Museum Hopper

at the end of finals, i went to the exhibit museum of natural history with my friend, daphne!  i remember going to this museum as a 2nd grader after we learned about the dinosaurs.    we had lots of fun.  it is a very "old school" museum although i do think bits and pieces are being updated.  daphne noticed that it had a lot of words/descriptions, much more than you see in the newer museums.  we saw dinosaurs, wolly mammoths and lots of different rocks and crystals. we thought it would be great for any families that had young children.  while we were there, they had a tour for children and the tour leader was great.  we felt like it could use a little face lift, but it was lots of fun for a quick (free) excursion! times visited: 1 time spent in museum: a little under 2 hours overall: B

this past friday, my boyfriend and i went to the ann arbor hands-on museum for a little outing!  we walked over there about an hour and some odd minutes before it closed.   i had been to the museum once before when i was in undergrad (why...i can't tell you).   it was smaller than jason thought it would be.  jason really liked the optics floor and i liked the " world around you " exhibit.  we played with lights, some digital media.  it was very hands-on (obviously).  they had some really interesting noise exhibits as well.  the gift shop seemed fantastic. i think we wished we had gotten there about 15 minutes sooner.  we were a little rushed near the end.  also, some of the exhibits were slightly broken or not working properly, which was disappointing.  overall though, we had more fun than we expected.  times visited: 2 time in museum: 1 1/4 hrs overall: B+

i recently found this book, 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die by Stephen Farthing.  it contains a list of paintings from pre-1400s to current 2000s screened by experts in the field.  i love it!    i have converted all of the paintings in the book into an excel as i start to track which ones i have seen!  i have currently viewed 241 out of 1001, so i am riding right around 24%.   take a peek at which ones are on the list !

i went to the ford presidential library last week after having gone for some reason when i went to michigan for undergrad. as a little background, president ford went to the university of michigan for undergrad majoring in economics.  he played center on the michigan football team and was also named to the all-american team in 1935.  the library is quite lovely up north.  it is not very large, but what exists is quite well done.  there is a section covering the first lady ford, president ford's university of michigan involvement and his career in michigan politics leading up to his presidential career.  the library also has a few of the presents president ford received during his presidency.  the negative: it was tiny.  also, i was literally the only person in museum besides the museum employees.  while i was there, i was obviously looking at the exhibits and they were standing around one of the cases.  i definitely was not going to ...

i went to the kelsey museum of archaeology today.  what a gem!  i was very pleasantly surprised and could not believe that i had never been there before!  it reminded me of a smaller scale british museum with perhaps a slightly lower caliber of items.  it also was purely focused on mediterranean items whereas the british museum does have asian and other areas as well.  when i was graduating undergrad, they were just starting a remodel on this museum, and it appears that the money was well spent!   i was impressed with the quality and variety of the items they had.  they had great descriptions of each item as well as nice overviews of each particular set of objects and their importance in the museum as a whole.  they had sections primarily on greece, egypt and rome.  i liked that they had a mixture of objects: bowls to funeral adornments to pieces of ancient columns.   i will definitely keep my eye on this museum to see if ...

i went to the museum of modern art (moma) in between sessions with one of my fellow MBA students, tyler!   we showed up coincidentally right as the museum was opening.  it was absolutely packed.  we were able to "sneak" in using a membership ID allowing us to skip the line that was forming outside.  i have no idea if this is the normal case...it was unseasonally warm, lightly raining and a wednesday.  we had to wait in a bit of a line to get a ticket. it was the usual.  we visited the main two floors with the picassos , and van goghs and matisses and the monets .  he was surprised to see the monets in the modern art museum!  they were super crowded as usual, my biggest complaint about the moma. happy i made it back...it sure has been a while.  it did remind me of what i like about it, but also what i do not like about it! times visited: at least 7 time in museum: 1 hr overall: B+

i checked out the morgan library last friday!   it was like coming home.  they had a trifecta of exhibits going on: degas: drawing and sketchbooks , roy lichtenstein: the black-and-white drawings, 1961-1968 , and mark twain: a skeptic's progress .  the degas drawings were pretty cool.  they were the originals and for the most part, not the final paintings.  i liked seeing how the crazy artist brought his masterpieces together.   this was in the small enclosed room.    the mark twain exhibit emphasized how contrary and skeptical he really was.  it also demonstrated to me how much of a presence mark twain ended up being near the end of his life.  he really seemed to be everywhere and have an opinion about everything. the lichtenstein early drawings were fascinating.  you could really see the evolution of his trademark style with the dots.  it seems that he was really always working on ordinary objects and turning them ...

