger sculpture with interesting mid-afternoon shadow.  Mostly, though, the sculpture is contemporary and installed with the hope that children will enjoy the artistic experience.

 

Here's a Tom Otterness, which was covered with kids climbing on it when we left.  And here's a unexpected Jim Dine

I don't know if the pix are good enough to convey the pleasure of seeing youngsters climbing up and down the sleek lines of the Mark di Suvero sculpture, but their activity is about as far removed from typical museum experiences as is possible.  Note the native grasses surrounding the di Suvero.  The landscape of the two-block park was designed to evoke the river beds and mineral deposits of St. Louis geology.  Very Cool.

Those white spheres in the foreground (the background being THE St. Louis symbol) are lit at night, and in summer they turn into small fountains.  Also Very Cool.

City Garden features several shallow pools, and as you can see above, they're in frequent use.  This one has perhaps a dozen large stepping stones which must be a magnet for 8-year old boys who can't resist the challenge.

I'm running on about this both because it's really beautiful but more because it's a visible sign that St. Louis is finally, after way too many decades, finding itself.  My husband and I lived in St. Louis for 16 years, where both of our children were born.  It was always a very easy place to live, particularly if one lived in a classsy suburb just outside the city limits.  But by the mid-1970's, when we left, St. Louis was pretty much a shell of its former grandeur, and there wasn't much hope for it beyond the inevitable posturing by Chamber of Commerce types.  Maybe we gave up too soon, though, for now, 32 years later, St. Louis is full-steam ahead. 

Up above is a shot of Brookings Hall, once (and perhaps still?) the administration building at Washington University, where I became an ABMAPHD (h/t Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).  The early 20th century campus has grown enormously in the last few decades, but unlike the expansion there in the early 1970's, all of the recent buildings are designed to harmonize with the quaint brick structures that gave WU its academic elegance.

One of the newest additions to the campus is the Kemper Art Museum, housing the University's fine arts collection but displaying mostly its most contemporary work.  Who knew they had such an extensive collection of Fluxus artists?  Or, even more mysteriously, that the University houses the Eric Newman collection of the history of money?  Now that was really interesting.

Cranbrook

Sunday November 22 2009

Today I had a delicious brunch with Rena Zurofsky's friend Regina Smith, who lives in Troy and works at the Kresge Foundation.  After brunch we drove over to Cranbrook, which even with its art museum closed for a two-year renovation, was interesting.  Having learned a lot about Eliel Saarinen in Columbus IN, I enjoyed seeing the campus, much of which he designed.  Below is his house, which is open for tours in nice months (November not among them).

The Cranbrook Art Museum, as seen below, is under construction, but the Sciece Museum

is co-hosting shows with it so all was not lost.  A photographer, Richard Barnes, has the most unusual show mounted right now.  He photographed art museum shows as they were being mounted so the viewer can get a better idea of the work (and deceit) that goes into an art exhibition.  Who knew there was a Museum of Comparative Anatomy in Paris?  Or a Museum of Paleontology in Ann Arbor?  Or that the Musee Fragonard has how and cow skeletons?  Or that the Agricultural Museum in Cairo is so beautiful? 

Neither one of us was eager to see the show, and neither one of us could get over its remarkable images.  As we chatted up a young guard, Regina asked why there were six stags' heads facing the wall.  "All part of the concept," we were told.  A bit of humor on Barnes's part, having the stags' heads facing the art rather than outward.  And, as Regina remarked, creating interesting shadows on the wall.

Perhaps the most interesting display was of a four-part diorama of Native Americans going through the seasons.  It had been at the Cranbrook Science Museum for years but was sent to a local historical society after Native Americans objected to the stereotypes portrayed in the diorama.  Barnes learned of its banishment, and brought it back, but with a long comment from a member of a local Indian tribe, the title of which is "We Are Not Toys." 

There were a number of cases filled with animal skulls, photographs of animal skeletons, and many other fascinating images.  I'm going to try to find out where else Richard Barnes has shows because he's definitely someone to watch. 

