Worcester Art Museum

We stopped at the small (but nice) Worcester Art Museum over the long weekend. They have this gorgeous Roman mosaic, which is better than some we've seen in Italy. They have a couple of lovely Matisse paintings as well. I'm sure I'm not doing the museum justice: if you're ever in the area, it's worth stopping for a few hours.

Wolfsonian

This fascinating little museum had an interesting exhibition on the concept of "speed" in the 20th century titled Speed Limits.  Pretty interesting, including the bit about kitchen design and efficiency.

Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center

This nice little museum was worth a visit: it had some interesting international art that we liked.  Their web site is kind of sparse, though, so I don't have any good pointers.

Cincinnati Art Museum

We attended a beautiful wedding in this cute little art museum.  We did not get to see much of the museum, but the building itself was gorgeous.

Hipsters, Hustlers and Handball Players

While we were at the Met, we stopped by this small collection of photographs by Leon Levinstein from the 1950's and onward.  What struck me was how non-beautiful the images were: very strikingly so!

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={C9CE6916-DFEF-4B86-BDB0-EE290C523227}

What is odd is that blogger won't let me use the above link on the title because it contains illegal characters.  The curly braces?

Kubilai Khan at the Met

No, he didn't come back to life and conquer the Met.  This exhibition was impressively curated, with works from all over the China (not to mention the rest of the world too).

Noguchi Museum

 
We finally made it out to the Noguchi Museum (or more accurately, had the opportunity to stop in on our way home) today. It is a lovely little museum out in the hinterlands of Long Island City: difficult to reach by public transit.

Metropolitan Museum: French Art Deco

We saw an exhibition at the Met titled "Masterpieces of French Art Deco", which included panels from a mural that came from a crazy French ship called the Normandie. Titled The History of Navigation, the mural reflects an era of luxury ended by The Great Depression.

Museum of Art and Design

This little museum is "pay as you like" on Thursday evenings: it's definitely worth visiting. They have a collection of interesting jewelry (sponsored by Tiffany, I believe). A current special exhibit of glass by Klaus Moje was really amazing: "painting with glass".

Morgan Library

The Morgan Library just opened an exhibition of their "latest" acquisitions (since 2004). Impressive stuff: definitely worth a visit, if you get a chance. The exhibition is open until October. Too bad they won't let visitors take photographs: they are the only major museum that has such restrictive rules.

We thought the most impressive works were some photographs by Irving Penn and Diane Arbus. There were some fantastic portraits of Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keefe, and T.S. Eliot.

Art of the Royal Court

The last major exhibit we saw at the Met was of "pietre dure": carving in hardstone. Treasures from Europe that one never sees (including a national treasure from Russia): it was unbelievably sumptuous. If you are into beautiful things, you should go see this exhibit.

Tara Donovan at the Met

We walked through this installation, which was cool to see. Not as cool as the photos on the Met's web site, though.

Jeff Koons on the Roof (of the Met)

An amusing exhibition, but it was so sunny that I was blinded by the contrast between the Met's roof and the inside of the museum. The dog was cute!

Turner at the Met

Wonderful exhibit. We saw this at the National Gallery in 2007, and also walked through it briefly when it opened at the Met a few months ago. We had to go take a stroll through it before it closed: what is utterly amazing is how Turner's late works anticipated the Impressionists by 50 years. In addition, Turner's ability to make oils look like watercolors was just stunning.

Henry Moore: NY Botanical Gardens

This was a nice exhibition that really took advantage of the Garden's beauty. The gardens were not as crowded as during the Chihuly exhibition two summers ago, which made the walk quite pleasant. No crowds!

JMW Turner

JMW Turner

We went to a members-only lecture about the JMW Turner exhibit that opens on Tuesday at the Met. The galleries were only open to members this weekend, which is a nice way for the museum to encourage membership. We didn't have a lot of time, so we just walked through it quickly. Our first impressions: the Met used much larger rooms than the National Gallery, and placed the paintings closer together. The exhibit felt more intimate in DC, but the relationships between the paintings seemed clearer at the Met.

Met lecture on fashion/superheroes

Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy

This lecture was nice and concise. The exhibit is fun to see, with one of the Iron Man suits from the movie that came out recently. They also had the Catwoman suit that Michelle Pfeiffer wore. I had never realized that "high fashion" had such weird outfits!

Murakami in Brooklyn

We went to see this rather over-the-top exhibit of Murakami's art. He combines a Japanese manga-like sensibility with business and "high art": they even had a small Louis Vuitton store inside the exhibit that was selling Murakami bags!

My reaction was that the exhibit was entertaining, but completely overrated. Murakami will not be remembered in 100 years, other than as providing some entertaining art.

A few of his pieces (both sculpture and video) are very explicitly sexual, which was odd. Many visitors had brought young children to the exhibit, and when they got to the room with those sculptures, you could see their faces suddenly change. Other than that, there wasn't anything particularly shocking about the exhibit.

The Brooklyn Museum itself is a wonderful building in a beautiful location.

Alhambra

 

Well, we visited the Alhambra while in Granada. Of course, how could one go there and not see it? A web album has some more pictures of the Alhambra.

Alhambra

La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia is an amazing cathedral: well worth visiting to see the genius/insanity of Antoni Gaudi. Unbelievable! Some other pictures of Gaudi buildings in Barcelona can be seen in a web album of other photos:

Gaudi and Barcelona