End of the Road

Friday, December 11 2009

The 2009 biennial road trip adventure is officially over, clocked in at 4,932 miles.  Except for the blizzard near Buffalo, driving conditions were universally satisfactory.

Nothing exemplifies the passage of six weeks as much as before/after pictures of my greenhouse. 

This is "Row One" on October 25.  Here is it on December 11

The yellow thingie is a white fly trap, which Michael Johnson installed a week or so ago.  The other rows in the greenhouse exhibit the same amount of growth. And indicate that I'll be eating well in days to come. 

Bye.

The unofficial end to a splendid trip

Tuesday December 8 2009

My 2009 biennial road trip adventure is unofficially over, cancelled because of illness and nasty weather conditions.  I'm not home yet, but the fun-filled adventuresome activities are behind me.  Now it's just trying to feel better and making it home despite threatening weather.  I've enjoyed an amazing trip, collecting many vivid memories to see me through the brutish Berkshire winter.  TTFN 

And the winner is...City Museum in St. Louis

Saturday December 5 2009

I don't know how many museums I've visited in the last few weeks, but it's been a lot and most of them were wonderful in different ways.  Trying to list my favorite would be, I thought, like choosing which of my two children is "best." 

But St. Louis's City Museum stole my heart.  It's a kids museum, but "kids" ages are defined as roughly between 1 and 100 years.  It's the most hilarious, idiosyncratic, noisiest, funkiest museum I've ever seen, and I can't wait to return. 

I wonder if my immediate seduction by the museum is because it's completely recycled.  Nothing in, on, or around  it, including the building itself, is what it was meant to be.  Bob Cassilly, the genius sculptor who created the museum in downtown St. Louis 10 years ago, bought the old International Shoe Company building and with the help of 20 artisans who are still working on it, created the zaniest space one can imagine.  As you walk up to it, you see a school bus perched on the roof; despite it's positioning, kids play in it all the time (although I can't imagine how parents can watch).  Up on the roof there's also a ferris wheel.  Adorning the building are two Saber 40 aircraft fusselages, a fire engine, a castle turret, a 25' tall cupola, and various 4' wide wrought-iron "slinkies" with kids crawling around in them. 

After you pay $12 for admission (plus another $6 for the new aquairium and another $5 for entrance to the roof), your instincts take over.  And you just gape.  And laugh.  And if you're a kid sliding down one of the eight or so slides, you're screaming, too. 

The entire floor on the entry level is made of beautifully designed sea life with handmade tiles from California.

Note the clear glass eyes in the fish--through them you often see children's hands as they reach up from the "enchanted caves" that used to be International Shoe's special conveyor system for its products.  I didn't slide down the hole because I suffer from claustrophobia, but I could tell from the shrieks coming from down there that the kids thought it was pretty spiffy.

The marine life imagery of the first floor was desiged because the building was originally going to be the home of the city acquairium.  Life got in the way of that plan and the acquairium didn't get there until recently, but it must feel right at home with all of the sea life imagery everywhere.

There are thousands of decorated spindles that make up the stairway from first to second floor.  Intricately decorated architectural pillars are everywhere  The one above is made of old watch bands.  I don't think the watch bands are visible, but they're what make up the stripes.

The Skateless Park is where kids can swing from ropes, balance on a 76' long pencil, bounce off walls, do other child-like activities.  There's a Circus room where acrobats, gymnasts and jugglers perform every day, and where the museum holds its "circus classes" for kids.  On the same floor there are enormous rooms where kids can do their own art.  One of the rooms posted a sign “Japanese Doll Making at 2.”   Have I mentioned the treehouse, the belly of a whale for exploration, an old bank

vault, and a '60's memorabilia section.  Around the building one finds a Wurlitzer pipe organ, old chimneys, salvaged bridges, a room full of preserved insects, and so on and so forth.  There are many slides for either

sliding or climbing, like this one.

 For grown-ups, there are hundreds of architectural elements, many of them from Louis Sullivan buildings.  Not to mention walls made up of old printers' type. 

A St. Louisan who collects vintage opera posters donated some dozens of them that now hang in a hugely vaulted hall with opera recordings playing continuously.On the second floor there's a shoelace factory where you can buy not just shoelaces, but bracelets and keyrings and zipper attachments and other shoelace tchtchkes being made by four old shoelace machines from the old shoe factory.  It's worth noting for folks my age that this is the same International Shoe company building where Tom (later Tennessee) Williams worked while he wrote "The Glass Menagerie." 

We saw dozens of school groups walking around with lists.  I snuck a peak at one of the lists and discovered the kids were there on scavenger hunts.  Sample questions:  "How many blue minerals are on the stone pillar,? " What recycled material is used to fence off the puking pig?," "How many red spindles are on the right side of the staircase,?" "How many panels of butterflies are in the insect room?"  Cute.

I can't do City Museum justice, so if you want to "visit" it, go to citymuseum.org and look at their pictures.    Better yet, go to St. Louis and see for yourself.  It's quite the sight.

Random observations

Tuesday December 1 2009

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was one of this country's most prestigious newspapers for over a century.  Now it's worse than the BEagle.  I realize that Thanksgiving Day is not a big news day, but consider the headlines above the fold from the Post-Dispatch last Thursday.  "Sweet success after dog raid," "Holidays in flux for military families," and "Shopper planning to score big deals."  None of these stories is morally reprehensible or counterfactual, but are they news?  Nope.  Even the Kansas City Star is newsier and more dignified than the once mighty Post-Dispatch.

Two years ago a group of reporters and editors from the Post-Dispatch who were bought out by the paper formed an online daily, the St. Louis Beacon (stlbeacon.org).  It reads like the old paper did--newsy and thoughtful.  I wonder if theirs is the model for "newspapers" of the future.  Because surely the current Post-Dispatch isn't. 

"The best restaurants in the world are, of course, in Kansas City."  So began Bud Trillin's life-altering "American Fried," still a bible for those like me who crave authentic food.  And his favorite restaurant then was Arthur Bryant's, where the men behind the counter slap white bread on a plate and then load it up with bbq ribs or pulled pork or bbq chicken or rib tips.  They slather the sauce on from a battered old metal bowl, and then pass the plate down the line to receive french fries or potato salad or cole slaw or baked beans.  You order a beer or a Coke and sit down at one of the 20 or so tables to gobble up the best bbq in America.  At least that was my memory. 

And I'm delighted to report that Arthur Bryant's hasn't changed an iota.  Well, yes it has; now there are branches but if one goes to the original, which one must do, it's exactly as it was 30 years ago.  And just as delicious.  I didn't want to report this without visiting twice, just to make sure my memories were correct.  After ribs last night and pulled pork tonight, I can reassure Arthur Bryant fans that all is the same.  Phew!

I'm staying at an inn about 2 blocks from the famed Country Club Plaza, the first suburban shopping center built in America.  Erected in 1922, it's about 6 square blocks, built in Moorish style, and must be as lovely today as it was way back when.  What's particularly fun about being here now is that all the stores are lit with red, green or white lights outlining the building curvature.  It's like walkig through a fairyland.

It's still up-to-date in Kansas City

Tuesday, December 1 2009

On the left is Myra Siegel, my friend Penny's roommate in her freshman year at Newcomb.  They've remained friends lo these many years, and I visited her and her art collection this morning before going out for lunch.  Thomas Hart Benton was a friend of her father-in-law, and he painted a huge mural for the family department store, Harzfeld's.  That mural is now in the American wing of the Smithsonian, but Myra and her husband have a small oil of it hanging in their family room:

Imagine this scene 24' long.  I couldn't get the details clearly so you can't see the figures, but most of them were drawn from Myra's husband's family.  They have a goodly amount of Benton memorabilia, which is fun particularly if you're a longtime Benton fan like me. 

Touring her house today was the second time in just a few days that I've been blown away by fascinating collections people amass.  My friend Mary Sprague in St. Louis is a long-time collector of stuff.  I walked around her living and working quarters looking at collections of wooden feet, Indian dolls, Japanese dolls, contemporary ceramics, beaded necklaces, wooden horses, toy animals of all kinds, African masks, rubber band thingies, antique paintbrushes, trompe l'oeil furniture, clay figures...and so on and so forth until your eyes and your mind shut down from sensory overload.

