Results tagged “Museums” from Intelligent Travel Blog

I arrived in Madrid a few weeks ago with only a handful of hours on a Saturday to show my fiancé around town, so I wanted a way to pack in as much culture as we could, and if possible, do it on the cheap. Enter my colleague Meg Weaver's excellent Free City Guide to Madrid, where I found a slew of cost-efficient ways to wander the city. With her list and a few of our own discoveries along the way, we were able to make our limited stay a memorable one, and save a few euros in the process.

Our first stop was the CaixaForum Madrid gallery, a former electric power station that's now a funky art space situated along the Paseo del Prado, tucked among some of the city's best museums. We wandered the current exhibit, took a break at the thoroughly modern cafe upstairs, then marveled at the living wall of plant life that's overtaken the exterior of the building next door. The admission is always free, so it should certainly join the must-see list for those visiting the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Museo del Prado, which is where we were headed next.

Admission is free for visitors to the Reina Sofia after 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and until 2:30 p.m. on Sundays, so we ducked in there first, taking the very-cool elevators up to see Picasso's Guérnica, which is always captivating. We spent awhile wandering the halls of modern art before heading over to the historic stuff at the Prado, whose immense galleries filled with works by Goya, Reubens, and Velásques constituted an entire semester's worth of study for one of my college roommates when she studied abroad in the city. But we only had two hours, as the Prado offers free admission from 6 p.m to 8 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday (and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday). Thankfully, that was more than enough time to take in some of the museum's more famous works like Las Meninas and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid.

Austen fans rejoice! Last week, The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City opened a new exhibit featuring more than 100 of Austen's works. One of the most exceptional pieces is the Lady Susan manuscript - the only surviving complete manuscript of Austen's. Other pieces include personal letters - including the ones she wrote "cross-hatched" (across the horizontal lines of text at right angles in order to save paper) - and selected drawings and prints depicting people, places and events important to Austen's life. The exhibit also features illustrated editions of Austen's novels and an unfinished copy of The Watsons - the "only surviving manuscript of Austen's novels showing her work in progress and under revision".

The exhibit explores the legacy Jane Austen left after her early death at the age of 41. It features later writers' responses to her work - opening with a diary entry by her peer Sir Walter Scott and followed by comments from 20th-century writers such as Yeats and Kipling. Austen's influence is further examined through a film (below) - "The Divine Jane: Reflections on Austen" - by Italian director Francesco Carrozzini at the conclusion of the exhibition that features interviews with artists and scholars. One highlight of the film is when the interviewees describe the kind of dinner party they would have if Jane Austen were a guest.

Contributing editor James Conaway is also our resident art buff, so we've asked him to review some of the best exhibits he visits in his travels. Today he contrasts two exhibits currently on display at the Corcoran Gallery in D.C.

Washington, D.C.'s prestigious Corcoran Gallery of Art currently has two oddly complementary exhibits of special interest to visitors and residents alike. The first is Oil, by the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, which opened this past weekend. It's a heroic display of wall-size photographs taken over a decade that document the influence of the world's most ubiquitous, dwindling resource upon our environment and upon ourselves. The second, Sargent and the Sea, is an antiphonal, painterly alternative to this reality by the 19th-century artist, John Singer Sargent, whose early drawings and paintings depict a still pristine, unhydro-carbonated, impossibly naive world.

Burtynsky's odyssey to some of the least lovely assemblages of post-industrial detritus can best be described as dreadfully gorgeous. "Industrial sublime" is the phrase used by the curators, and that works, although the word sublime was intended for natural phenomena of such grandeur and power that the beholder is transported to a nether space somewhere between fear and ecstasy. Well, when you're confronted with the derriere-end products and landscapes of a century of unbridled internal combustion, you too will be both afraid and aesthetically moved.

Contributing editor James Conaway is also our resident art buff, so and we always appreciate his willingness to offer us a tour of some of the new exhibits he finds during his travels.

National Gallery of Art in Washington: so-called "modern" art has ingeniously been made not just accessible, but practically participatory. We're not talking about amateurs here, but the likes of Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, and Jasper Johns up close and personal, at least as far as inspiration and technique are concerned.

For the gallery's latest exhibit, The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works, curators dipped into the permanent Meyerhoff trove, came up with 126 exemplary works from the late '50s to the present, and then radically grouped them according to theme, i.e. "Scrape," "Line," "Drip," even "Stripe to Zip," as well as more conceptual categories like figure, frame, and "concentrity." The result's a riveting meander through half a century of fine painting, sculpture, drawings, and prints categorized not by year or artist, but according to the ways in which the artists themselves made the leap from idea to creation.

