Tag: art

Mini-Vacation In Boston. Day 2: More Art

Each art museum is different, and there is no such thing as “too much art.” It does not matter that we have the Art Institute in Chicago, it does not matter how many art museums I visited in my life. It does not matter how many Florentine icons I’ve seen in my life, or how many Monet’s or Van Gogh’s. Each one is a new one.

Can you guess who the artist is? I could not believe it when I read the name!
Maybe there are more chances to figure out who’s work is this one, but it was not obvious for me either.
And you can see the artist’s name here 🙂
Toulouse-Lautrec, of course!
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Mini-Vacation in Boston Day 1 – Afternoon

After the Isabella Gardner museum, we went to the Massachuset Fine Arts Museum:

I am trying not to post too many artworks because my amateur photos do not do them any justice, but since I can’t talk about these artworks without showing them, I tend to post too many:). The picture below struck me, and when I read the story, it struck me even more.

And then to a Korean place for more desserts:

Mini-Vacation In Boston, Day 1 Morning

The first day went just perfect! The building where my friend live has a great gym

We went for breakfast to Tatte:

And then to the Isabella Gardner Museum:

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Guggenheim Museum

A surprising advantage of a large portion of the museum being closed for renovation was that I could focus on some interesting paintings and actually consider them.

I love Kandinsky, and I am usually very good at decoding his symbolism, but I had moderate success with his “Pleasures.” The only object I was able to undoubtfully identify was a fork on the right!
Surprising Picasso
Henry Russeau
Paul Gauguin – I never saw horses on his paintings
Gorgeous Van Gogh
Toulous-Lautrec!
And guess who’s painting is that one!

I also saw several interesting installations by women artists and a large exhibit of art made by children participating in the museum workshops. But as I said, I focused on a small number of paintings (and I am still intrigued by Kandinsky’s work – still wondering what to make out of it).

Saturday In Chicago

Anna and her Family visited me this weekend. They arrived on Friday night. On Saturday morning, we had a little kids’ concert, then we went to the Art Institute and Millennium Park and had dinner at my house.

I think it was one of the best Chicago weekends we had so far. This time, Kira actually sat and listened to the concert and was engaged all the time. Also, it was almost the first time when she wanted to see the exhibits before rushing to Ryan’s center. The projects that they had at Ryan’s center this time were probably the best we ever made: creating your own miniature rooms.

Anna said right away that she wanted to make her own project, too, not just helping the girls, so I ended up helping everyone:). It was a very fun project, indeed. Anna told Nadia that adults rarely do crafts, and Nadia asked why. We had to admit that there are no good reasons not to do them (and, in fact, some adults do quite a bit!).

Here is the music room Anna crafted (with a little bit of my help :))

Some other people’s crafts:

Norman Simon Museum

One of my old friends, with whom we unintentionally fell out of touch about ten years ago, lives very close to Pasadena, and I messaged her on my way to the conference. To my delight, she immediately responded, and we agreed to meet. We ended up meeting twice: on Friday night, when we mostly talked, and on Saturday night, when we went to the Norton Simon Art Museum.

The museum is incredible – the whole collection was put together by one person, and although relatively small, it contains an amazing selection of the finest works of world art. I also quite enjoyed reading the annotations to the artworks: detailed, clever, thought-provoking. I didn’t even notice the time when we were informed that museum was about to close.

Just a couple of artworks to illustrate my point: in an hour and a half, a complete history of European art from 13th to 20th century is unfolding in front of you, and each major trend and style is covered. I recall this visit and smile 🙂

National Art Gallery

To say the weather in DC was bad is not enough. It was the worst you could imagine! There was pouring rain all Saturday, so we had to change our plans and head to the museums. Unfortunately, we were not alone: everybody who came to DC for a weekend, did the same, so there were crowds everywhere.

Boris and I headed to the National Gallery of Arts. The first thing we saw there was an exhibit of German Expressionism.

“Sorrow” by Egon Schiele
“In God’s Hands”
Gramatte “Self-pportrait with wife”. It took me a while to see “a couple”

We stopped by Cauguin an Van Gogh, because you can’t pass them, and then we saw the Flemish collection.

“An Old WOman Dozing over a Book” seems very familiar 🙂

Unfortunately, the side effect of all museums in DC being free is the requirement to get passes in advance, and since we didn’t plan for it, we couldn’t get into many of them. Once again, something for the next time!

Radical Clay Exhibit

My friend, who moved from Chicago to Boston last year, was in town last week, and we went to the Art Institute for the Thursday evening hours. We saw an exhibit I hadn’t seen yet – “Radical Clay,” which presented the works of Japanese contemporary female sculptors made of clay/porcelain. 

The exhibit is small, but all the artworks are extraordinary! Here are some pictures that I took and some from the official webpage. 

This one is called “Looking for a crush”
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Long Weekend

This Thanksgiving was not ideal, to put it mildly, so I am not going to talk about it. I am just hoping that next year, it will be better.

However, despite that fact, the long weekend was pretty productive. Boris came on Wednesday afternoon, and I told him right away that I would need lots of help around the house in general and to help me get ready for a very busy December in particular. He was indeed exceptionally helpful, and I felt supported in all possible ways.

Friday was our day in the Loop. We went to the Art Institute because there were three exhibits I wanted to see, and having how my schedule looks for the next month, I won’t have that many options. In fact, the Remedios Varo exhibit closes tomorrow, and I kept “not having time” for it. The Picasso drawings exhibit just opened, the same as Canova’s “Sketches in Clay.”

Overall, we didn’t like either of the exhibits that much:). Picasso’s exhibit is hype, but I was never very fond of him anyway, and this particular exhibit is all about his “dark side” and the Minotaurus, and I looked at all these drawings in horror.

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Wild Onion Market Fundraiser

I am a part of Wild Onion Market – I joined as an owner almost two years ago, and since then, donated several times. Now, our coop is in the final fundraising stretch, raising the remaining fund needed to open in December.

Today we had a fundraising event in the Rhapsody Theater. I bought two tickets because I felt I could do at least that, and took my mom there, since the theater is just two blocks away from her building. I was hoping to catch a program, but when we came thee at six, they told us that the programmimg won’t start till 8 PM, and I was not ready to stay that long.

I didn’t plan to participate in either silent auction or the live one, but since I had time, I decided to check out the silen auction items. To my surprise, I saw that a painting with the estimated price of $350 and initial bid of $75 didn’t get any bids. I quickly put a $100, and nobody put anything after me! That way, completely unexpectedly, I became an owner of this beautiful painting: