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.
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