The Metropolitan Museum of Art

On December 4, I took a PTO day from work and along with my absolutely beloved mom, we took the train into The City. Of course here in CT, when I refer to 'The City', we understand it to me

an New York City. The train ride into NYC is my preferred method of transportation and this trip was no exception. Grand Central was awesome as usual and this was my mom's first time since we moved here from Missouri 16 years ago. This trip has a first for me as well - I have never taken a taxi in NYC before. The first cab driver we got was Yu Chow and he was amazing. My mom started to talk to him and he seemed delighted and eager to answer any questions she may have. He even took

a more difficult route through the city so that we could pass the Rockefeller Christmas Tree on our way to the museum. He pointed out famous places like Saks Fifth Avenue, Radio City Music Hal and the NBC Studios. I have been to these places all before, but my mom was thrilled. With my first taxi cab ride over, we stood outside the entrance to one of the largest museums in the world.

If it was not for a friend of mine who explained the entrance price to me, I would have paid $20 per ticket as is recommended. She advised that we could put a quarter on the desk and they would take that. Since we were splurging on this mother/daughter outing to the big city, I pulled the first bill I had in my wallet and put it on the desk. I am very appreciative that a museum of this caliber and size can accommodate the rich and the poor so that everyone can see its treasures.

I took over 200 pictures in 45 minutes. I could spend days trying to make sure that I saw everything single piece on display, but our time was limited so I focused on the areas of my

personal interests; Egyptian, Medieval and Renaissance. Let me start with Egyptian as this is where my tour through the museum also began...

Once we reached the famed book of the dead, which I could not capture all of it on a single frame and was not allowed to video tape it, my mom took a rest and I went off in search of Medieval art. I found the Greek and Roman section which led to African and South American art which led into Renaissance. Here, I decided to go window shopping for furniture in my house.

This will be in my foyer

This will be my parlor

This will be my dining room

and this gorgeous example of French design in the Renaissance era...

will be my bed :)

I finally found my holy grail - Medieval Art. I was in history heaven and wanted to capture everything I saw. Here are the highlights of my favorite pieces...

These are pieces that were part of a personal or family shrine

This was a gorgeous stone and marble table - unfortunately the decoration on the top of the table did not come out well on the camera

This is a beautifully detailed metal box

This was part of the Medival Arms section. Seeing the suits of amour for both man and horse situated in this fashion was breathtaking for me - I'm into this stuff.

This last photo is of the Christmas tree that is in the great hall as part of the medieval exhibit. There were so many people around I could not take more than one photo of the tree so unfortunately I did not get any close up shots of the ornaments and decorations surrounding the base of the tree. It was amazing.

New Haven Excursion - Part Two

On that bright, sunny Saturday after Thanksgiving, I decided to visit both the Yale Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. The British Art museum was the second stop on my agenda. It was conveniently located across the street from the Yale Art Gallery (and across from a Starbucks too :-D). On street parking is very limited since it is a city, but parking in the Chapel-York Street garage was not a bad alternative. The outside of the building isnt anything to write home about - or in our case to blog about. Simply looks like an office building from the 1970s to me. What I liked though about the outside of the building was that you could see some of the pieces from the street.

The museum was recently renovated in a very modern style - warm wood combined with cold concrete. I prefer that the surroundings match the artwork that is on display so I wasn't enamored with the modern decor. The picture on the right (which was taken from the museums website http://ycba.yale.edu) shows the interior of the first floor. All around it are huge paintings of homes, people and animals. I was awed by the size of the paintings and by how graphic some of them were.

This trip, however, I encountered a snag. So far I have been able to photograph anything as long as I did not use a flash. In the Walpole exhibit, which consumed the entire third floor, I was not allowed to photograph anything. There were no signs posted, and while guards did see me holding a camera, none of them offered to advise me on the no photography rule. I found out by taking this picture of Cardinal Wosley's hat. His real hat. To anyone who watches The Tudors on Showtime, Cardinal Wosley, portrayed by Sam Neill, was responsible for getting Henry VIII

