Melting Music Museum!

This is the EMP (Experience Music Project) Museum in Seattle.  The building was designed by aliens Frank Gehry. I had to steal this aerial shot from the internet to really show you vaguely what this organic metallic structure looks like. 

This is the side entrance by the monorail

 Inside the walls are reflective like the exterior, it's hard to tell from the photo what is window and what is wall.

 Colors are not enhanced by photoshop... it really looks like an amazon butterfly.  A metal butterfly.

Next up; inside the building...

That Egyptian Dude with all that stuff on Tour

I believe the punishment for taking photos in the King Tut exhibit is dismemberment, death or being forced to watch 8 straight hours of CSPAN 2... something along those lines. So any pictures included here were stolen from google searches.

When I go to popular exhibits like this I often wonder what it is they've expected the public to find exciting. I tend to judge the museum's expectations on what they're selling in the gift shop and what information they have plastered in repetition inside the gallery. Museums never seem to sell the pictures I want to own so it's sad when I cannot take any photos (or make any sketches) of my own. I spent an hour and a half inside, reading every plaque and observing fronts and backs of everything. I took textual notes (thus getting through the "no sketching" loophole). I did get the feeling however that the people who put the exhibit together were not interested in the same things that I am. The major themes to the exhibit seemed to be; 1.Look at the shiny stuff 2. Here's the sociology and genealogy of ancient Egypt. 3. This stuff is really, and we mean REALLY Old! (and well preserved)



On the one hand there is a lot to see and the whole exhibit could get overwhelming easily. However anyone who has seen a TV special on this goes in knowing a lot about it. I felt like there could have been more information provided in addition to what there was because a lot of it was review anyway.

As for the look at the shiny stuff aspect of the display, the shiny stuff was even more impressive than I had anticipated. As an artisan, I was rather blown away by the craftsmanship put into almost every item. Compared to every other culture on Earth at the time (including China) their art was thousands of years ahead of its time. The intricacy of portraiture was amazing. They did have the representational style like most cultures in 14thC BCE did as well, but the items that were meant to be exact were. There were two cow's heads that I'd never seen in photos before that caught my eye... and were not being sold as postcards either.

(oh side note, the exhibit explained that "Amun" was Lower Egypt... but What does Tut Ankh mean?)

What I found most interesting were many large photos of the way Tut's tomb looked upon discovery. Google only provided me with one of them... but the exhibit had a lot. The mere thought of discovering a room that has been undisturbed for 3000 years (give or take) is exciting. The story goes that the first time the tomb was discovered Howard Carter's companions asked him if he could see anything. In what I can only hear in my head as delivered in a dry understated British accent Carter answered "Yes wonderful things". Pip pip I say.



One of Carter's photos showed a stack of wreaked chariots. "Where are the chariots?" I thought, no mention of them in the exhibit at all. Another thing that I kept wondering throughout was "Where are all of the body parts?". There were vessels and sarcophag(i?) all over the place that used to contain this body or that liver but I kept thinking... so where's the liver now? Did they put it in a mason jar somewhere in Egypt? A docent told me that all of the human parts and mummies are still in the Valley of the Kings. I didn't ask what kind of receptacle the livers and lungs went into... let's just imagine mason jars anyway.

Hidden Chamber

The very best part of the sculpture garden at the DeYoung was this weird chamber... out along the edge of the garden it looks like you're about to head out into some sort of service exit. I am not one to be put off by being places I shouldn't be...
First you look down a corridor that looks like this;

and once you've crossed through this door you will find a big cylinder surrounded by wall... walk around it and you'll find another door (phew... this is "art")

through the door is a hidden chamber with benches and ambient light and a hole in the ceiling.
This is my attempt to photoshop several photos together to make a long one but my camera insisted on changing the colors on each of them even though they were taken in succession. Hopefully you get the idea anyway...


It was delicious finding this room on a rainy day. The sculpture garden was almost empty because everyone was trying to stay dry. Sitting in this isolation it was tempting to just pull out my book and hope that no one else would find it... the sound inside was amplified so that even the drip drip drops of the rain coming through the ceiling were impressive.