i tried to go to the whitney yesterday to see the new hopper exhibit .  i was quite disappointed to find out the whitney opens at 1 pm on fridays .  i did not even think to look given that i got to the whitney around 11.  i am not sure why given they had a guard at the door telling everyone that the whitney was not open yet.  just open the door!  while i was rethinking my plans for the late morning, at least 20 people went to the door trying to get in.  what a waste.  i was so disappointed.    times visited: 5.5 (i get 1/2 a visit since i showed up) time in museum: 2 hrs overall: A-

i visited the william l. clements library before my last final on thursday.  i had stopped by the library a few times before it was finally open.   before you go, definitely check the hours.  i stopped in.  there were literally 6 of us in the library.  they had two glass tables with the manuscripts about for the sugar in the atlantic world: trade and taste exhibit.  one of the tables had all the books, letters and manuscripts regarding the "trade" aspect of the exhibit.  i thought it was an interesting comparison to the exhibit i visited at the new york historical society regarding the cotton trade covering roughly the same time period.  the other table discussed how sugar started to appear in more recipes in america around that time.  the library had a number of cookbooks, full of sweets, candy, and cakes.   the library also had a set of cases regarding previous controversial books at some point in history.  they h...

i headed back to university of michigan museum of art yesterday to finish up what i had started two weeks ago  (see blog post from earlier visit here ).  i visited the upstairs permanent exhibitions this time as well as spending about 15 minutes in the special exhibit.   as i headed upstairs, i was struck by the number of tiffany artifacts as well as the comfortable chairs to view exhibit materials. the special exhibit is currently on beauty and the everyday: the prints of james mcneill whistler .  it was quite interesting; i have never seen an exhibit so singularly devoted to the making of prints.  whistler did a number of etchings and dry points.  the exhibit clearly described the process, which i was not familiar with.  i thought it was really interesting that the prints change throughout the pressing process; therefore, the first print does not always look exactly like the third, which does not look like the sixth.  nearly all the w...

i recently started attending the university of michigan ross school of business for my mba degree.  ross just opened up a brand new building filled with beautiful art.  kathleen dolan is the curator and calls it " ross art ."  as she states, it is a collection of modern art mostly concentrating on art created since the 1960s.  it is a collection of photography, painting, and sculpture literally filling in the school.   Alexander Calder as you enter the new ross building, there is a pamphlet which contains a list of all the art.  at the top though (this surprised me), it lists a number you can call to get descriptions of about 10 pieces of art!  today, i called those and listened to the descriptions.   i enjoy her selections.  my personal favorites are right outside the zell lurie institute.  they are by frank stella and alexander calder; coincidentally they had created two out of the four bwm " art cars " on view last year....

i moved to ann arbor a few weeks and it was definitely time to visit a museum! i figured the first stop should be the university of michigan museum of art . they recently completed an addition on this museum which was started when i was wrapping undergrad at the university. this new wing, the maxine and stuart frankel and the frankel family wing, contains new modern and contemporary exhibits. the museum was not crowded, but definitely was not empty. it was a nice level of busyness. i only visited the first floor of the museum figuring i will go back and visit the second floor. the first floor of the "old" wing, alumni memorial hall, contains european (renaissance and 18th century) and american art. it was a refreshing mix of paintings, sculptures and artifacts. the art was quite beautiful although tended to be lesser known artists. i really enjoyed the renaissance sculptures on the main floor as well as the large american landscape paintings. i did not enjoy...

last week, when i was in los angeles, my boyfriend suggested that we go to the museum of tolerance . it is quite famous and popular. it was designed to "examine race and prejudice in the united states." it is sponsored by the simon wiesenthal center . simon wiesenthal is the famous nazi hunter who survived the holocaust. we went to the museum on a friday during the summer. parking is conveniently located under the museum and is free with admission to the museum. the museum exhibits are primarily in the bottom of the building and on the 3rd floor. we started out entering in the tolerancenter . this was a very interactive exhibit with many videos, surveys and interactive screens. the focus seemed to be on post-holocaust racist genocides' many of which occurred in africa and the middle east. it seemed to emphasize that the world had not learned from world war ll and that the issue still needs worldwide focus. at this point, jason wanted to see the speaker at 2 p...