After the Science Museum, we strolled the grounds of Cranbrook, which even on an overcast late November day is calm and beautiful.

I've spent more time with people these last two days than I have over the entire trip so far.  It's been fun to have conversations with real people and not just myself.

Art lover's delight

Friday, November 20 2009

I think the facade of MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) is funny.  It has no permanent exhibits, and today all they had were two video shows, neither of which captured my attention.  Besides, I can't imagine how this museum can compete with DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts), a few short blocks away, which has a dynamite, dropdead contemporary collection that left me exhausted and exhilirated.  DIA is a world class museum, as had been reported by friends Rena and Margaret who've been here before.  But still.  I simply wasn't prepared for its depth and breadth.

My first stop (after a nice lunch in the cafe) was to the Rivera Court, which is just as beathtaking as one imagines.  Snapshots can't do it justice, but just to give you the flavor, here are a few:

Not only are the murals magnificent, but you see them in a beautiful interior courtyard, a bit reminiscent of the Spanish courtyard at the Met.  I noticed that as people came and went, they quieted their voices whilst walking through.  It's that kind of space.

As befitting a major art museum in a city like Detroit, there is an emphasis on African-American contemporary artists.  My favorite was "Officer of the Hussars 2007," by Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977)

based on the 1812 painting of the same title in the Louvre by Gericault.  I was a bit weary in this gallery, and luckily there was a chair placed in full view of the painting, so I could rest up while concentrating on it. 

One of my favorite artists is Jeff Koons, whose three "Bread with Egg" were in a case.  Here's a shot of one of them

The little description on the case said that Koons was making a political statement by using the traditional Jewish challah with a painted Easter Egg in the center.  Whatever. 

Today I learned about the artistic movement Fluxus, apparently created in 1963, of which Yoko Ono is a practitioner.  There's a whole room devoted to Fluxus works, which are ironic in intent and reception.

Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the African-American Museum of History, which is a block away from DIA.  It's one of the friendliest museums I've been to, with guides wanting to help at every turn.  Their main exhibition is "And Still We Rise," a multi-media examination of African-American history, going way back to the earliest time in Africa.  They do a vivid, rather painful job of taking the visitor from Africa to America, and then through slavery.  The recordings that accompany the installations are jolting.  Looking at a portrait of slave owners branding their slaves is accompanied by terrifying screams.  One walks through the hold of a ship, packed with bodies.  It's meant to be creepy and unsettling, and it is.  It's also hard to go through this and not wonder how we allowed this to perpetuate itself.  It was one thing to see the illustrations of slavery, and quite another to go through the exhibits of the crimes perpetuated against blacks after the Civil War.  Sanctioned by our Supreme Court.  And our elected leaders.  Between almost wiping out Native Americans and brutalizing the slaves, we've got quite a history to reckon with.  I know we all know that, but going through this museum today reminded me of painful truths we tend to ignore in our everyday lives.

The African-American Museum is sponsoring a Genographic Project, which asks African-Americans to use a blood sample kit for personal ethnographic research.  By giving the museum a blood sample, they'll use the DNA to help recipients identify their original tribe or country of origin.  Kind of cool.

Louisville has Muhammed Ali, and Detroit has Joe Louis, to whom an exhibition space is donated. 

It wasn't all just deep thoughts from museum attendance today.  At Rena Zurofsky's suggestion, I went to the Detroit Artists' Market, also in the cultural neighborhood where I'm staying, and had a delicious time looking at the wonderful pieces of arts and crafts for sale.  Temptations ran amok also at the DIA gift shop, truly a wondrous store.

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art

Tuesday November 17 2009

It's a dark and rainy day, the perfect kind to spend in a beautiful museum.  Particularly one filled with engaging art and artifacts.  Like the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis.  Founded 20 years ago by a local philanthropist who had a lifetime interest in Native Americans and their art, the museum is beautifully designed and laid out.  But like all museums, it's the art that counts.  And as a longtime devotee of Western American art, I fell in love.

