Museum Hopper

My mom and I arrived in Madrid on Tuesday evening and first thing on Wednesday, we headed to el Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza .  It was across the street! This museum reminded me quite a bit of the Musee d'Orsay (for Spain) meets the Frick (since it was/is a private collection).  The collection is very nicely curated and progresses chronologically through their collection.  They have seven paintings from the list .  I really enjoyed their late 1800/ early 1900 century art collection -- they had some really fantastic Edward Hopper paintings.   That being said, they have some fantastic renaissance art as well.  The El Greco painting, The Annunciation ,   was the beginning of our love fest with his art while in Madrid (see Prado , Church of Santo Tome , Museo del Greco ).   My mother was thrilled that they had a Wyeth exhibit.  It was a exhibit about both father and son, " Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the studio. "  My mother was surprise...

I have been somewhat dreading writing this blog post -- I am worried that I am not going to the Prado and Thyssen (the next post I have to do) justice!   I booked tickets for my mom and I in advance for Saturday, which I highly recommend.  We still have a line to get in, but it was nowhere near as bad as the other line.  Our line was mostly due to people arriving before the museum opened.  I also think we got a slight discount for booking online.  I also bought the museum guide with our ticket.  I was expecting some sort of small-ish book; the book was ~20 EUR bought separately in the bookshop.  It was only ~9 EUR with the ticket.  While heavy to carry through the galleries, it was a nice reference for some of the other masterpieces.   Also, worth noting, you can get your ticket stamped as you leave and you can come back.   Our line a few minutes before it opened Our hotel was basically across the street from the museum, which w...

Jason and I dashed (literally ran) into the Bryggen Museum to avoid the downpour!  The Bryggen Museum is right next to the UNESCO Heritage Site row houses.  It is about the history of the row houses and the Bergen area. The bottom floor is the permanent exhibit.  Like most major towns, Bergen had a number of major fires.  Each time, the town rebuilt on top of the remains of the previous one, so Bergen today is ~6 feet higher than the earlier settlements.  Given this, the Bergen museum, encloses some of the earlier foundations which the rebuilds had covered.  They also had a number of artifacts that had been discovered like shoes and tools.   The upper floor was an exhibit focused on "Great Fire of 1916."  It started as when a few storage workers lit a candle to see in the dark, but unfortunately, it caught spark on the goods in the warehouse.  The Bergen city government took advantage of this horrible misfortune to redesign Bergen into t...

Jason and I visited this tower while we were in Bergen over our Norwegian cruise.  I have to say I was extremely disappointed.  This is the first "C" I have given out in a while!   First of all, it was not cheap to get in (then again what in Norway is cheap?), so we figured why not?  The description stated there was a look out, so we thought we could see the building and get a view of the city at the same time.   The rooms in the tower were close to empty, but did have descriptions on the wall as to what each room's purpose was.  The rooms were quite stark (since this was from the 1500s) with plain walls and wooden floors.  We did not even take any pictures! Much to our surprise, we did not have a viewing platform!  All of the windows were closed; most of which were leaded glass and obscured anything outside. Overall, it was just a pretty big disappointment.    Time in tower: 40 minutes Times visited: 1 Overall: C

I decided to run over to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofia Saturday afternoon while I was in Madrid.  It is very close to the hotel we stayed in and I really did want to see Picasso's Guernica , which is the highlight of their collection. The art museum has a number of temporary exhibits, but the main permanent collection is on the 2nd floor.  The museum is focused on themes like "From Revolt to Postmodernity" and "The Interruption of the 20th Century: Utopias and Conflicts."  I am not sure I completely understood the themes.  They seemed rather arbitrary given the chronological aspects as well.   The collection has some strong, stand-out masterpieces, of which Guernica is the star.  I had no idea it was so large (11 x ~26 ft).  The museum dedicated ample space to it, which was fantastic.  Given the size of the painting and the crowd looking at it, Guernica has a room to itself.  The materials to learn about the painting were...

On the way back from the Kronberg bike ride, I knew we had to go to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art .  They are open late and serve dinner with a view overlooking the Baltic Sea.   The museum is under construction, but it is still pretty easy to get around.  We had a few times where we thought we would miss something, but lo and behold, we ended up seeing it everything.   My favorite part of this museum was the integration of inside and outside.  We seamlessly moved from the landscape to the galleries.  All of the glass keeps the museum feeling light and impacts how the art is viewed. Calder mobile The Picasso before Picasso exhibit was really interesting.  I had always heard that Picasso was an extremely talented realist painter, and that is what allowed him to break all the rules.  It also allowed him to evolve as a painter (e.g. his Blue period to the rose period to cubism.  If you were looking at these sketches without k...

On our first day in Madrid, my mom and I went to the Palacio Real.  We decided to go into the Palace, at first, mostly to get into the huge courtyard.   The Palace is at the far west end of the city with a panoramic  vantage point out west.  It was a very popular stopping point before going into the palace.   The Palace was beautiful!  It was a bit hot and crowded in some places, but generally, the Palace was easy to navigate and identify the key elements of each room.  We were able to take a few pictures before getting into the Palace.      The rooms were fantastically baroque.  I particularly liked the dining room, which sat 150+ (?)!  The chandeliers were so ornate.  I also liked how we could see the main symbols of the crown: crown, scepter, and throne.  It also has the proclamation speech.  The musical instruments were also so unique.  The floors were beautiful.  I als...