my mom and i went the holocaust memorial center today. it was a perfect today to go since it reached about 95 degrees here in the detroit area. my mother had been to the older museum about 10 years ago and my dad had been to this one about 5 years ago. my mom thought it was much bigger and better laid out than the older version. the museum is quite sequential and it was easy to follow and complete in order. i think the best part of the entire museum was this HUGE time line. it went from almost the beginning of the jewish faith through present day on the top of the time line. below the time line were other events occurring throughout the world (i.e when the wall of china was built, mozart's messiah was written, etc.). then there is a pretty full description about the jewish faith, beliefs, rituals and ceremonies. we did a good skim of this section, since most of this was familiar to us. next we learned about jewish cultural and contributions to society leading...

my last museum visit in new york city was the new york historical society with my parents. we were pretty much exhausted at this point after packing the mini van with my stuff, checking out the frick and then walking across central park (yes, it was 90 degrees outside). my dad loves the grateful dead , so i thought he would like this exhibit. most of the details of the museum are in this blog post: http://museumhopper.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-york-historical-society.html . my parents really enjoyed it; they liked the dead head merchandising and they said that they learned a few things about the grateful dead that they did not know before. times visited: 4 time spent in museum: 30 minutes overall: B+

wednesday was my last “real” day in new york city. i left on Thursday morning bright and early. My parents were in town and wanted to check out the frick before leaving (they were just in town for about a day). I think my parents really enjoyed it. They loved the concept of the house turned into a museum as well as the art that he collected plus the acquisitions. my mother mentioned that if she had to recommend just one art museum for someone to visit in new york city, she would recommend the frick collection. we saw the entire museum. we did miss the video since we got there soon before closing. i think my mother sums it up well, "the frick has a fantastic example of each classic artist and their quintessential piece of art." i am really happy that they moved the renoir mother and children to the oval room from the hallway. it now is framed and viewable from the garden which is quite beautiful. personally, i love the hans holbien the younger's sir thomas more...

i went to the fashion institute of technology museum as my last "by myself" museum in new york city. i needed a short break from the packing and figured that the fit museum would be the best size/location. i went and saw the eco-fashion: going green exhibit. it is created around the idea of what is "green" clothing as well as what can designers and producers do to make fashion more environmentally friendly. the exhibit started off focusing on current "green" fashion and clothing. then it switched gears and showed fashion from 1800-1949, 1950 through present and then again a few more pieces of eco-fashion. i really enjoyed how this exhibit looked at all aspects of what being green means. it especially impressed me the emphasis on creating lasting fashion with the exhibit having examples of throw away psychedelic 60s fashion. a major issue with fashion production is the creation of dyes. many of the newer green fashion houses are using the natural c...

i went to the morgan library today as a last hooray before i leave new york city. i love it there. as usual, it was a completely different museum this time. i did not see a single repeat item. first i checked out the upstairs gallery. it has an exhibit about palladio , a venetian renaissance architect. the exhibit was titled palladio and his legacy: a transatlantic journey . his architecture influenced many famous american buildings including the capitol building and the national gallery of art (just visited!) in washington, d.c. the next exhibit i watched was romantic gardens: nature, art and landscape design . this was broken up into a few different deeper digs into a few countries: france, england (the most detail), united states and germany. romantic gardens were supposedly more natural (although could be completely stylized to look natural) as opposed to structured formal gardens. one of the biggest examples of the planned "natural" gardens was central park i...

my birthday was last week and as a present, my boyfriend took me to the king tut exhibit at the discovery center in times square. we got discounted tickets through groupon.com , which reduced the ticket price down from $30 to $18. we went on a tuesday, so it was slower and less crowded than it probably would have been. we only had to wait a few minutes to exchange our vouchers into tickets and then were admitted right away. there was a short 90 second intro video and then we were let loose in the exhibit. the exhibit started out with a number of artifacts from king tut 's many relatives. near the end of the exhibit, we finally saw some of the many wonders from his tomb. it had about 150 artifacts total with nice descriptions about them. the advertisements are slightly misleading since the exhibit did NOT have king tut's mummy or tomb features in all the advertisements. there were some absolutely beautiful artifacts, but not his (i.e. one of father's wives' r...

the last and final museum we visited last monday was the national museum of natural history . the boys had gone on a little before me and i met them there. before i got there, they checked out the dinosaur exhibit. jason (he has really gotten used to this blogging thing) told me that he did not think it was as good as the exhibit in new york city. he thought the layout was a little crowded. he also liked the how the new york city natural history museum exhibit is informative to both adults and children. he felt that at this museum it was a little too kid centric. we walked through a few different exhibits, darwin's legacy (all about evolution) and the mammal exhibit on the first floor. upstairs, we checked out the hope diamond, minerals, gems, basically the stone sections. the hope diamond is huge! i did not realize that it was in a museum and that we could see it! also, we appreciated the few shout outs to michigan for our cooper deposits! we were getting pretty exhauste...