This odd cement and stone structure did what good art is supposed to do... it transports you, it changes your perspective, it makes you aware of that which you would otherwise overlook. It was moving.

Free Tut?

What happens when Target buys San Francisco 40,000 tickets to see the Tutankhamen exhibit at the DeYoung? They sell out in less than an hour. Today I went to go wait in line to get one of them.
(box office opened at 8:30)
9:02am;
I get to the front of the museum

9:13 am;
I find the end of the line by the Rose Garden (if you think about the museum as a city block, I am around three sides and the next street down... The tower with the steam rising from it is the far end of the museum away from the entrance)



9:23 am;
I am at the fountain end of the museum and staff is walking the line telling us that our "chances are slim" for getting tickets... slim is better than nothing so I wait it out listening to the whiny couple behind me talking about how they "should have bla bla bla" and the cackling sisters behind them... I am zen, I came to wait... Tickets are usually over $30 with museum entrance (an extra $7 if you want the audio tour)

10:07 I think there are about 150 people left in front of me when staff finally announce that Tut is 'sold out' but the rest of the museum is free so I take a 20% off coupon and begrudgingly head in.

10:15 I stop at the docent counter and chat with the ladies about the tickets going so fast and ask a few questions about the museum... but wait, one tells me to 'wait here'... and calls me over to receive ... Oh My Dear Tut... a ticket for a 4pm entry (YES!)

-- 6 hours to kill --

I went for a stroll through the permanent collection. I do recall being underwhelmed when they first opened so I held hopes of improvement.

#1 Amish Quilts... pretty, not overly exciting but pretty and brighter than I expected from Amish. I liked a pattern called the Roman Stripe and took a note in my journal about the direction grain lines are in whereon I was jumped upon because "We don't allow sketching!" Ok first off there's no sign on the wall or in the brochure to convey such information and second off all of their patterns are available in the gift shop... apparently the Amish are concerned about copyrights? I feel like publishing my two doodles of squares with arrows here but my laziness trumps my spite.

#2 Meso-American art; impressive, lots of well preserved reliefs and some textiles...


#3 19th Century to modern art; not impressed. The major artists they have don't have good representations of their work... "here we have a canvas Gauguin painted on and then gave to his cat mittens to sleep on for 10 years until the poor feline died upon it..."

#4 The Sculpture garden; still the best part of their permanent collection, although there are a couple of crap-art pieces, for example;
Untitled (really? This looks like freshly quarried rock to me.)
The best part of the sculpture garden was the chamber that I'm giving its own post (HERE)

#5 the look out tower; so cool to see the city from this angle (this photo shows the Golden Gate Park courtyard and the Cal Academy of sciences in the foreground).




--- three and a half hours to kill ---

bla bla, got a lot of coffee, took some pictures of the lookout tower from below...



4pm; King Tut (another post that is yet to come)

---
Sorry for the teaser post but I am exhausted! However it was a goal today to get a blog up so here it is. Blog blog blogety blog.

How to Launch a Cat

I took a quick trip to the museum in LA this weekend...
The best thing I saw at the Getty was this book illustration;



painted circa 1500

The 19th Century is scary...

Walking up to the Museum of Natural History in New York, there is a statue of Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th President. He is atop a noble steed and holds a brave daring stance...

Zoom out... and you will see there is a naked er... 'man of the Afric' assisting him.

Walk around his haunches and you will see a leg and some feathers and I thought "oh maybe it's an angel"... my friend who is not quite as hopefully naive as me said "oh no... that's a Native" and sure enough, on the other side; what would have been called at the time; 'a noble savage'... also nearly naked.

I think this is possibly the most offensive statue I have ever seen.

Da big Apple

Some sporadic photos from my weekend trip here... I'm afraid I was too busy having a great time and getting lost on the subway to even think about taking many photos...
Times Square was as overwhealming as ever. They've cut off traffic and installed lawn furniture, it looks like they intend to make this permanent and with all of the foot traffic it seems like a good idea...
I took this one because the friend I was there with lives on a kibbutz in Israel... the juxtaposition was funny to me...
We went to the Museum of Natural Science (I may do a quick additional post about the museums I went to)...