Ask any of my friends and they'll tell you that I'm a big nerd. I'm also a college student (i.e. broke and cheap), so any event that allows me to learn for free gets two big thumbs up. This is why I'm so excited for the Smithsonian magazine Museum Day. This coming Saturday, September 26, over 1,250 museums around the U.S. are offering free admission. That's right, FREE. All you have to do is go to the Museum Day website and print off the admission card.  Each admission card is valid for two visitors and the only stipulation is that only one card be used per household.

This event provides a great opportunity to take that trip to the museum you've been putting off or to check out a funky one you normally wouldn't consider. With a price tag like this one, what do you have to loose?

I've compiled a list (after the jump) of some of my favorite participating museums from the Museum Day list...

Traveler Contributing Editor James Conaway is inspired by the New England's fall foliage, and goes looking for other inspirational art at two local museums.

The foliage factor's just beginning to radically alter the New England landscape. I wanted something thoughtful to add to the palette of fiery reds and yellows of just-turning maples as I was driving through Massachusetts, and so headed for the northwest corner, where I found what are probably the two antithetical, if captivating, art venues in the state: "The Clark," in Williamstown, and MASS MoCA in nearby North Adams.

The undeclared war between traditional, painterly views of nature, and those portraying the physical world as an unrelenting grapple with the forces of destruction and anomie, rages. You'd never know it from the air of decorum reigning at both institutions. Yet the vast arc of western artistic interpretation links them and provides the traveler with a riveting contrast, the Clark being the essence of tradition, and MASS MoCA a descent into the post-apocalyptic present. Both are provocative and, yes, fun.

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute sits at the foot of the gentle Taconic Mountains and includes in its stunning collection some iconic New England paintings, among them Winslow Homer's Undertow, which shows ocean survivors once described as the wettest-looking people in American art. There are scads of Impressionists, among them many Renoirs, Pissarros, and Monets, some too pretty for real nature to ever equal. The collection is deep and varied, however, and can easily take up a day, particularly with the addition of Through the Seasons: Japanese Art in Nature, at the new Stone Hill Center, with Edo screens on loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York and stunning examples of contemporary Japanese ceramics.

We've often delved into the nostalgia of children's literature as inspiration for this blog, so children's book illustration fits right into that vein of thinking. Or at least that was my original rationale when I ducked in to see "From Bugs to Beasts: Storytelling Through Collage by Eric Carle" at the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery in D.C.'s Woodley Park neighborhood, where a collection of lithographs and torn paper works by the artist are on display. But it turns out that the exhibit, which runs through September 1 and features huge versions of Carle's classic tissue-paper illustrations of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and other works, only scratched the surface. Carle, a commercial artist who ventured into children's books -- illustrating over 70 -- and never went back, dreamed of a place where the art featured in classic storybooks could be appreciated beyond the page. So in 2001, he opened the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in his hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts.

The museum now hosts a series of rotating and permanent exhibits; the two currently on display feature the works of E. H. Shepard, the illustrator of the classic Winnie-the-Pooh books, and a retrospective of writer and illustrator Tomie dePaola, who celebrates his 75th birthday this year. And The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which is perhaps Carle's most famous book, is observing a birthday of its own, with 40th anniversary parties being held across the country (check out these listings for events near you). Carle himself turned 80 this year, but is still busy blogging, and will be making his annual visit to the Picture Book Museum for a book signing this August 23.

The Carle seems like a perfect gateway museum for parents who are looking to move their kids beyond the children's museum circuit and have them begin to appreciate fine art. Not only will they recognize many of the illustrations from their own book collections, but they'll have the chance to make their own in the massive artist's studio on site. They can also take in a story hour in the museum's library, or watch some of the stories come to life in the theater. And then of course there's another charming touch for the Very Hungry museumgoer- the signature snack in the museum cafeteria is the caterpillar cookie... with a hole in the center. 

["From Bugs to Beasts: Storytelling Through Collage by Eric Carle"]
[The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art]
[The Official Eric Carle Web Site]

Pittsburgh, aka "Roboburgh," has long been a hub of cutting-edge robotic technology, and Chris O'Toole downloads the details on the newest exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center, which opens this weekend.

Robots: so smart, so shiny, so smooth. They're the celebrities of the machine world (next to the iPhone). So it's fitting that the most glamorous and well-known machines have gathered in one place, at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center, so humans can pay tribute.

The Robot Hall of Fame honors movie droids like R2D2 and C-3PO, creepy HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, and a classic 1928 pin-up girl: Maria, the shapely robot of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. But it also credits real-word winners like NASA's Mars Sojourner, the DaVinci surgical robot, and everyone's favorite living room pet, the Roomba.  