next stop on the museum trip was the national gallery of art . needless to say, i ended up staying in this museum a lot longer than the boys did. they went through about half the museum and then left. they headed to the next stop, natural history museum. i liked the layout of this museum. it reminded me of the national gallery in london with a very easy to follow layout. as you went through the museum, you knew you weren't missing any rooms. you also didn't need to do much back tracking to see all the paintings. i did not go into the east building (modern and contemporary art), but stayed in the main west building. i loved the fountains at the each end of the museum. it was a nice little sunny break from the museums. i liked the flow of art styles and time periods. they had a few spectacular pieces. i particularly liked the raphael , which is the only painting of his in the united states. i also briefly walked through the sculpture museum on the way to the natural...

while visiting my boyfriend's cousins in d.c., we spent a power day visiting three museums. jason's friend, greg, joined us as well. greg has lived in d.c. for school/work for a year now and had NEVER been to any of the museums yet! i was shocked. he joined us for all three museums. the first museum we visited was the national air and space museum . full disclosure on this review: a spaceship my boyfriend worked on is in this museum. it is the spaceship one hanging in the entrance of the museum. we did spend a substantial amount of time looking at this plus a few other exhibits. we loved the airplanes/spaceships in the main lobby. they seem to have every airplane on note. the spirit of st. louis , the wright brother's plane, the command module of apollo 11, columbia , and the first plane to break the sound barrier. we went into the special exhibits about world war II aiviation , america by air , and apollo to the moon . we in particular wanted to check out the ap...

as my company does every year, we get a day off to volunteer around the community. last year, i went to the bronx zoo to volunteer. this year, i volunteered for the rema hort mann foundation . the foundation supports undiscovered, starving artists and provides travel expenses to loved ones of cancer patients. they were hosting an art craw l for to raise money. the organizers had selected a 14 galleries around the lower east side to visit in small groups. we started off going to the gallery, canada. you would never know it was there if you did not already know! the artist, katherine bernhardt, was in residence with her exhibit, tombouctou 52 jours, which was heavily influenced by moroccan rugs. we went to another gallery that had sort of papier mache sculptures. the artist called it his jungle. a lot of them hung from ceiling and were influenced by chinese flowers. another artist takes objects that he finds around and call them found art (or other people's art). then he m...

i went to the new york historical society today to see their new exhibit, grateful dead: now playing at the new york historical society . i had to go see an exhibit put on by the museum whose last exhibit was lincoln: the most beloved president new york ever hated . this exhibit was smaller than the other two exhibits i have seen there. very concisely laid out and stepped you through how the grateful dead revolutionized the music industry with their interaction with fans and sound engineering, and control over their music. the memorabilia was really neat. most of it had never left the grateful dead archive at the university of california santa cruz. what i found most surprising were all the fan letters that the band had saved. these fan letters were quite elaborately decorated. the grateful dead did the best to eliminate unauthorized merchandise. what i found interesting though is that some of the authorized memorabilia was first recognized when it was unauthorized. they reco...

i went to the cloisters a few weeks ago with my friend from school. it was a beautiful day. the flowers were starting to peek up... the cloisters were a great trip...as usual! see the previous posts for more details! times visited: 3 time in museum: 1 1/2 hrs overall: A

100th blog entry. i knew this would have to be one heck of a museum. so i decided to go with a classic, the met . this is the museum i have been to the most (by far) over the last 3 years. it just seemed fitting for the 100th entry on my blog. (the picture is of the shrine on the 2nd floor of the met!) i went without a particular exhibit or area in mind. i just sort of wandered...and i ended up wandering into a wing i had never been to before! i wandered into the tutankhamun's funeral . this had different artifacts from his burial site although none of the real show stopper pieces. i loved the displays of the floral collars that some of the royalty was wearing. those were quite beautiful and unusual. i then walked into the exhibits which were upstairs from the egyptian exhibits. i am not quite sure how i had never ended up there before. it landed me right near the exhibit, five thousand years of japanese art: treasures from the packard collection . this exhibit was magn...