Central Park; Wow it was humid and sticky... but pretty.
"Emergency brake; Pray"


Great weekend... I love New York and I love New Yorkers. It was hot and humid and the weather really takes it all out of me pretty quickly but somehow the pace and the attitude of the place make up for it.

On Sunday it rained and it was delightful warm rain that helped pull a lot of the humidity down. People on the street were selling umbrellas but I just chose to get wet. At a certain point the wetness of rain sure beats the wetness of sweat. I don't know that I'll be posting a lot more from this trip but I thought I'd share the nutshell version... probably posts about the Met and the Natural Science museum to follow. Until then... caio!

California Academy of Science

The third Wednesday of every month is the free day at the Academy of Science in San Francisco. In an attempt to get my brain off of crazy operas and work for an hour or two, I went to check it out. This is a brand new museum with all sorts of innovative green technologies used. Everything from the insulation (scrap denim), the water systems, the heating, the light and the roof are built with eco-sustainability in mind. The lay out was very impressive.

There are lots of interactive booths that teach about ecology and carbon footprints, endangered species, Darwin, Dinosaurs, conservation... and so on and so forth (somewhere in Kansas there is a school board member vomiting at the thought of so much science in one place)

They have two big domes inside; one is a planetarium and the other is a spiral rainforest. After waiting in the line to get in to the building at all I was disinclined to wait in another line, so I missed both. Plus the planetarium has limited passes.

In the lower levels they have many different aquariums. They have a swamp with a white alligator. They have a tropical "coral reef", a California coast, jelly fish domes et cetera, et cetera. The aquariums were in good health and interesting but somehow lacked a certain finesse that the Monterey Aquarium has. The lay out seemed a little frenetic on a scientific storyline level, but aesthetically it was all very pretty.

The South African Penguins were neat;


It surprised me that there was a lot of it that was just basically a natural history museum with dioramas and taxidermy. One interesting part was that the room that the taxidermy happens is in full view, there's a big glass window for the public to watch dead things get groomed and stuffed.

I loved the living roof they've got. It's covered with native plants and acts as a temperature regulator for the entire building. Also it helps bring down the carbon footprint of the entire facility.

All of the science here was mostly geared at elementary level scientists (ages 5-13ish) and it was very well laid out. I honestly was a little underwhealmed and can't see paying the $25 admission fee for myself. However it would be a fun afternoon trip to take kids on.

The Fashion Machine

This is a painting by fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo...

...it's nice to never take your work too seriously

The Train Museum

So it looks like Sacramento isn't exactly the cultural mecca of California. There was that one museum and beyond that there are a good two dozen attractions focused on the gold rush. It's all ye-olden days, gold rush, old California politics, Sutter's fort, California's birth... eh ok then. It's not quite as exciting as Albrecht Durer to me but it's what I've got. I went to the train museum...


... just to proove that I am a costumer I spent maybe three or four shots on the trains and most of the rest on costume research...



check out the prosthetic leg

Oh and of corse they had Dishes!  What the hell is up with the fascination with dishes! Now that I've noticed how many museums have rooms dedicated to dishes, it's really starting to get irritating...
There's a balcony full of toy trains... I liked the tiny one in the briefcase.

... yep that was it.  Well laid out, nice displays.  I guess I just wasn't that interested though.  I'd rather be at a science museum or an art museum.  

The Crocker Art Museum

On Tuesday I also visited the Crocker Art Museum, which was small but surprisingly good for a modest museum. Most of the works were part of the Mrs. and Mr. Crocker's personal collection donated to the city. The building alone was worth the price of admission...
Here's the front of the mansion;

The foyer;

They had a display on nude figure drawing. I did a nerdy jump for joy when I spotted this original sketch by Albrecht Durer;
There was a room of dishes... I Really don't get why every museum seems to have a room or twelve dedicated to plates... so not interesting.

a sketch by Peter Paul Rubens (also really impressive to see in a small collection)
They had a modern art wing with pieces that weren't your standard MOMA fare... I liked this one, titled "Crowd Control"

... and this cool walk through sculpture mirror house

I also loved the salon style hanging of the genre paintings... although the lights weren't hung very well (there was a lot of glare and they weren't pointed in the proper directions for the paintings)

Mostly it's a neat little art museum that was worth the visit.