The first floor is devoted to Western American art, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Remingtons (both paintings and bronzes) and work by many other artists portraying Native Americans.  The Remington that stopped my heart is entitled "He Looked At the Land of His People and He Hated All Vehemently."  Remington painted it as an illustration for a coming-of-age tale of a young Indian hero.  The young brave looks discontently in the vast distance and you can just feel his disappointment and anger.  I normally don't spend a lot of time studying paintings but this one didn't let go of me for a while.

A second exhibition on the first floor features contemporary work by Native American artists.  About half of the work could have been painted by any talented American; that is, I couldn't discern anything that made these works "Native American."  But others were clearly influenced by the artists' ethnicity.  My favorite was one by Shelley Niro called "Unbury My Heart."  She created 500 hearts, represeting the 500 Indian tribes of this country, and linked them together with cord.  Of course many of these tribes are out of existence, which makes this a real heartbreaker.

My other favorite in this show was by Woody Guyn, a striking painting of a western landscape, with an interstate road slicing its way across the forests and streams.  I also had to look at this for a while, and thought a lot about the wind turbine issue that's so troubling to me.  We Americans have become all too good at destroying our natural resources.

The second floor of the museum is devoted to Native American art.  I was struck by the differences in the displays on the first and second floors.  The floor of Western art was filled with paintings and bronzes.  The floor of Native American art was filled with masks, cooking utensils, beaded headdresses and other ornamentations, jewelry, carvings, saddles, mocassins and other implements of everyday life.  No "fine art" for them.  I don't know what to make of the difference, but it was very striking.

As I was leaving I read a statement posted on a wall that said something to the effect that white men look at time as a river flowing onward, whereas Native Americans look at time as a pond where everything is layered.  I've got to ponder that for a while.

Breaking Away

Sunday November 15 2009

Did you see "Breaking Away," which won the Academy Award in 1979?  If yes, do you remember that it was filmed in Bloomington?  Which is where I am right now, and finding out how beautiful this college town is.  Being on campus made me feel as if I were on a movie set, so I wasn't surprised to learn that it's been hailed as one of the five most beautiful college campuses in America.

The Indiana University Art Museum, located on the IU campus, was designed by I.M. Pei.  My favorite gallery was where they displayed modern and contemporary craft work they own.  There were weavings, ceramics, jewelry, and glass, each piece elegantly mounted.  I did kind of a double take when I read the label for a brooch and saw it was designed by George Rickey.  He taught art at IU in the early 1950's and this brooch was done in 1951.  It preceded his kinetic sculptures, which are found in almost every sculpture park and garden in America, but who knew he made 6 7/8" pieces, too? 

The IU Art Museum also had a rich show of African art, several rooms with colorful weavings on the walls and platforms filled with large and elegant ceramics in the center.  All very muscular and almost intimidating in their strength.

From there to the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, where I wandered several rooms of "Images of Native Americans," drawn from their extensive Wanamaker Collection, "the largest and one of the most imortant collections of photographic enterprise in the United States."  There seemed to be an apologetic undertone to the pictorial documentation, which must stem from criticism of the stereotypes and staged nature of many of the photographs.  Stereotypical or not, they were beautiful.  And sad.

I'm staying at a lovely inn close to IU, and within easy walking distance of the charming downtown, built around a square on which sits the county courthouse.  Everything seems to be in walking distance here, including a one-block restaurant paradise with nine (!) restaurants, including Basil Leaf (Thai), Casablanca, Mandalay, International Market, Bombay House, La Dolce Vita, Siam House, Anyetsing's (Tibetan), and Anatolia (Turkish).  Just across the road on the next block are Snow House (Tibetan again) and India House.  And this is Bloomington!  I felt as if I were on St. Marks Place in the East Village.

