"free" museums

Hand-drawn maps of how to get into various museums for free. I almost like the awkward drawings more than the concept.

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard. Possibly the most modest and most fascinating exhibition I've ever seen in a museum. Evans and I had a lot of important things in common. Photography, postcards, ephemera. Did I mention postcards? Evan's commentaries sound strangely reminiscent of Paul Groth's in our cultural geography survey. Art + academia. It's so rewarding when the parallel. (And it happens a lot with CG.)

London day 6

I stated that the color of London is black. I still hold this to be true, but with one slight emendation: the other color of London is pink. It's not just Jon; an inordinate number of British men wear tailored pink shirts with their (mostly striped) suits. In fact, one of the major retailers on Jermyn Street is Thomas Pink. It carries an inordinate number of women's shirts with French cuffs, which makes me greatly regret the fact that I have neither the money nor the occasion to own one. Nevertheless, the British toiletries shops may warrant a return on Wednesday.

I spent the morning putting together a BRAT diet for Jon's queasy stomach and then found the charmingly colorful, hidden, and happily alternative Neal's Yard. Both were accomplished with much wandering around and backtracking. The matter-of-fact man at the takeout counter had a South American accent to match the bright, un-Londonish colors of the triangular yard. While awaiting my tremendous and affordable portion of scrumptious vegetarian food, I got to talking with a certain James and his partner, who were moving to France. Soon we were chatting over scalding hot vegetarian chili, gluten-free basil bread, and free juices as part of the deal -- mine was cashew, a juice whose existence I had to consume to believe. Definitely a place to which I will return.

St. Martin in the Fields was closed for renovation and St. Paul's choir was on vacation from Evensong, so I was out of luck church-going-wise in London. Fortunately Naomi had made up for it this weekend. So straight I went into the Tate Modern, where I shelled out for the Dalí and Hélio Oiticica special exhibits. I was a bit Dalí-ed out by the end of the first exhibition, especially after seeing his puzzling and slightly gruesome films and then topping them off with the (in comparison) saccharin Destino, with its anachronistic early-20th-century soundtrack and modern animation. The swinging bell tie-in had lost its magic since the Boijmans van Beuningen, which somehow managed to display all of Dalí's works more imaginatively. Nevertheless, I was pleased to have examined "The Persistence of Memory" and a number of other chef d'oeuvres up close, and Oiticica's work turned out to be pleasingly informed by Klee, Malevich, et al, yet blown up into strikingly spatial cosmic systems of warm tropical colors. I might still give in and get that Tate timeline... to think I'd never heard of Oiticica before! My late arrival left no time to see the most exciting avant-garde exhibits, and those are free, so obviously I must go back.

From the Tate I made a beeline to Savile Row to peek into London's dearest haberdashers while there was nobody else around to notice. They were all doing the two-button thing (only Chip would know the proper term and context for it), and to my delight I could even see tailors busy at work in the basement of one of the stores. To my amazement, they all offered "bespoke tailoring" -- in other words, clothes made to order without a pre-existing pattern. Definitely British. Of course I ended up outside a giant Brooks Brothers once I turned back onto Regent Street, but not far past it was my ultimate evening destination -- Ramen Seto, home of the cheap bowl of noodle soup.

The ramen was actually mediocre and the soup overly rich, but anyway it was merciful on my wallet and allowed me to time hop into Harrod's for a look at the tea selection. I'd had a difficult time imagining the department store to end all department stores, but I finally found that it was a Disney-like fairyland made of course to much more sophisticated standards than any Disney attraction and filled with a mind-boggling amount of designer merchandise, but nevertheless Disneyish in its extravagant existence outside of any practised interior aesthetic. Still worth another trip -- I am not, I repeat, not coming back from England without tea.

Every year Euge becomes more glamorous, and she was dressed to rival any Londoner when I found her outside the Ritz. We were met with much more resistance trying to get into the Landsdowne Club without a printed letter of introduction, and I wonder if the lack of a white male in our presence had something to do with it. But finally we earned our time to catch up, and discovered that she's been living in another branch of the apartment/hotel residence that I stayed in with Josephine and Victor. Big city, small world!

Afterwards we wandered about the club, but other than the lovely ground floor and swimming pool, the club didn't offer a fraction of the luxuries of the Yale Club of New York City. In fact, none of the reciprocal clubs I've visited can hold a candle to it. But I have yet to make it out to Stoke Park. They're bound to make me eat my words. In any case, the deal I have with the Yale Club as a non-NYC-resident/full-time graduate student is unbelievable. I suppose most in my position don't do so much traveling, but as it is I get access to exclusive clubs for a laughable annual membership fee back home. Euge is raking in the money, but for this week I have the posh deal in London: club-hopping. A great sport if you can pull together the look and a bit of spunk.

Incidentally, while everyone finds it funny that ancient rivals Oxbridge share their turf at the Oxford & Cambridge Club by St. James', I just learned from Wikipedia's article on the Yale Club that our 22-floor James Gamble Rogers-designed facility also plays host to the Dartmouth Club, the Virginia Club, and the DKE Club (presumably not for your typical frat party).

Rotterdam 2007: City of Architecture

I love Rotterdam. After quite a costly ticket and lots of hurrying, I made it to the Netherlands Photomuseum and didn't regret a single cent or drop of sweat. And the Nederlands Architectuur Institut finally brought Le Corbusier's posthumous Eglise Saint-Pierre in Firminy, France to my attention. Not quite on the posthumous scale of the Sagrada Familia, but still damn cool. Anyone want to make a pilgrimage with me? Or a Paul Rudolph road trip?

I took home a new favorite Dutch photographer from the Fotomuseum, Aart Klein. Yet another reason to avoid the photography shelves at De Slegte... this could be very dangerous.

ICA Boston

After my debate with Ben on the direction of modern food, music, and art, I was positively riled up to go to the new Institute of Contemporary Art on the reviving Boston harbor. The way there was a bit nerve-wracking, as it involved both buses and walking, some of my least favorite modes of transportation. My efforts were not really rewarded. First of all, the architecture was a disappointment. There was no reasonable pedestrian approach to the building, to the point that I was convinced that I must have found the wrong structure. Picking my way through the heat of a crumbling parking lot, I took my best guess about which side of the building I should approach, as the ass end it presented to approaching visitors gave no clue as to where the entrance might be.

Rather than being drawn into the exhibits upon entry, one had to take the stairs or elevator to the top floor. The huge industrial elevator was a nice reminder of the building's former purpose, but it carried only a small handful of people each time and seemed like a tremendous energy waste. For the stair walker, there were no clear indications to prevent one from getting lost on intermediary floors, as both me and a couple behind me did. The claustrophobic bathroom, glowing in Dan Flavin-ish lights, was also impossible to find, and so cramped that I could barely fit my small person into a stall. All this in a small museum for a big $10 entrance fee.

The one redeeming space was the glazed Founders Gallery with its sweeping gridded panorama of the bay and its ambient soundscape by Teri Rueb, produced by many speakers sounding their own localized parts and luring you from one to another. The hallway framed its visitors magnificently in grey and white. The lack of bass frequencies from the tweeters detracted from the convincingness of each sonic microcosm, but perhaps evoking low-tech science exhibits of yore was part of the intended effect?

One of the most striking works in the museum was Rineke Dijkstra's twin images of Eygenya, a young female Isreali inducted into the army. Startlingly, the first photograph, taken on the day of her induction, conveyed less personality than the photograph taken eight months later of her in drab. The image haunted me for some time, as did the thought of whether this beautiful young woman had joined voluntarily or not and whether she was in mortal danger or perhaps even dead.