Museum Hopper

Last weekend, I had my office holiday party downtown Detroit.  Jason and I ended up staying downtown for the night and made a little weekend of it!  We visited the Detroit Historical Society on Sunday afternoon. We really enjoyed the museum.  Admission was free, but they charge do charge to park in their lot.   We really enjoyed the museum.  The first exhibit was about Detroit through the ages.  It had a good variety of materials around sports, education, fashion, business, and politics.  We spent quite a bit of time in this exhibit.  It was a bit of propaganda though -- about how Detroit was moving forward, passing mention of the Detroit riots , no mention of the Kilpatrick trials. I liked the auto exhibit.  Seeing some of the old cars was really cool!  I love looking at the old cars.   We ended up hurrying through the auto exhibit as there was a tour guide (?) who was quite distracting (/annoying/unnecessarily loud).  We wanted to get away from him. I think we will be head

Last weekend, I went to the Detroit Zoo with my in-laws, sister-in-laws, brother-in-law and baby niece!  It was my sister-in-law, Julie's idea to go!  It ended up being a beautiful fall day.   To make it interesting though, I actually had to use a wheel chair while I was there since I had just sprained my ankle less than a week ago.  The zoo is really a great place to go in a wheelchair as it is very handicap accessible.  Everything had ramps and limited stairs.  I really appreciated that as my loving husband had to push me around the zoo! We made it to most of the big exhibits.  I really enjoyed the "new" Australian animal exhibit.  It was so cool to walk through the exhibit with NO fences!  A Wallaby hopped right in front of our path!  I felt like a kid again with how cool that seemed! One of my biggest gripes about the zoo though is that when you arrive, you had to pay for parking.  I think that is quite silly as it is in the suburbs and there really are very fe

We did a day trip to den hague when we were staying in amsterdam.   Haags gemeentemuseum is a little bit outside the downtown and we took a tram to get there! It was a pleasant surprise!  We really ended up enjoying the museum quite  abit.  We get there about ~2 hrs prior to closing.   We first walked through the exhibit, Asian Art and Dutch Taste .  It drew interesting connections of Art to the Asian culture.  I had never noticed the influence of the culture.  I loved how they highlighted the China and how the Dutch made changes and claimed it as their own.  This included jewelry, clothes, furniture, and painting. We had to go to this museum since it had three paintings on 1001 Paintings list.  Two for Piet Mondrian since he is Dutch (who knew?).  One was a traditional classic landscape and the other were the geometric paintings.  We learned quite a bit about the movement and the other players at the time.  I finally will understand a little bit more what I am looking at goin

Jason and I decided to visit this museum, The Rembrandt House , since we were in Amsterdam.  I was hoping that it would be like the Musee Rodin where it is Rodin's house filled with his artwork.  Instead it is more specifically what the house looked like when Rembrandt lived there with very few of his paintings. We got there fairly early in the day just beating a school group.   It was pretty interesting.  They were able to recreate most of what it looked like based on correspondence and sketches that Rembrandt had written at the time.  You could see what were considered items of status back then. I think we liked the "curiosity room" where Rembrandt would keep items for his students to practice drawing.   They did have a number of paintings that Rembrandt used as inspiration.  Rembrandt used his house as a gallery, so there were a number of paintings on the wall.  We would have liked to see more of his works though besides just some sketchings.  They did have on

On our last night in Amsterdam, we went to the Anne Frank house , which has been turned into a museum.  The house was basically across the street from our hotel. It was a great way to end our trip -- it was a reflective pause at the end of the trip. We made reservations about a month in advance, and really had a limited ticket selection.  It worked out for us, but if we had wanted to go during a more normal hour, we should have made reservations even earlier . Jason really enjoyed it.  It was a museum that brought the entire rest of the trip together.   The museum is in the original house.  They have bought a few of the surrounding house as well.  We learned the history of the house and how the Frank family ended up in the annex.  Jason had never read the book and found this to be very interesting... I do think they could spend a little more time elaborating on how she had actually started re-writing her diary in anticipation of publishing it.  I think that makes the story even

On our last night in Amsterdam, we went to the Anne Frank house , which has been turned into a museum.  The house was basically across the street from our hotel. It was a great way to end our trip -- it was a reflective pause at the end of the trip. We made reservations about a month in advance, and really had a limited ticket selection.  It worked out for us, but if we had wanted to go during a more normal hour, we should have made reservations even earlier . Jason really enjoyed it.  It was a museum that brought the entire rest of the trip together.   The museum is in the original house.  They have bought a few of the surrounding house as well.  We learned the history of the house and how the Frank family ended up in the annex.  Jason had never read the book and found this to be very interesting... I do think they could spend a little more time elaborating on how she had actually started re-writing her diary in anticipation of publishing it.  I think that makes the story even

This museum was one of Jason's picks for our visit to the Hague.  We really enjoyed the Escher in Het Paleis .  It was so very interesting.  I find that I have really been enjoying the small museums focused on one artist lately.  They may not be your best bang for the buck, but they sure are a great size and wonderful to see the progression of an artist.  I had no idea that Escher did all of these sketches/paintings. Aren't these so cool?  The tessellations are fascinating.  I remember learning them in middle school, in particular his fish ones.   The museum is also pretty interesting to walk through.  It is a former palace of the Netherlands monarchy.  The former queen used to live in this palace and it is the only one open to the public.   One thing that irritated me a smidge was that they charged you to pictures in the slanted floor room.  Like, we didn't pay to get in... It was interesting to see his transformation from "normal" sketches to hi

We visited the Cathedral of our Lady in Antwerp.  It was a beautiful old Church in the middle of historic downtown Antwerp.  I loved that it was on the main square. " P1010905GroenplaatsAntwerpen " by G.Lanting - Own work . Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . This was on our list to visit in Belgium as it actually has one of the paintings on my list of 1001 paintings !  It was so beautiful by Peter Paul Rubens, his The Raising of the Cross .   The cathedral also has a few others.  The others were quite beautiful.   As this was a Catholic Church, it was more ornate than some of the other churches we saw.  It had a number of old tombs and other sculptures as well.     time in church: 2 hrs times visited: 1 overall: B

We visited the Cathedral of our Lady in Antwerp.  It was a beautiful old Church in the middle of historic downtown Antwerp.  I loved that it was on the main square. " P1010905GroenplaatsAntwerpen " by G.Lanting - Own work . Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . This was on our list to visit in Belgium as it actually has one of the paintings on my list of 1001 paintings !  It was so beautiful by Peter Paul Rubens, his The Raising of the Cross .   The cathedral also has a few others.  The others were quite beautiful.   As this was a Catholic Church, it was more ornate than some of the other churches we saw.  It had a number of old tombs and other sculptures as well.     time in church: 2 hrs times visited: 1 overall: B

our first stop in amsterdam worth any mention was the van gogh museum !  We got into town, dropped our luggage at the hotel, picked up our bikes and headed to the museum in a downpour!   It was great to be back in the museum.  We had purchased tickets in advance and basically walked up to the front of the line.  The other line waiting to get in was very  long due to the inclement weather.  Due to this, of course, the museum was quite crowded.   We did follow the typical route through the museum and it did open up a bit as we got further into the museum.  I think Jason was quite impressed with the museum as well.  He really enjoyed seeing the Almond Blossom .   I really enjoyed the special exhibits in the museum when we visited.  They had an exhibit on Felix Vallotton, Fire Beneath the Ice .  I loved the similarities to Van Gogh's work.  Some of his paintings were so similar in style and feel, but his woodcuts were so interesting and different from his painting work.   They

a few weeks ago, my husband and i went to the detroit institute of art for a date night.  i really wanted to see the latest exhibit, samurai: beyond the sword .  i love learning about the far east.  given that i have not spent much (read: any) time in the far east of china, japan or korea, i have not been too many museums specific to the topic. as usual, the DIA did a nice job with this exhibit.  the exhibit went by really quickly; i was amazed actually.   the first half of the exhibit was about the warrior part of a samurai's life.  we learned about how their swords were made.  they are a truly a work of art. it can take up to a six months to make just one sword.  i cannot imagine working on a single item for that long.  we also learned about their regalia and how it was used in official parades and other engagements. the second half was about how the samurai were actually strong carriers of the japanese culture.  it had all these pieces of art, vases and choreography.

i was in seattle a few weeks ago to visit one of my really good friends, Jessica.  she suggested that we go to the pacific science center to see their exhibit, the photography of modernist cuisine: the exhibition.   our friends, priscilla and jen, joined us as well.  it looks like the exhibit will be traveling after this to a few different cities in the united states and then potentially heading overseas. the museum itself is made up of separate buildings and so we quickly headed over to the building that housed the special exhibit.  the photography was pretty spectacular.  it was photographed by the chef, Nathan Myhrvold , who i recognized from his appearances on top chef!  his full cookbook costs $00+ the photographs were pretty spectacular.  to a certain extent, i almost felt like we should have been visiting the art museum to view them.  the preciseness of the images and showing how food looks in the process of cooking was so cool.  it presented food in a whole new light.  i