A quick look at Cincinnati

November 6, 2009

Lucky me.  This weekend the Cincinnati Art Museum hosts its biennial "Artists in Bloom" display, with perhaps 200 floral arrangements designed for specific spots in the museum created by amateurs and professionals.  Each entrant is given a specific location for a floral arrangement and I guess the rules are that it must be compatible with the surrounding art. 

I'm not sure if the Cincinnati Art Museum is any good or not but it was an enormous amount of fun to walk through galleries featuring ancient Egyptian artifacts, African art, 19th and 20th century Impressionism paintings, a lot of  Rookwood Pottery, and a smattering of contemporary work, all decked out in art and flowers.  I couldn't stop smiling.  Or snapping pictures. 

The pix on top are from one of the African galleries, and I tried to show the flowers alone, and then as they were, adjacent to masks.  Well done!

Here is another set that really amused me:

Findlay Market, the oldest market in Cincinnati, dating back to mid-19th century, is in a poor black neighborhood.  Perhaps that's why I was one of the few white people there this morning.  There were about two dozen purveyors, most of them selling poultry or meat.  There was none of the panache of North Market in Columbus.  These vendors were selling chicken corn dogs, potato and bacon stuffed pork chops, lots and lots of processed cheese, etc.  The produce consisted of an array of pineapple, bananas, citrus fruit, and other items not grown locally.  One vendor did sell Amish meat and poultry that looked good.  And Colonel de Ray had a brilliant stand selling over 500 culinary herbs and spices (no nettles or oat straw).  I hope to go back tomorrow (Saturday) to see if there's a different crowd there on the weekend.

If you're in Cincinnati, you must visit the Joseph Betts bookstore, which I plan to nominate as the best bookstore in America.  No kidding.  It's enormous and beautifully organized.  There's even a HUGE children's store of its own.  I headed straight to the mystery section which has a larger selection than any mystery book store I've ever visited.  And then I realized why.  They don't carry just the latest title or two of productive writers--they carry the whole line!  So for an OCD mystery reader like me who needs to read the books sequentially, it was literary nirvana.  My friend Morgan recommended that I read James Lee Burke, and there they were--all of them!  And all of the George Pellacanos, who's one of my new faves.  I left very happy and a bit poorer.

Most amazing museum in Ohio

November 5, 2009

Above is a photo of the Miami University Art Museum.  Very unassuming.  Almost a cliche, at least from the outside.  But wait until you step inside!  Absolutely amazing!  Whoever curated the shows is a genius.

Three shows are up, my favorite being Composition in Black and White.  There's Pueblo pottery.  Black Wedgwood.  A black Louise Nevelson.  Black and white gowns.  Black and white photographs by 20th century legends.  And a strong representation of political works.  The most haunting is an oil by Philip Morsberger, painted when he was on the arts faculty of Miami of Ohio, entitled "Missing No. 1."  He started it as a portrait of Goodman, Cheney, and Schwener and then muted it after the world learned of their murder.  Legendary bad boy Chris Burden is represented with "Atomic Alphabet," George Bellows (one of my all-time favorites and Columbus OH native) is represented with a preacher preaching to convicts, and McCarthy winner Kara Walker a haunting silhouette "African/American."   Thom Shaw's "Drive By" hits you in the stomach with the aftermath of a driveby shooting, and a photo by Chris McNair of a bombed out southern church also hurts.

Another show, "Figure and Form," uses portraits, among other artistic expressions, to tell people's stories.  My favorite was the wall on which hung four elegant old portraits.  The fifth item on the wall was a 12' baroque mirror so you could make yourself into a portrait, too.  Cute.

I loved this museum.  I want to go back.  Its goodness makes up for my disappointment later in the day with the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center (zipped through in under 5 minutes).  The nearby Weston Art Gallery, in the Aronoff Arts Center, had better shows up.  There were three of them, all contemporary and all whimsical.  Here's a photo of an installation by Casey Riordan Millard.

Well, okay.  It's not Rembrandt, but it's also not video "art."

