Museum Hopper

also, while we were in geneva, we visited the musee d'art et d'historie .  it was a beautiful museum filled with art as well as artifacts about the history of geneva.   the museum was very easy to navigate.  it was basically built around a center hall with large rooms completely connected in a circle.  it was a few different levels, but it was a beautiful building.   we did the "greatest hits" tour of the museum.  it included a map with the locations of the paintings.  to be fair, we could not find two of the paintings!  we were in the rooms seeing artwork by the same painters and the "hits" seemed to be missing/gone!  it was an interesting museum.  all of the swiss painters were placed in the positions of prominence.  we had to search to find the monets, which were so beautiful.  i loved the peacefulness of their landscapes.   we also looked at the muskets and old swiss pottery.  very beautiful.   overal...

jason and i were recently in chamonix, france for a wedding and ended up visiting lyon, france and geneva, switzerland as well at the beginning of the trip.  when in geneva, you cannot miss the st-pierre cathedral .  it can be seen throughout town and was home to john calvin during the reformation. we climbed to the top of the church, which has a spectacular view of the lake geneva harbour.  we were able to get quite close to the old bells.  it also appeared that one of the towers was built later than the other given the difference in stone color.  the interior of the church was quite plain compared to catholic churches built at the same time due to its protestant denomination.   it did have a video regarding the history of the cathedral.  it spoke about its catholic roots, but how it became protestant.  i will say the video could be improved though!  it was composed primarily of black-and-white photographs or sketch...

it's been a while, but this visit to the detroit institute of arts has been in the works for a while!  i bought the tickets to the faberge: the rise and fall, the collection of the virginia museum of fine arts over a month ago!  i went to the exhibit with the man friend, jason, and my dad. i had seen the ads for this exhibit a few months ago and was excited to see what faberge was all about.  it was something that i feel like i have always known what it is (those very decorated easter eggs ), but had never seen in person.   we went at noon on a sunday arriving slightly before our entrance time.  i think we just beat the beginning of the rush!  i remembered how busy the rembrandt exhibit was last december, so i am happy we didn't wait until closer to the holiday season and we went earlier in the day this time! the museum first stepped us through the history of the house of faberge .  peter carl faberge, the founder's son, is really the owne...

last weekend, i headed down to the detroit institute of art !  the tri-county area recently passed a millage providing free admission to the county residents in exchange for a tax placed on each property.  i want to get in a habit of taking advantage of it, so i headed downtown before meeting up with some friends for brunch! i was unlucky and missed the vermeer exhibit.  i should have paid closer attention to the dates on that one!  i did end up seeing picasso and matisee: the DIA's prints and drawings .  the collection was interesting.  i liked seeing how it came together and how the purchases were made.  matisse 's crisp work in contrast with the elaborate abstraction of picasso 's was very much on display within this exhibit.  as expected, a collection of this size was donated by a single donor for each of the two artists.   matisse's bright colors with simplistic lines resonates with me.  i did enjoy seeing some of picasso's reali...

for training, my new company was nice enough to put me up in chicago for the weekend to avoid the travel back and forth.  my boyfriend, jason, came to town and we decided to check out the field museum , a chicago classic.  it ended up working out perfectly since we met a friend in the south loop for lunch and went on a boat ride afterwards, which was docked outside navy pier.   jason and i were able to use our student IDs, which was great.  we ended up getting the pass that allowed us access to the whole permanent exhibit and one of the special exhibits.  we choose our special exhibit to be ghengis khan   who i was excited to learn more about since all i knew, i learned from the movie mulan .  we really enjoyed the museum.  we started out in the permanent exhibit about the egyptians .  this was definitely the most crowded and loudest part of the museum completely with running and screaming children. i also enjoyed learn about ...

about two weeks ago, i was in chicago for the kick-off training of my new job.  i ended up skipping the intro to excel training (smart move -- it was optional!) and headed up to lincoln park to the chicago history museum .  i had been once when i was in middle school with my mother and sister.  my wonderful friend, kelly, also had her wedding reception there last august, but unfortunately, i was unable to attend. i got there a little after 3:00.  the entrance is pretty easy to find although my cabbie wanted an actual street address. i really enjoyed the museum.  i first tackled the first floor including the dioramas and the very old "mystery" american flag.  the dioramas are some of the oldest part of the museum.  the story with the flag is that they really do not know the story of the flag!  it is not standard print or size, so they are trying to figure out where it is from and why it was created.  i then headed upstairs to where ...

i cannot believe it has only been about 10 days since i went to the milwaukee art museum .  i was in milwaukee with about thirty of my closest friends for a fun weekend!  i remember the first time i visited the museum, they had a degas sculpture exhibit; i took these lovely picture yes, the famous degas sculptur this time, i was very excited to see the posters of paris: toulouse-lautrec and his contemporaries .  i loved the exhibit (mam does do special exhibits very well)!  for the last ten years or so, i have noticed the parisian posters almost everywhere except in museums.  the first time i was aware of them was within my college dorm on friends' walls.  this exhibit clearly explained the appeal of them and how the parisians used them both as advertising and then later as art (reminding me of the andy warhol campbell soup can series).  the exhibit walked through the chronological rise and fall of the poster craze in paris.   i...