Same with Myra's house, replete with folk art from all over the world  Fruit baskets from Spanish markets, Egyptian artifacts, folk art from all over Latin America, Native American goodies, Eastern European wood carvings, plastic beads from Mardi Gras, minerals, antique English game boards, Irish animals, Cambodian and Laotian crafts... and so on and so forth.  Not to mention all the serious art.  Makes one breathless.

Well, this was a first.  I've never been warned not to bring a gun into an art museum before, but there you see the evidence.  This was my introduction to the Nerman Museum at the Johnson County Junior College in Overland Park, KS.  It's a lovely building with good-size, well-lit galleries.  I couldn't take pictures of a temporary exhibition (too bad because the work by Agathe Snow is fabulous), but I did snap a sculpture created by a South Korean made of military dog tags.  Very striking.

Today I also visited the Kemper Contemporary Art Museum, opened here in KCMO in 1994.  I'm staying about two blocks away from the Nelson-Atkins Museum (their main art museum), which is about two blocks from the Kemper, and we're all just a few blocks from Country Club Plaza, built in 1922 as the first suburban shoppping center in America.  Quite the cultural nabe.

This spider graces a lot of the publicity for the Kemper, but I prefer the "Crying Giant" by Tom Otterness.

 

Art from a Siberian Prison Camp

I don't think I can give the experience the justice it deserves, but on the Saturday after Thanksgiving I had one of the most momentous artistic moments in my life.  My pals Penny and Mary and I paid a visit on Marian Steen, a St. Louis artist who's also a friend of my friends.  Here's a picture of the four of us when we had lunch at O'Connell's two years ago.*

Marian inherited two old battered suitcases packed full with 294 pictorial images created in a World War I Siberian prisoner-of-war camp. The prisoners were officers from central Europe (Austria, Hungary, etc) who were in the prison camp for four or five years. Because they were officers, they were able to buy their own food, furniture, and art supplies. Some of them even hired servants. But, still, they were prisoners. In Siberia.

During their years as captives, several of the artistic officers created watercolors, pencil sketches, silhouettes, and even two oils of their experiences. There are drawings of laundry hanging on clothes lines, interiors of the barracks, prisoners at meals, in bed, exercising, playing cards--that sort of thing.  There are also satirical drawings of the guards and their living conditions.  Food scarcity became a serious issue so there are drawings of prisoners fighting the cooks.  There is one excruciating drawing of a prisoner comforting a comrade who has just been sentenced to death.  In this one there are six corpses hanging from nooses in the background.

The drawings are mostly quite small, typically 6" x 6".  They are done almost entirely in the German Expressionism style of the period. 

One prisoner, an Austrian engineer, managed to take them with him upon his release. His daughter and son-in-law snuck them out of Austria when they escaped to America in the late 1930's and kept them under their bed until their death in the late 1990's. They were willed to Marian, a daughter of their lifelong friends, and she has taken on the huge responsibility of trying to insure that these unique pieces stay together in a location where they can be useful for artistic and historic education.

Several years ago, Marian and her husband Rick Knox mounted a show, "Drawings and Paintings of World War I Internees of the Krasnovarsk, Siberia Prison Camp" in St. Louis. At the same time they engaged an art historian to inventory the collection. As part of that process, there's now a book of all the art work, many of them reproduced in full because of their small size.

Once the collection was appraised (for a lot), Marian and Rick stored it in a fireproof safe while they figure out how to make sure that they end up in a suitable place.  I just reread this and realize I'm not able to convey the enormity of the experience of seeing this obscure record of life in a Siberian prison camp.  Looking through the drawings is both fascinating and horrifying.  The task of insuring that this body of 294 drawings remain together is enormous.  I'm rooting for Marian to find the right home for this work.

* In the photo from left to right, Marian, Mary, me, Pemy

Sleeping in Mary's Studio

Monday November 30 2009

St. Louis is perfectly splendid.  Visiting friends there was terrific, as were the many delicious meals I ate in favorite old haunts and new ones that dazzle.  Part of the time I stayed with dear friend Penny, who owns a comfortable condo in suburban St. Louis.  It's a "normal" place, one you can find your way around in because it's built like most other homes.  You know, the kitchen in the kitchen, next to the dining room.  Bedrooms upstairs. 

Then part of the time I stayed with another good friend, Mary Sprague, who lives and works in her multi-floor 4,000 sq ft loft in downtown St. Louis.  Living quarters on one floor, the studio above.  Guests sleep in a desk that folds out to a bed in the studio.

Although her building is only three stories, it's industrial enough to be a reasonable facsimile of SoHo.  I particularly liked riding on the industrial elevator.  Even though the building isn't tall, there's a lot of privacy because the neighborhood was once a manufacturing and display sort of place, and the surrounding buildings aren't very tall.  So unless you don't like light, it's fun to keep the shades up all the time.  I felt quite cosmopolitan changing clothes in full view of...the sky. 

Mary's studio is in a part of north St. Louis that is still recovering from the devastation wreaked upon the inner city since the end of World War II.  I wouldn't necessarily want to cruise the streets there at night, but in the last few years a number of restaurants and night clubs have opened near her building.  I wish I could describe how much fun it was to sleep in a working studio.  The images are wonderful.  And I have a real crush on turpentine's aroma.

Here are two views of the walls I studied before going to sleep:

I've enjoyed my time on the road by myself, but I must say that spending almost a week with good friends was quite a special treat. 

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.

"Pirate Radio"

Wednesday November 25 2009

Today my old friend Penny Stein and I saw "Pirate Radio."  What a wonderful movie! 

Between the long drive from Ann Arbor to St. Louis, and the holiday tomorrow, artsy visits will have to wait.  Although this afternoon I spent time at the studio of my dear friend Mary Sprague, a noted St. Louis artist.  I'll be staying at her studio over the weekend, and will post pix of her funky and highly individual living quarters and studio. 

Hope everyone has a tasty Thanksgiving.

Zingerman's

Monday, November 23 2009

Now I can die happy.  For I have had a corned beef on rye sandwich at Zingerman's Delicatessan in Ann Arbor.  And the earth moved.

Now that that's out of the way, I'll bitch about institutions that don't update their websites. The Motown Museum was closed on Friday due to a party, but the website reported it is open on Mondays. However when I showed up this morning at 10, the sign said Open 10-5 Tuesday-Saturdays. Drat.

So I got to Ann Arbor earlier than anticipated, and used the time to visit Nicola’s Books, a large and inviting book store run by a woman who’s obviously a savvy retaier. The space is probably larger than the Bookloft, the Bookstore, and Water St Books combined and then some. All of this real estate allows her to feature books faceout on shelves and tables, enhancing book lust even when one knows better. I figure that such a store can exist in Borders’s home town only because Ann Arbor hosts a major university.

I met my former boss and his wife at their posh digs on E. Huron St (one of main drags), about 2 ½ blocks from the campus. They retired here almost 17 years ago, and have made a lovely life for themselves in this culturally rich community. We had a lovely lunch and long catch-up chat.  Very nice visiting with them.

We didn't have lunch at Zingerman's because it was beyond mobbed when we arrived, but later in the afternoon I cased the joint.  Who knew it was so small? From avidly reading their catalogue over the years, I imagined it to be huge, perhaps the size of the Fairways on 73rd in the old days. But no. The place is tiny.  (See pix above)   But it’s packed. I mean really packed. There’s dozens of beautiful olive oils and perfumed vinegars, along with thousands of jars and boxes and bags of marinated peppers, olives, jams, peanut butters, nuts, rice, beans, pasta, licorice, teas, coffees, biscuits…my mind went numb from sensory overload.

And that's not even icluding the breads, and cheese, and deli goods.  I counted 14 varieties of olives in the deli case.  OMG.  I returned later to have dinner there (the aforemetioned corned beef sandwich), where one eats at "Next Door," a somewhat large space so folks can "eat in."  I forgot to mention that the pickles made me want to cry. 

