Weekend Update - MFA and Dragons
It was a very lazy four day weekend. I spent most of it with my nose in a book, reconnecting with some old friends. Anne McCaffrey’s death made me realize how long it’d been since I read any of her books. Too long. So read I did. So far I’ve finished:
Restoree
Crystal Singer
Killashandra Ree
Dragonquest
Dragon Song
Dragon Singer
Dragon Drums
And I’m about halfway through DragonQuest.
Saturday I headed into Boston to meet up with ravena_kade at the MFA. I was going to take the T in, but it appears that they’re doing some kind of maintenance on weekends. It would have been nice if they’d had a sign to that effect outside. I would have liked to have known that the station was closed before I went inside, parked, and took the escalator downstairs. At least they didn’t charge me for parking when I mentioned it to the attendant.
I pointed the Garmin towards the City and drove right in. Museum members get ½ off parking, and I was curious how their parking rates compared to the MET. With the discount, all day parking was $14, which isn’t bad for downtown Boston.
I met up with Jennifer outside, and we went in and I renewed my membership. Then we checked the map and headed to the Degas and the Nude exhibit, in a new space, in the basement of the newly constructed wing. At least I think it’s part of the new construction, it’s below the big new courtyard/café space.
At first I enjoyed the exhibit. The first room was student works, and I was rather impressed at the quality of work from him when he was still in his late teens and early twenties. The second room contained a bunch of preliminary sketches for a large work (War in the Middle Ages). It was kinda neat seeing the practice sketches right beside the finished work, even if I didn’t particularly like the finished piece. The third room was when they started to lose me. There were a bunch of prints (etchings?) of nudes done in a brothel. He was using a technique that was smearing ink around on metal plates, so the images were often blurry. I was not impressed. Although I was amused by what was considered “scandalous” a century ago. It all looked pretty innocent to my eyes.
By the time I got to the fourth room of nudes, I was pretty sure I wasn’t a fan of Degas’s nudes. There were five similar portraits of a woman’s back, while she combed or dried her hair after bathing. There was a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Degas, a Renoir, another Degas, and one by someone I don’t remember. I liked the three non-Degas much more than I liked the two Degas nudes.
After this there were three or four more rooms of nudes, but by this point I’d sort of given up on reading the descriptions, and started walking through a little faster, because things all started to look the same. I’m not at all convinced that things that the artist never displayed in their lifetime really should be displayed after their deaths. I mean, preliminary sketches are NOT the same thing as finished works.
It had taken us a couple of hours to get through the exhibit (and the small gift shop at the other end). We took a quick poke through some of the rooms in the basement level of the new Art of the Americas wing. Why is it that the MFA’s American collections seem to run mostly to furniture and silver, I don’t know. Surely Americans were turning out other art? Well, we did find one room full of embroidery, including some rather massive embroidered bed hangings. And there was a room devoted to Ship Models. But their collection was tiny compared to what you can see at the Peabody Essex in Salem. (Although I do love the idea of a warship named The Terrible…)
Once we finally figured out how to get upstairs (I am NOT impressed with the architect who designed the new wing, this is the second time I’ve gotten trapped in small hallways that seem to go nowhere….). We took a short wander around and I took some photos of colonial era portraits, since I have very little experience with early American fashions and haven’t developed an “eye” for the proper details yet.
Then we headed across to the café. Because you can’t get from one side of the basement to the other without going upstairs, across, then downstairs again. We took the shortcut through the Ellsworth Kelly exhibit, which was a bunch of boards. No seriously, a lot of long boards, standing on end. The piece on the Web link is just about the only piece that we saw that didn’t look like lumber. After lunch we stopped to read the description. When I got to the bit about how the artist “distilled things down to their essential shapes” or somesuch, I said, “This is bullshit.” Which made the guy standing next to me laugh. He said, “When I post these pictures on FaceBook, I’m going to label them ‘Art?’”
After a lengthy gab over lunch we headed back into the museum. Where we stumbled across the Beauty as Duty exhibit. I’d checked the Web page a week or two ago, but had forgotten what I wanted to see by the time we got there. I was glad we found this one. It was small, just a single room, but interesting. There were probably 30 or 40 scarves displayed on the wall, and maybe a dozen mannequins with dresses and uniforms, two short videos, one of the Blitz and the other about clothing rationing, and two large photos blown up and displayed on the walls. One was a mother and baby in a carriage, both wearing gas masks. Quite eerie. And the other was the famous shot of the Queen Mum after Buckingham Palace got bombed. The one where she famously said, “I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.” A small exhibit, but a powerful one.