I'll close for today with two facts about Ohio you probably don't know.  1)The only whistles made in America are produced in Columbus.  2)Margaret Bourke-White started her career in Cleveland, photographing machines and industry.  It's been that kind of day.

Roseville pottery

November 3, 2009

The whole point of visiting Zanesville was to pay homage to the Ohio region where American ceramics of the early and mid-20th century flourished.  My Ohio-born friend Mary Pat said that this region was a mere shell of its former self, but I chose not to listen to her warnings.  Wrong.

Despite the general malaise that hangs over Zanesville, its  Art Museum is filled with beautiful Roseville and Weller pottery pieces, many of which I lusted over.  Viewing these magificent pieces made me realize the vast difference between museum pieces and those listed on Ebay.  Oh well.

Although there's a lot of pottery stores in the area, the few I visited were filled with loathsome junk.  It was so depressing that I simply fled to Columbus, where I'm lodged in a sweet B&B in the heart of the Short North District, the center of the arts in Columbus.  Must be about a dozen galleries within walking distance, many of them specializing in crafts.  Nice.

Between Zanesville and Columbus I listened to "This American Life," Ira Glass's hilarious NPR program.  My friend Eric burned some CDs of this program for my listening enjoyment, and I thank him for that because this one made me laugh out loud. 

Whilst leaving Zanesville, I stopped to get gas and saw a sweet looking diner across the road, to which I repaired for an early lunch.  Only after I sat dow at the counter did I realize that this was not a real diner but a Denny's with a whole new look.  I studied the menu carefully, noting that the only unfried item on the menu was grilled tilapia, which I ordered.  Came with a bowl of chicken noodle soup.  Both the soup and the fish tasted like chemicals--very unpleasant.  Perhaps I'd have been better off with a burger and fries?  Heavy on the fat but maybe fewer chemicals?  Contrast the nasty soup and fish at lunch with dinner tonight at a sweet Greek taverna nearby.  The best bowl of avgolemono soup in months, and delicious salad.  Tasted like real food.  I felt something like a lab rat tasting franchise food and real food in one day.  Thank buddha for the latter.

Happy birthday BZ.

Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio

October 29, 2009

Day Two of the Adventure started out with much hope for the theoretically repaired GPS, but within half a block of the Wilson's I realized it still wasn't working.  Luckily I was only about a half mile from a Target, where I bought a new GPS, a thoroughly unanticipated and not happily made purchase.  Tonight I have to figure out how to use it, a project I'm dreading.

You probably didn't know, as I hadn't until Tuesday, that the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio was established in 1919 as the first museum dedicated to American art.  And it's a beautiful gem of a museum.  There's the usual early American, Western art, mid- to late-19th century art, and a tour de force of 20th century work.  My favorite piece Raphael Soyer's "My Friends," painted in 1948 and donated to the museum in 1963.  His brother Moses Soyer is featured in the painting, and Raphael's back is to us ont he right.  Why my favorite?  My grandson Soyer is named for him, and seeing the artist's name gave me a thrill.  Unfortunately the gift shop doesn't carry a post card of the painting. 

A "super realist" sculptor, Marc Sijan, has a large show up there and it's fascinating.  Very lifelike figures, many humorous, and a few kinda scary in their real-ness.

I wouldn't recommend going to Youngstown just to visit the museum, but if you're in the vicinity, it's a lovely spot in an otherwise rather dismal city.  I was reading up on the settlement of Youngstown, sittuated in an area of vast natural resources.  Unfortunately, the only way to profit from those resources was extraction, and now the city is poor and much-diminished.  Gives me pause about what it must be like in West Virginia.

I did't have printed directions to Cleveland, but decided just to follow road signs to get there.  I called the Glidden House, where I'm staying, to make sure they had a room for tonight, which they did.  Despite numerous phone calls to the Inn, and the help of various and sundry police officers, it took me well over an hour to find the place.  Which means now I have to learn how to use the new GPS.  Ugh.