his divorce from Queen Catherine. While the show is fiction, Cardinal Wosley was not. He was the Chancellor of England under King Henry VIII and took care of many of the affairs of state while the young king did whatever took his fancy. In 1529, he was removed as Chancellor by a much more involved Henry VIII for his failure at getting a divorce for the king. Wolsey's task was to convince the pope to allow a divorce, which was forbidden in the Catholic Church. The reason the pope was against granting the divorce is because of Henry's marriage to Queen Catherine. Catherine was married to Henry's brother who was supposed to take the throne. The brother died, and in order to maintain the peace treaty with Spain, which was signed with the marriage of Catherine, Henry's father urged the Catholic Church to nullify the first marriage so that Henry could marry his brother's wife. The nullification was granted, and the marriage proceeded. Henry VIII wanted the divorce for a few reasons: 1) He did not have a male heir and believed he sinned when he slept with Catherine 2) He was not in love with Catherine, but with Anne Boleyn whom he wanted to marry. When Wolsey failed to secure his divorce, Henry removed him from Chancellor and blacklisted Wolsey anywhere else he went for employment. Wolsey, having no where else to go, went to York where he was appointed as the Archbishop of York back in 1514. In 1530, almost a year after he was ousted as Chancellor, Henry had him arrested and he died on the way from York to London where he was going to stand trial for treason - and most likely lose his head like so many others who were associated with Henry VIII.

I love this time period in history. Starting from the early medieval period through the Reformation in European history is just fascinating in all aspects to me. The piece I picked originally was a full suit of armor that was on display, but for some reason I told myself that I would go back and take a picture of it later in case I found something that drew me in stronger. When I saw the hat I knew I had to write about this. This hat, where only a think layer of glass stood between us, was a direct link to Henry VIII - one of the most notorious English kings in history. I was millimeters away from being able to physically connect with a piece of history - a real piece of history. Not a picture in a book or on a website, but the real thing just presented there for the world to see. How many people walk by it and not even stop for a glance? This is why museums are such an important part of our lives as people. They give us the opportunity to make connections which our collective pasts and presents.

After I took the photo is when a guard told me that the entire third floor, the entire first floor and parts of the second floor were no photography zones. I can understand copyrights and all that, and since the Walpole showing was a traveling exhibition I can understand why they would not allow photographs, but from that moment on through the rest of my time there, the museum took on an unwelcoming feeling that I did not experience at the other museums. This feeling dampened the rest of the tour for me. There was great artwork, and the entire Walpole exhibit was incredible, but not being able to take photos took away something for me.

New Haven Excursion - Part One

Yale University Art Gallery

Located on Chapel Street in downtown New Haven, the Yale University Art Gallery is open free of charge to the public. The gallery recently, along with the British Art museum, went through a large renovation project. The result is a four-level modern building with the exhibits, both permanent and special showing, segregated into different groups such as African Art, Asian Art, and European and American Art. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and go to both the Art Gallery and the Center for British Art on the same day since they were across the street from one another. I tried to do this last weekend, but parking proved to be a massive hassle and I left unfulfilled. This weekend, I came prepared with cash for the parking garage on York Street and this proved to be much easier and much less of a headache than the previous weekend. So far I have decided that museums outside of the city are the way to go for me because with a city museum, parking is always an issue if you drive. But, find a nearby parking garage on a nice sunny, fall day and things aren't so bad.

The flow to the museum was not as smooth as other museums that I have visited. Each floor is divided between two exhibits with the separator being the elevator in a small corridor. I felt like I was doing a lot of back-tracking to make sure I saw everything there was to see. Also with this museum, a lot of the pieces of art are in the open air on a pedestal around the room. Knowing I am not allowed to touch the artifacts was the only thing that kept me from doing so. You can walk right up to a lot of the pieces and breathe on them. This made me particulary nervous so I was very watchful about where I stepped and what my surroundings were which took away some of the experience - I was concentrating onnot knocking over a priceless bust of a greek politician to really take in the full concept of the bust. Would I have preferred that the pieces be behind glass? Perhaps. I think I would have felt more secure about the pieces but whose to say that glass would protect it from falling to the floor and shattering if someone bumped into the glass?

The one piece that really took my mind off of my nervousnes

s and just swallowed my attention whole was a votive out of gray schist in the Asian Art collection. This piece is called "Footprints of the Buddha" and was found in ancient Gandhara which is located in modern day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. It was made during the Kushan period in Asian Art. The Kushan dynasty was the first in which images of Buddha began to appear. In Gandhara, the art that was produced was heavily influenced by the Roman Empire.