Despite the Motown disappointment, an altogether lovely day.

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.

Pewabic Pottery

Sunday, November 22 2009

Thanks to Dan Shaw, I read Bob Herbert's op-ed about Detroit in the Saturday NYT.  It begins,

"In many ways, it’s like a ghost town. It’s eerily quiet. Driving around in the middle of the afternoon, in a city that once was among the most productive on the planet, you see very little traffic, minimal commercial activity, hardly any pedestrians."

This is the same Detroit I wrote about on Friday when I described the pleasures of visiting the compelling African-America museum and the world-class Detroit Institue of the Arts.  After reading Herbert's op-ed, Dan wrote to say I sounded like Pollyana.  I told him that Herbert is correct, but that I'm not wrong.  Because I'm staying in a neighborhood  in the heart of the "cultural district."  And when they say cultural district, they're not exaggerating.  There is the African-American Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Science Museum, the Detroit History Museum, the DIA along with its Film Centre, the Detroit Public Library, not to mention Wayne State University.

This former mansion is on the corner of Woodward and E. Ferry Street (I'm staying on Ferry Street and Woodward Avenue is the main North-South artery of Detroit). Once a private home, it's now CPA offices.

This is the main building of the Inn on Ferry Street, where I'm staying. The Inn is actually five buildings that all look like this one, with high ceilings, lots of paneled wood, and elegantly appointed rooms.

This is a neighboring building of the Inn, illustrative of the elegance that characterized "midtown" when it developed in the last 19th century.  It is still quite impressive, although I don't think any of the buildings are actual homes any longer.

My new Detroit friend, Jane Duggan, whom I met through our mutual friend Margaret Hunt, lives in Lafayette Park, the largest Mies van der Rohe neighborhood ever built.  It's in Detroit proper, about a mile from Lake Detroit.  There are 4 groups of 46 units each in this complex, built from 1956-1959.  There's also the Pavilion built behind one of the complexes (see below) and two other residential Mies towers nearby

This picture is of Jane's apartment, one of ten in that building.

Each unit is 2-stories with a full basement.  Neighborhood boards decide on what can be planted outside, what type of renovation plans are acceptable for the apartments, and other things that co-op boards are wont to do.  Lafayette Park was built in the 1950's as an integrated community, and remains so today.  What was considered integration in the mid-1950's, racial, has been expanded to include single-sex and multi-racial families. 

I guess what I'm trying to tell Dan is is that in the macro sense Bob Herbert is right.  Detroit is a financial, industrial and polticial disaster with problems so severe the city may never recover.  Nonetheless, there are some bright spots around town that give one hope that maybe, just maybe, it's not the absolute disaster we think it is.  There are neighborhoods where young professionals with young children are moving in and changing the tenor of the local schools.  Serious attempts at greenways running through the city are succeeding.  Belle Isle, the heavenly island in the middle of the river that is to Detroit what Central Park is to NYC, is well cared for and well used.  There's a lively arts community. And extraordinarily good, decent people who are rooting for it. 

So yes, driving down Woodward, the north-south main drag, is spooky.  Where are all the people?  Why is an 8-lane road bereft of cars?  Will they ever be back?  The good news is that however down on its heels Detroit is, it's light years ahead of Cincinnati, which wins my prize for worst, most dismal, most fraudulent American "city."   Cincinnati's "downtown" is dominated by far too many interstate exchanges soaring above normal streets, far too few streets a pedestrain can cross without fear of dismemberment or death, too may huge stadiums dominating too few blocks, far too few reasons to even go downtown except to be disappointed.

But this is about Detroit, not Cincinnati.  So let's cut to the chase.  On Saturday, the highlight was visiting Pewabic Pottery, one of the oldest pottery companies in Detroit, and still one of its finest.  The building has two stories, the top one being the museum with early versions of the pottery that took the world by storm.  Because Christmas is almost upon us, some of the museum space was given over to work by younger artists, which, luckily, were on sale.  On the first floor, most of the space is devoted to Pewabic Pottery, which still uses its muted colors in tiles of all sizes and shapes, and vessels of many shapes and sizes.  This was the perfect place to buy presents, which I did with a determination I evince in the proper circumstances.  Without intending to sound too crass, I would like to return to Detroit, partly to revisit the DIA and partly to spend more money at Pewabic Pottery.  Those who know me will understand.

Before Jane and I left dinner, we asked the hostess to take a picture of us.  Here we are:

Jane was a mechanic with USPS, and is running in a hotly contested union election that won't be determined until Wednesday.  As the eldest of 11 siblings, she has scores of nieces and nephews.  She's a descendant of Irish-Americans, so it's fascinating to look over her family photographs, full of Chinese and Filipino and Kazatsistan (sp?) and Pakistani and Syrian children.  Delicious living proof that America has adapted in the last 50 years to changes in our society.  Jane teaches seminars on diversity to postal workers, and typically opens her first class by telling students that when her mother grew up, she had to walk one mile to the Irish Catholic school, passing along the way the French Catholic school and the German Catholic school and the Italian Catholic school so she could attend the "right" Catholic school.  Whe her mother died, the family was well represented with grandchildren of many racial variations.  I like this story.

Speaking of stories, Jane corrected me on the African-American Museum's DNA project.  It's not just for African-Americans.  Anyone who's willing to spring for a DNA swab test becomes part of the project, and receives information on where the individual's ancestors originated.  This goes back centuries, if not millenia.  Jane spoke of it in such moving terms that I'm thinking of doing this myself, which one can do by ordering the swab kit via internet.  Just imagine the possibilities.

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.

Reflections

Thursday November 19 2009

When we lived in NYC, I couldn't help but feel somewhat superior to people who didn't live there.  It was just so cool being at the center of the universe that it was unimaginable to live anywhere else.  And of course I thought we'd neve leave.  But then I moved to the Berkshires.  And what do you know but once again I began to develop a sense of what I'll call "locational superiority."  The Berkshires are the absolute best place to live, the most beautiful, the most cultural, the nicest and most interesting people.  To the exclusion of everywhere else.

This road trip, though, has given me me a new perspective.  There are lots of "best places to live" in the U.S., and Indianapolis is high on my list as one of the best.  (that's a sentence I never thought I'd write)  I don't know the shenanigans over how the NCAA moved its headquarters from KCMO to Indianapolis, but it's easy for me to see why they did (all due respect to KCMO).

It's easy to get around, it hasn't given up on its historic neighborhoods, and it puts private and public money into cultural endeavors for the public.  I stayed at a charming little bed and breakfast in the Chatham Arch neighborhood, built originally in the mid-19th century, gentrified in the past several decades by a large, dedicated and respected gay community.   The couple who owns the inn are retired school professionals who lived in suburban Hartford for some years, and who returned to Indianapolis to retire.  They're active in the Chatham Arch Neighborhood Association, one of a number of neighborhood associations in the city that raise private money to beautify their commuities.

I was touched when I learned that an elderly gay couple who lived in an era not as open as ours who were so thrilled to see the neighborhood developed by gays that when they died they left over $1 million to the Chatham Arch Neighborhood Association.  Now that's commitment!

I was awakened both mornings I was at the inn far earlier than I would like by construction noise on the street.  The project--completing a link to the 7 1/2 mile urban bike and pedestrian greenway that winds through the city.  Like Bloomington, Indianapolis is becoming a city of bikers, facilitated in part by a government that provides money to build the appropriate roads and adorn them with public art.  The Indianapolis greenway hooks up to a 150-mile cross-state National Road Heritage Trail for bikers and walkers. 

I missed it but last weekend was the opening of the Indianapolis Winter Farmers Market, held every Saturday from November through sometime in the spring (when the summer markets open).  There are dozens of vendors.  Several thousand people showed up for the opening last Saturday.

Urban gardens are a big deal in Indianapolis, much like what is developing in Louisville.  So one of the outcomes of this road trip adventure is to curb my locational elitism.  There's a lot to like out here.