to take advantage of the beautiful day in new york city, i thought i would try to take the lower east side tenement museum walking tour. i hustled down there and got there right in the nick of time. i have been to the lower east side museum for their tenement tours, but wanted to try this 1 1/2 hr walking tour, immigrant soles: a neighborhood walking tour . i saw some areas of the lower east side which i had never seen before. the tour guide was very good; he did a great job pointing out the interesting architecture making us think about what certain architecture features might mean. for example, a building with only three windows, what does that mean? answer: that it was meant to have a single family live there as opposed to twenty, since there was no partition splitting the building in two. he also brought up some of the different political tensions running through the LES that had not been mentioned in some of the other tours. perfect for a beautiful summer day. times v...

i went to the jewish museum on a mission to see one thing: a small money named george . the exhibit, curious george saves the day: the art of margret and h.a. rey , was on the second floor, which is a different location than the other special exhibits i have seen at the museum. the layout was done chronologically throughout their life, starting in about 1938 through the rest of their life. the exhibit was a mixture of letters, illustrations, pictures and their custom holiday cards! i wish i could find some photographs of these holiday cards. they were fantastic! they were probably my favorite surprise in the exhibit. they also had illustrations from curious george goes to the hospital , which a favorite growing up. another interesting factoid from exhibit, curious george is not an actual species of monkey. who knew? note: the museum is always free on saturdays, but unfortunately, the gift shop is closed on saturdays. times visited: 3 time in museum: 45 minutes ov...

i went to the brooklyn museum of art yesterday after a failed attempt last weekend. we had the day off from work, but the subways were still running normally! i went out to see one exhibit, to live forever: art and the afterlife in ancient egypt . i expected the exhibit to just focus on that, but it actually was primarily focusing on contrasting the upper, middle and lower class funerals. the exhibit was made up of 2 small rooms and 1 larger room. as i have found is typical of brooklyn museum exhibits, i was not sure if i went through the exhibit in the right order. i ended up going through all three rooms in clockwise orders circling back and finishing at the beginning. the exhibit was primarily contrasting the three classes. typically, the lower class would try to replicate the upper class funerals by either reducing the number of items (like food given to the dead, toys, fake servants), replacing more expensive materials with cheaper ones or changing the location of the funera...

i went to the whitney museum of american art with a friend from college today. this is the first one i have been to in a while since i sprained my ankle and was somewhat immobilized for a while. i had dinner with my friend, mike, this week and we decided to go! neither has an extensive (aka: any) art background. the top floor currently displays art that had been previously shown in the biennials. this included some beautiful peaces of art including one of the hopper paintings that i like. it was interesting to see how often certain artists had been shown (hopper had been shown over 15 times). the rest of the museum showed the current biennial. i am not sure what the current rules were, but i believe it was that they could not have shown something previously. the art was...interesting. i was happy to have mike there with me; otherwise, i am not sure that i would have spent quite as long at the museum. some of it was just beautiful/enjoyable. i loved this huge room of pa...

i went to the queen mary last week after landing at the long beach airport with my boyfriend. he timed the visit very well; we arrived right before sunset. we could see the city skyline from the boat...it was beautiful. they have converted this old ship into part hotel, part museum and part restaurant. the non-museum parts of the ship seemed well worn except for this beautiful art-deco bar lounge. the museum was really interesting! we saw the isolation area, which housed sick passengers. it had a lot information about stow aways and health conditions on board the ship. we had a tour of all the decks as well as the huge anchor! it was interesting to see how the ship transforms over time through world war ii when it added gun and armoury. the captain's rooms and uniforms was another interesting part of the ship. the most important people of the ship were the captain, the captain's steward, first mate and the head engineer. it was really interesting to see the ship....

i stopped by the asia society museum after my visit to the frick . if i had not been able to get in for free (through my corporate ID), i would not have stayed. the weekend i was there, they only had 25% of their exhibits open. the first exhibit was yoshihiro suda: in focus . the artist takes an ordinary object and intricately carves it out of wood making it look unbelievably lifelike. this exhibit had two flowers, a rose and and an orchid. it contrasted the new art with old 12th century pottery. this exhibit, devotion in south india: chola bronzes was a definite contrast to the first exhibit. these were ancient bronze statues of various hindu deities primarily created in the 12-14th centuries. times visited: 2 time spent in museum: 30 minutes overall: B+

i went to the frick collection to see the recently renovated exhibit . it was amazing to see how a coat of new paint really changed the way paintings look. it was a pretty short visit to the museum, mostly to view the few paintings. i also stopped by to see the renoir and this hans holbien the younger 's painting. worth a quick stop. times visited: 4 time in museum: 20 minutes overall: A-