Museum Hopper

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...