Fun in Indianapolis

Wednesday, November 18 2009

For a city its size Indianapolis has more than its fair share of recommendable tourist attractions.  I started out this morning at the National Art Museum of Sport (NAMOS), not to be confused with the NCAA.  The museum is 20 years old, and has already moved three or four times.  Currently it's located on two floors of a conference center at the Indiana Univesity campus.  As I was walking along the first long hallway, I thought I saw a sculpture of doughnuts and coffee until I realized they were real doughnuts and coffee for young people attending a VISTA conference in the building.  It's not often that you run into this kind of real life at a museum.

But this is not your normal museum.  I've been trying to figure out how to describe it.  At first I remembered the old saw, "Martial justice is to justice what martial art is to art."  But that's too draconian for this museum.  It's more like Johnson's observation of a dog walking on two legs--don't think about the dog doing this badly, just think that the dog is doing it at all.

My favorite piece in the museum is a huge portrait of Larry Bird today, with versions of him in the background as he was in his youth in French Lick.  It's a bit hokey, but Larry Bird is so revered in Indiana that I found the portrait very fitting.  And there was a beautiful bronze of basketball legend Bob Cousy making a shot soaring above the offense. 

And who knew that Muhammad Ali was also an artist??  In 1975 NAMOS hosted a reception at NYC's Roselad where Ali donated three paintings to be auctioned, with the proceeds going to the United Nations.  This museum has one of those paintings entitled "Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee."  It's "primitive" rather than "fine" art and quite interesting.  According to the wall notes, as a child Ali used to travel with his artist father to paint murals in churches near Louisville.

From NAMOS I went to Indiana Museum of Art (IMA), which is large and full of fun things to see.  As one enters the first floor galleries, there is very long two-story Sol Lewitt that gets your art appreciation juices flowing.   I skipped many of the galleries and concentrated instead on "Paired Photographs," a fascinating juxtaposition of black and white photos from all over.  There were perhaps 50 pairs of photographs.  My favorite was a Richard Avedon of Pablo Picasso along with a Lucien Clerque one in which Picasso is holding his cigarette as if it were a paintbrush.  But I also liked very much photographs taken in the 1930s as part of the Federal Artists Program.  Wouldn't it be nice if Obama funded something like that today?

At the center of the museum, there is a three-story pavilion with a Robert Irwin installation of geometrically shaped flourescent bulbs.  Three diagonal stripes run from top to bottom of the installation.  After watching it for a few minutes I realized that these "stripes" were actually the escalators.  Cool.

Above is a Duvor (a Ghanaian communal cloth) created out of aluminum caps and liquor bottles, then tied together with copper wire.  It's designed to resemble W. African strip woven textiles, which it does.  It isn't until you get right up to it that you realize it's made of bottle caps, not brightly colored cloth. 

I have a picture of myself in front of a similar one at the St. Louis Art Museum, taken on my first road trip adventure, two years ago.  And I've seen a few others of these at museums on this trip, too.  They really hold a wall! 

It was fun to walk into a small gallery and see a large Kara Walker piece.  She's the young(ish) African-American artist whose work I keep seeing on this trip.  It also was fun to get off the escalator and see an electronic strip of Jenny Holzerisms running atop the elevator.  I watched it for a while.  My favorite is "Private Property Created Crime."  Indeed.

Up in the contemporary gallery, there is a huge wall featuring "Seven Spades," a construction of 100 household objects plus a deck of cards with seven spades.  I desperately wanted to take a picture of it, but such is not allowed. You'll just have to trust me.

 The picture above is of "Memory Cloud," a group of hundreds of translucent plastic photo viewers suspended on metal chains.  Each one has a 35 mm slide transparency of just plain folks out there.  They were all taken by Judith Levy, who created this entry-worthy exhibition.

Well, enough high culture.  After two art museums, it was time to get real.  So I took David Gellman's advice and headed out to the Indianapolis Speedway, where I took the 11-minute drive around the 2 1/2 mile race track.  The stadium is HUGE.  One of the factoids I learned from the audio tape on the tour is that the speedway was built in 1909 back when automobiles were just beginning to be produced.  There weren't real roads back then, and auto manufacturers needed a place to test drive their product.  Hence the roadway.