The hall of fame is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, which inducts new members each year. It's part of the world's largest permanent museum show on robotic sensing, thinking, and acting. It opens tomorrow, June 13. Roboworld features over 30 exhibits packed with super-smart demonstrations of how robots collect data, process information, roll, fly, and build things. And it has a few lovable greeters, like Andy, a robo-thespian, and Athina, a sassy chat-bot who'll converse on any topic. She even laughs at her own jokes, like this one: how many humans does it take to change a light bulb? Her answer: three. One to weep uncontrollably; one to cut its soft fingers while attempting to change the bulb; and one to program the robot to do it. Hey, at least we're good for something.

Photo: Andy the robo-thespian via The Carnegie Science Center

Tracey Teo shares a new way to explore San Antonio's eclectic art scene: by barge.

Sunfish have always swum in the San Antonio River, but they have never been spotted "flying" above it - until now. Philadelphia artist Donald Lipski and seven other artists were commissioned to create public art for an extension of San Antonio's famous River Walk. Known as the Museum Reach, Lipski's installation features a school of 7-foot-long illuminated sunfish suspended beneath the I-35 overpass adjacent to Camden Street, and it opens on May 30.

The Museum Reach extends four miles from Lexington Street downtown to Hildebrand Avenue, making several city museums accessible by river barge. No need to worry about parking, directions, or catching a cab. Visitors staying along the River Walk can simply step outside their hotel, catch a river barge and spend a day museum-hopping. The Witte, the Southwest School of Art and Craft and the San Antonio Museum of Art are just a short ride away.

Visitors traveling along the San Antonio River soon realize that not all the city's art is displayed in museums. Thanks to the numerous innovative public art installations, there's plenty to experience along the way.

Hunter Braithwaite visited the Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, and says the he "started off thinking that this guy was a genius, then shifted to kook, then settled on a mix of the two." You can determine for yourself by checking out the exhibit, on display through June 21st.

In this season of layoffs, the clichéd "doing more with less" seems inescapable. But did you know that the term wasn't coined by a regional manager somewhere, but by Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, almost-inventor of the flying car, and founder of the modern day sustainability movement? Now you do.

Here is the back story: Fuller, twice-expelled from Harvard, unemployed, and unable to provide for his family, contemplates suicide on the shore of Lake Michigan. In the end, he decides against it, choosing instead to help as much of humanity as possible while using the smallest amount of resources. Or, to do more with less. If this came as a revelation, and you find yourself in the Chicago area before June 21st, check out Fuller's retrospective "Starting with the Universe" at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  
 
Luckily, the exhibition's curators do not share Fuller's passion for resource conservation. "Starting with the Universe" is a maximalist account of Fuller's life. Mining years of journals, the show is an in-depth narrative of Fuller's personal and professional growth. The walls are silkscreened with quotes, drawings, and enormous portraits of Fuller. There are models of his houses and developments. Unfortunately, the Dymaxion car isn't present. With a length of thirty feet, it wouldn't fit in the museum's freight elevator.

The exhibition charts Fuller's ambition as he moves from single-family homes to planned communities, from domed cities to plans for reallocating international resources. And toward the end of his life, things really took off. He made plans for cities that floated in the ocean. After that, he planned cities that floated in the sky. Some of these blueprints are little more than scribbles on notebook paper, but they raise the universal question, "what could he do had he lived for another decade?" The last room of the exhibition baits the viewer to pick up where Fuller left off. It is the Dymaxion study center, where visitors can browse over 400 volumes by and about Fuller.

Contributing Blogger Cathy Healy chats with the curator of Wyoming's National Museum of Wildlife Art.


JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. -- The bronze elk stand alert at the snowy entrance to the National Museum of Wildlife Art, while across the highway, 7,000 live elk nuzzle hay in the National Elk Refuge, unafraid of the coyotes skulking their perimeter. I confess, I've driven by many times, staring back and forth, but never bothered to stop for the sleigh rides among the elk (looked really cold) or to revisit the museum (no excuse).


"People are surprised when they come in and see the incredible depth of what we have," said Dr. Adam Harris, curator of art. "They're expecting to see animals from this region in fairly representational form, but we really try to collect a broad range of art work...we have the great artists from America and Europe." [See video interview.]

The museum is year-around and so is the wildlife.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the BBC has put together a fascinating package that explores the role that the atrocious death camps still play in contemporary European culture. Many of the camps were built over 70 years ago, and were not meant to be long-term installations. But now, millions of visitors travel to camps like Auschwitz each year to bear witness to the memory of the atrocities.

Time and heavy traffic has led to the gradual deterioration of these sites, and many of the museums on site are facing a financial shortfall that has preservationists worried about how to ensure that future generations will not forget. In some cases, many of the artifacts are slowly starting to deteriorate, such as the shocking room filled with two tons of victims' hair that can currently be seen at Auschwitz. At the time, the Nazis had sent the hair to textile factories; today scientists acknowledge that it is only a matter of time until it all turns to dust. (You can see a slideshow of many of the deteriorating parts of the camp here).