This is a beautiful carving and I was drawn to it by the fact that instead of a figure of Buddha, the feet were used as an iconic representation. I am sure the symbols on the side as well as along the border of the piece have significance, but the reason I decided to write about this piece was due to

the swastikas in the toes. The swastika, which in modern times is the unarguable symbol of the Nazis, came from Buddhist images from Asia. The symbol is really a representation of the sun. I learned the origin of the swastika in Asian Art (which I took at AMC and recommend) and found it interesting here because of what I have learned from various art and history classes over the years. One of the most basic techniques of any group, tribe, nation, etc. is to adopt the symbols and customs of other nations into their own social identities. If you read Dan Brown novels at all, you are familiar with Christians taking Druid and pagan symbols and rituals and adding them to their own practice. Essentially, the Nazis did the same thing. It was adopted by the party in 1920 and into its final appearance on a red flag encased in a white circle in 1925 - designed by Hitler himself. As a result, most of the Western world recognizes this symbol as pure evil, where in antiquity, it stood for the sun and was used in artwork depicting the most peaceful entity the world knows he - Buddha.

The Asian art collection was gorgeous, and the pieces from Greco-Roman and Assyrian times were fantastic, but I want to make a special mention of the column to the right. When I took Art

History I at Gateway Community College in New Haven, we went to the old Yale Art Gallery and had to pick a piece on display from either Greco-Roman, Assyrian, early Asian or European history prior to the Renaissance. I chose this same column back in 2003 when I took the course. I learned the column was from an abbey long destroyed now in France, and that pieces of the abbey that were discovered at the dig site are located at The Cloisters in NYC. This particular column depicts the Adoration of the Magi - a common theme for religous stone work in medieval times. I remember writing about the zig-zag pattern on the shaft of the column and the four different scenes at the top. I was attached to the column the first moment I laid eyes on it and have always referred to it as "my column" for some reason. I have not seen it since my one trip to the gallery those six years ago, but when I saw it on Saturday, I instantly thought "There's my column". Just wanted to share that :)

New Britain Museum of American Art

I am just posting the pictures I took at the museum trip from last Sunday this week. My overall impression of the museum was that it was okay. I went there with an open mind, although I am the first to admit that American art - especially modern art - is not my cup of tea. I did find a few pieces in the Hudson Valley collection and the painting of the Parthenon most impressive. Otherwise it was not my favorite visit so far, but at least I had no problem with parking :)

Grandfather Clock - they just don't make 'em like they used to.

This is a replica of a Revolutionary Officer's coat

Samuel Colt Revolver - need I say more? It was gorgeous but with the lighting and the class, it was very difficult get in close to show the emmaculate detail that was on the gun

Bronze statue of Pan

George Washington

I took this one for the rainbow on the left side of the painting. George Inness 1861

This one is nice upclose - it is called Sunday Morning by Asher Brown Durand

This one is about 7ft long and 5ft high. It is on loan from the Met and was done by Frederic Edwin Church who was part of the Hudson Valley team.

The colorful wall is paper and plastic cups which is interesting but I was more interested in the glass sculpture hanging from the ceiling. The one at Mohegan Sun is gorgeous and this one, while it looks a little smaller, is still awesome.

Antique copy of Treasure Island with color artwork. Below is the painting that was used for the artwork in the book above.

The Wadsworth Atheneum

This is a picture of the Wadsworth Atheneum. I probably would have had a more enjoyable experience if I did not choose to visit on the same day as the Veterans Day Parade in Hartford. In case you were unaware, the main stage for the parade is across the street from this gorgeous building. I had parking issues, crowd issues and the worst part was trying to leave the city after my tour through the museum was over. But all that pain and anguish aside, the Atheneum is a high-class place with gorgeous pieces and wonderful exhibits that are culturally diverse.

The Wadsworth Athenium was finished in 1842 and is America's oldest public art museum. Daniel Wadsworth founded the Atheneum out of his love of the arts and the knowledge that only the wealthy at the time were able to purchase art for their own personal enjoyment. He set out to bring art to the masses which dramatically supplemented the culture of the people of Hartford and surrounding towns. The art museum quickly grew in size and was named the Atheneum in honor of the greek goddess of wisdom, Athena. This cultural center was dedicated to preserving and presenting history, literature and art in all its forms. The original art donors were Wadsworth himself, the wife of Samuel Colt - Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, and J. Pierpont Morgan. It was also the first American museum to acquire works by masters such as Caravaggio, Frederic Church, Salvador Dalí, and many others. Right now, the Atheneum is featuring a Rembrant exhibit. Below is a video I took of the plague that is to the right of the main entrance to the Atheneum detailing the dedication of the building to Wadsworth. I took a picture as well, but it could not capture the upclose detail of the words.

While I was waiting for my two friends to join me, I started my tour in the first gallery behind the front desk. This gallery is full of European paintings that are just amazing. Some are gigantic while others are very small. The one that caught my eye was called The Old Man and Death by Joseph Wright of Derby. I was in the gallery for all of five minutes when I saw this piece and knew that it was the one that I was going to write about. But first, here is some background information of the Wright of Derby.

Joseph Wright was born in Derby in the 18th century. He was the son of an attorney and decided at an early age that he was going to become a painter. He studied under Thomas Hudson, a renowned portraitist in London. Wright became known for his use of chiarascuro and for his paintings of landscapes. The picture to the right is a self-portrait that shows his use of chiarascuro - his face and upper torso are illuminated while the rest of him is fading into the darkness of the background. His title "Wright of Derby" came from the ettique of the time. There was another painter, Richard Wright, and at that time painters were referred to (and if you think about it, are still referred to this day) by their last names. To distinguish himself from Richard Wright, he was given the name "Wright of Derby" and the name stuck with him long after his death.

The Old Man and Death is a painting that incorporates his talent as a landscape artist. It is based from the Aesop Fable in which the old man is tired and in pain and wishes for Death to release

him from his suffering. Death appears, and the old man is so repulsed by Death's visage that he begs Death to leave him alone and go away. The moral of the story is that it is better to suffer, than to die. While the fable is a dark one, this picture is anything but. Sure there are gothic undertones, but does this painting look dark to you? It is a interesting point of the painting that something which has such a dark theme to it, is painted in such a bright color palette. The use of bright colors was mentioned on the information plague next to the painting, but it wasnt the color palette that hooked me and reeled me in. It was the skeleton.

I came around a corner, looking at a vase that was made in Germany but looked like something that came from China when I looked to my left to see a skeleton. What amazed me so was the detail of the skeleton. This painting was made in the 1700s. How was he able to recreate a skeleton in such complete detail? "Did he go to medical school?" I asked myself. Was he another Da Vinci and study cadavers? Turns out, he did not. And I could not find an answer to my question of how he was able to paint that skeleton. Upon closer look, you can see all the small bones in the ankles, feet and hands - not to mention the ribs, shoulder blade and the fuse marks in the skull. I was blown away but this skeleton and the great about it once I got over the initial puzzlement as to how it was made, was the setting that it was in. Here is a skeleton - not grotesque by our modern standards, but to the old man, the most repulsive, terrifying thing he has ever seen. And here was that skeleton in the middle of this picturesque landscape - ruins in the background next to a lake or sea with nice puffy white clouds in an endless blue sky. I took video again to try to get the details upclose - to be honest, I did not want to take too many photographs because I was not sure of the photography policy and there was about six security guards per exhibit.

I have been to the Atheneum before - freshman year of high school I was in a humanities class where we took English and History in a combined manner. While the English midterm was a regular paper exam, our History exam was a trip to the Athenuem where we had to pick a painting and write about it in a historical context. I chose a painting of Napoleon at the time which is no longer at the museum, but I think that trip was the first time I enjoyed going to a museum. I loved going back and thought the experience inside the museum was fantastic. I am sure the outside experience would have been better if I was aware of the goings on in the city. It really was a nightmare.

The Florence Griswold Museum

This is the Florence Griswold House. It was built in 1817, and was inherited by Florence Griswold from her parents. Since she was unmarried, she decided to use the property as a boarding house to help pay off the debt load she also inherited. In 1899, a New York painter named Henry Ward Ranger came to stay at the house and promised to return the following summer with more artists in hopes of establishing a Barbizon-esque colony at the house. He made good on his promise and Miss Florence's house became a Mecca for painters looking to escape the city in favor of the rural countryside. Old Lyme offered everything they could hope for, and Miss Florence's hospitality and support gave this influx of artists the environment they needed to master their craft.

In 1910, the resident artists decided to renovate parts of the house. In addition to the wallpaper, furniture, rugs, carpets, etc. that was brought into the house, the painters also began to leave their own personal touches behind. It was these “personal touches” that captivated me while I was in the house. While leaving the Art Colony parlor, I turned and took a good look at the door on the west wall and saw the painting of a bull directly on the door. Living on the Connecticut shoreline, I have seen dozens of old houses from stone houses in the 1600s all the way to a governor's mansion from the 1950s. I have never seen painted door panels before in a house and this is what jumped out and grabbed me. As wonderful as the other specimens of art in the house were, I was fixated on the painted door panels. I left the parlor and ended up, almost being pulled, to the dining room in the rear of the home which, as it turns out, is where the largest collection of painted panels resides. The tour guide stationed in the dining room was gracious enough to, after checking my camera to make sure that I was not using a flash, give me a little history on the panels.

Henry Ward Ranger, when he first began to stay at the house in 1899, said that Old Lyme was "a place waiting to be painted." Ranger was schooled in France in the traditional Barbizon style. Barbizon was a colony of artists in France that painted French Impressionism. Impressionism deals mostly with landscapes and nature scenes. Ranger lived in New York City but traveled to Connecticut with the intention of setting up an art colony similar to the ones he was familiar with from his time in France. Florence Griswold's property and surrounding community provided the best location and soon, Florence Griswold's house turned into an art colony that attracted some of the best artists America had. Originally, the artists who stayed at the house were Tonalists which is characterized by subdued landscapes at dusk or twilight. Fog, mist and rain were commonly used as well in these kinds of paintings. After the arrival of Childe Hassam in 1903, Impressionism started to be the preferred style and those painters who painted in Tonalism began to clash with the new Impressionists coming into the house.

While the residing boarders may not have agreed on the style of their art, they were united by it. As a gesture of acceptance and admittance to the art colony, Florence Griswold would request an artist to paint a panel for her home. The first panels that were painted were done by Ranger and Henry Rankin Poore in 1901. It was done as a game of sorts – Ranger painted Bow Bridge by Moonlight on the right side of a door panel on a piece of canvas, then challenged Poore to complete the other side of the door panel. Poore painted Hound Dog Baying at Moon in response to the challenge, created a unified piece of art (see image at right). The reason the two scenes were done on canvas was in case Miss Florence wanted to remove them, but as it turned out, she adorned the paintings and starting asking other artists to paint directly onto panels so that she could have more in her home.

The panels themselves came from Killingly, or there abouts, and were made of mahogany wood. According to the tour guide, upon invitation to paint a panel, the artist would need to choose the size of his painting and then the panel would be ordered. Once the painting was done, it was fit into place on a door or on the wall. The scenes that are painted on the panels are landscapes and nature scenes for the most part, keeping with the Tonalist/Impressionist styles of the period. Another common element to some of the paintings are cows. All of the panels were done in oil paints and most of the landscape locations are from either the property or the town of Old Lyme. An interesting note: Only one woman was accepted into the Lyme Art Colony at the Griswold House – Matilda Browne. She was given the honor of painting two door panels that graced the door into Miss Florence’s bedroom.

The most unique panel that was created is a frieze above the fireplace in the dining room. It is called The Fox Chase by Henry Rankin Poore. He began the piece in 1901 and finished it in 1905. It is a caricature of the group of artists that stayed at the house and he continued to make changes to it as that group grew. In 1920, he added Matilda Browne, which was another symbol of acceptance for her into the art colony. I wanted to capture the entire frieze as close as possible, so I took a video of it (below). The landscape is of Old Lyme in the early 1900’s and has the traditional elements of a fox hunt; the fox at the far left of the painting being chased by hounds and men on horseback. The scene changes into something modern with the addition of the artists and some of the background elements such as a painter’s easel next to a cow and the Griswold House on the far right corner of the frieze. I started at the right and panned to the left.