I wanted to look around the medieval and European sections, but some of the rooms were blocked off, including the big grand gallery. We peeked in, and there were lots of white flowers. I guessed wedding (we asked someone on the way out, turns out I was right! How cool, getting married in the museum!). We finally headed down to the gift shop, which had been closed for some sort of renovations.
It turns out they’d made it smaller. When I asked, the cashier told me they’d lost 1/3 of their space. I think it all came out of their book section, which was sadly, quite noticably diminished. I used to really adore the MFA gift shop, now I’m quite disappointed in it. Losing all that room makes a huge difference. But I think that I’m most disappointed that the space they lopped off the old gift shop seems to be empty. According to the map, it is education space. But it looked like empty rooms, from what I could see through the glass wall.
We decided to check out the “new” gift shop by the front door. I was hoping it would be bigger, but it was tiny. All of their cookbooks and local/Boston books are in that location. Although I’m unimpressed with their buyer. Really, do they need to sell Jane Austin novels? Can’t you get her just about anywhere? Unless there was some tie in with an exhibit, I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to carry art books instead.
We didn’t have time to do more than pop in to peek at Aphrodite and the Gods of Love. I’ll have to make sure to get back to take a better look at it. It’s so seldom that you see erotic art in a museum (they had a Priapus and a couple of X rated carvings), it’s usually hidden away in the basement or not on view at all.
They’ve made a lot of changes in the museum layout with the opening of the new wing. What used to be their main “special exhibit space” on the second floor, above the gift shop, is now contemporary art galleries. The gift shop that used to the at the exit of that space (and was usually devoted to special exhibit related items) is now down in the basement. Which actually makes it much less accessible, since the old special exhibit gift shop used to be a long corridor that connected two parts of the museum and had three doors leading to it. The new shop is tucked in an inaccessible part of the basement, and just about the only way to get to it is through the new exhibit space. I'd be really curious to know if they see a drop off in their gift shop purchases with the new changes.
Jennifer's take on the day is here -> http://ravena-kade.livejournal.com/1648509.html
Sunday it was back to Pern for me.
Restoree
Crystal Singer
Killashandra Ree
Dragonquest
Dragon Song
Dragon Singer
Dragon Drums
And I’m about halfway through DragonQuest.
Saturday I headed into Boston to meet up with ravena_kade at the MFA. I was going to take the T in, but it appears that they’re doing some kind of maintenance on weekends. It would have been nice if they’d had a sign to that effect outside. I would have liked to have known that the station was closed before I went inside, parked, and took the escalator downstairs. At least they didn’t charge me for parking when I mentioned it to the attendant.
I pointed the Garmin towards the City and drove right in. Museum members get ½ off parking, and I was curious how their parking rates compared to the MET. With the discount, all day parking was $14, which isn’t bad for downtown Boston.
I met up with Jennifer outside, and we went in and I renewed my membership. Then we checked the map and headed to the Degas and the Nude exhibit, in a new space, in the basement of the newly constructed wing. At least I think it’s part of the new construction, it’s below the big new courtyard/café space.
At first I enjoyed the exhibit. The first room was student works, and I was rather impressed at the quality of work from him when he was still in his late teens and early twenties. The second room contained a bunch of preliminary sketches for a large work (War in the Middle Ages). It was kinda neat seeing the practice sketches right beside the finished work, even if I didn’t particularly like the finished piece. The third room was when they started to lose me. There were a bunch of prints (etchings?) of nudes done in a brothel. He was using a technique that was smearing ink around on metal plates, so the images were often blurry. I was not impressed. Although I was amused by what was considered “scandalous” a century ago. It all looked pretty innocent to my eyes.
By the time I got to the fourth room of nudes, I was pretty sure I wasn’t a fan of Degas’s nudes. There were five similar portraits of a woman’s back, while she combed or dried her hair after bathing. There was a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Degas, a Renoir, another Degas, and one by someone I don’t remember. I liked the three non-Degas much more than I liked the two Degas nudes.
