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.