Art in the Time of Coronovirus (The Coronavirus Diaries, Part XIX)
Yesterday's post about my recent photo-a-day habit was not up for twenty minutes before I remembered that I'd actually done something similar to a photo-a-day activity very early in the pandemic. In fact, it started the day after my last day in the office and continued for 113 straight days.
While the intent was to clear stuff off my phone and provide some distraction for people, the photos themselves dated back to the very trip that I got my first smartphone for. The topic in this case led to a very obvious name for the album: "Art I Like." Essentially the first thing I started doing with my iPhone was using it at museums to take pictures of art I found interesting. I also took pictures of the signs under the art. This was a vast improvement over trying to remember a title or two and looking for pictures later if I happened to remember. Of course, I wasn't actually doing anything with these photos, so I had hundreds of art photos on my phone and nothing to do with them. Combine that with some pandemic boredom and voila, an effective short term "Photo-a-Day" was born.
113 days later, I'd completely cleaned all the art photos out as well as all the supporting sign photos. Some just got deleted when I realized I didn't like them so much anymore, but most were still interesting to me. I touched art from a great many museums, including:
- LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art
- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Assorted outdoor art, including Rooms to Let
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Cincinnati Art Museum
- The Cleveland Museum of Art from several visits
- NOMA's Besthoff Sculpture Garden
- The Art Institute of Chicago
- Oklahoma City Museum of Art
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- Corning Museum of Glass
- National Portrait Gallery
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- The Toledo Museum of Art
- Renwick Gallery
- 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City
- National Gallery of Art
That's a lot of museums for less than three years. I still have no idea when I'm going to get to go to one again, but given Delta probably not until there's a vaccine for Birdie, which has no timeline. That's particularly frustrating as the Cleveland Museum of Art is opening a Redon exhibition soon that in normal times I would have considered flying across the country to attend.
So that's the story of my first "Photo-a-Day", which involved not one new photo for the 113 days it ran. Those so inclined and who are friends with me can see the photos here.
Randomly: this was the first post with "The Coronavirus Diaries, Part #" in the title that I had to look up the Roman Numerals for. So I guess I can count to 18 in Roman Numerals.
While the intent was to clear stuff off my phone and provide some distraction for people, the photos themselves dated back to the very trip that I got my first smartphone for. The topic in this case led to a very obvious name for the album: "Art I Like." Essentially the first thing I started doing with my iPhone was using it at museums to take pictures of art I found interesting. I also took pictures of the signs under the art. This was a vast improvement over trying to remember a title or two and looking for pictures later if I happened to remember. Of course, I wasn't actually doing anything with these photos, so I had hundreds of art photos on my phone and nothing to do with them. Combine that with some pandemic boredom and voila, an effective short term "Photo-a-Day" was born.
113 days later, I'd completely cleaned all the art photos out as well as all the supporting sign photos. Some just got deleted when I realized I didn't like them so much anymore, but most were still interesting to me. I touched art from a great many museums, including:
- LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art
- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Assorted outdoor art, including Rooms to Let
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Cincinnati Art Museum
- The Cleveland Museum of Art from several visits
- NOMA's Besthoff Sculpture Garden
- The Art Institute of Chicago
- Oklahoma City Museum of Art
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- Corning Museum of Glass
- National Portrait Gallery
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- The Toledo Museum of Art
- Renwick Gallery
- 21c Museum Hotel Oklahoma City
- National Gallery of Art
That's a lot of museums for less than three years. I still have no idea when I'm going to get to go to one again, but given Delta probably not until there's a vaccine for Birdie, which has no timeline. That's particularly frustrating as the Cleveland Museum of Art is opening a Redon exhibition soon that in normal times I would have considered flying across the country to attend.
So that's the story of my first "Photo-a-Day", which involved not one new photo for the 113 days it ran. Those so inclined and who are friends with me can see the photos here.
Randomly: this was the first post with "The Coronavirus Diaries, Part #" in the title that I had to look up the Roman Numerals for. So I guess I can count to 18 in Roman Numerals.