After this there were three or four more rooms of nudes, but by this point I’d sort of given up on reading the descriptions, and started walking through a little faster, because things all started to look the same. I’m not at all convinced that things that the artist never displayed in their lifetime really should be displayed after their deaths. I mean, preliminary sketches are NOT the same thing as finished works.
It had taken us a couple of hours to get through the exhibit (and the small gift shop at the other end). We took a quick poke through some of the rooms in the basement level of the new Art of the Americas wing. Why is it that the MFA’s American collections seem to run mostly to furniture and silver, I don’t know. Surely Americans were turning out other art? Well, we did find one room full of embroidery, including some rather massive embroidered bed hangings. And there was a room devoted to Ship Models. But their collection was tiny compared to what you can see at the Peabody Essex in Salem. (Although I do love the idea of a warship named The Terrible…)
Once we finally figured out how to get upstairs (I am NOT impressed with the architect who designed the new wing, this is the second time I’ve gotten trapped in small hallways that seem to go nowhere….). We took a short wander around and I took some photos of colonial era portraits, since I have very little experience with early American fashions and haven’t developed an “eye” for the proper details yet.
Then we headed across to the café. Because you can’t get from one side of the basement to the other without going upstairs, across, then downstairs again. We took the shortcut through the Ellsworth Kelly exhibit, which was a bunch of boards. No seriously, a lot of long boards, standing on end. The piece on the Web link is just about the only piece that we saw that didn’t look like lumber. After lunch we stopped to read the description. When I got to the bit about how the artist “distilled things down to their essential shapes” or somesuch, I said, “This is bullshit.” Which made the guy standing next to me laugh. He said, “When I post these pictures on FaceBook, I’m going to label them ‘Art?’”
After a lengthy gab over lunch we headed back into the museum. Where we stumbled across the Beauty as Duty exhibit. I’d checked the Web page a week or two ago, but had forgotten what I wanted to see by the time we got there. I was glad we found this one. It was small, just a single room, but interesting. There were probably 30 or 40 scarves displayed on the wall, and maybe a dozen mannequins with dresses and uniforms, two short videos, one of the Blitz and the other about clothing rationing, and two large photos blown up and displayed on the walls. One was a mother and baby in a carriage, both wearing gas masks. Quite eerie. And the other was the famous shot of the Queen Mum after Buckingham Palace got bombed. The one where she famously said, “I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.” A small exhibit, but a powerful one.
I wanted to look around the medieval and European sections, but some of the rooms were blocked off, including the big grand gallery. We peeked in, and there were lots of white flowers. I guessed wedding (we asked someone on the way out, turns out I was right! How cool, getting married in the museum!). We finally headed down to the gift shop, which had been closed for some sort of renovations.
It turns out they’d made it smaller. When I asked, the cashier told me they’d lost 1/3 of their space. I think it all came out of their book section, which was sadly, quite noticably diminished. I used to really adore the MFA gift shop, now I’m quite disappointed in it. Losing all that room makes a huge difference. But I think that I’m most disappointed that the space they lopped off the old gift shop seems to be empty. According to the map, it is education space. But it looked like empty rooms, from what I could see through the glass wall.
We decided to check out the “new” gift shop by the front door. I was hoping it would be bigger, but it was tiny. All of their cookbooks and local/Boston books are in that location. Although I’m unimpressed with their buyer. Really, do they need to sell Jane Austin novels? Can’t you get her just about anywhere? Unless there was some tie in with an exhibit, I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to carry art books instead.
We didn’t have time to do more than pop in to peek at Aphrodite and the Gods of Love. I’ll have to make sure to get back to take a better look at it. It’s so seldom that you see erotic art in a museum (they had a Priapus and a couple of X rated carvings), it’s usually hidden away in the basement or not on view at all.
They’ve made a lot of changes in the museum layout with the opening of the new wing. What used to be their main “special exhibit space” on the second floor, above the gift shop, is now contemporary art galleries. The gift shop that used to the at the exit of that space (and was usually devoted to special exhibit related items) is now down in the basement. Which actually makes it much less accessible, since the old special exhibit gift shop used to be a long corridor that connected two parts of the museum and had three doors leading to it. The new shop is tucked in an inaccessible part of the basement, and just about the only way to get to it is through the new exhibit space. I'd be really curious to know if they see a drop off in their gift shop purchases with the new changes.
Jennifer's take on the day is here -> http://ravena-kade.livejournal.com/1648509.html
Sunday it was back to Pern for me.