Night at the museum

[fbhjr]

Last night blue_micha, perrin_o_ravnos, my wife and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts masters of Venice exhibit.

The museum is undergoing major renovations and expansion.


While that made us use the front entrance instead of the side it didn’t disrupt our seeing things as much as the Exceptional Woman award program reception did.
I’ve got no problem with museums having special events. I know they make a good bit of money off of it. But, I would have liked to have had warning they were closing off a large section of the second floor during normal hours.

But, there was still plenty to see.
perrin_o_ravnos looked at some Egyptian action figures.


I am very fond of their rolling seals.


Honestly, I’m not sure why I like them so much, but I’ve always found them very cool. I like other seals as well, but the roller ones I really like.
But, regular seals are cool too.


The sign for this one said it was a “magic bottle”.


I’m not sure why it was magic. I do wonder. If I could rub it, would a genie come out? Or, is it a magic potion? Or, a magic hand grenade?
It’s locked up behind glass, so I’ll probably never know.

blue_micha provides some scale for some of the other Egyptian artifacts.


I liked the scarabs. They’re cool.


I know these aren’t D&D figures, but that’s what came to mind.


While the rebuild the place a lot of things are on loan to other places.


My wife liked the gold head pieces.


They are cool.


There was something that seems like a big practical joke to me. It’s a Greek bowl where the person who made it molded a bug in the bottom.


It makes me think they put something opaque in it and when someone tipped it up to drink they saw the bug and freaked out.

Of course, as an engineer, one of the things I really liked was the vase that was on a turntable that you could rotate.


What didn’t make sense to me is it was in the middle of the room. So, you could just walk around it. Why rotate it and not the things against the wall? Maybe it was against the wall once.

They do, of course, have other things I think are interesting.


Although the Met in New York has a larger collection, this one is still good. But, not really what we came to see.
So, we headed off to Venice.


Sadly, they don’t let you take pictures in the special exhibit. I bought the book of it. So, anyone one who really wants to see it can come visit at some point... (Call first.)

After the special exhibit, we went to see other parts of the museum.


perrin_o_ravnos really likes the Dutch masters.


They don’t have too many of them, but they are cool.

He and I also had quite a talk about the nature of one of the bigger paintings.


It’s a legend of Jupiter being asked for help by one of his human girlfriends. Apparently when asking Jupiter for help you need a brest exposed and a torch in each hand.


Why was not clear to us. (Especially the torches. Given his other habits, the breast is pretty clear...)

I liked this one as it is like getting many paintings in one and seems very efficient.


(I’m told that isn’t the point, but why not? Get a painting of lots of paintings and save money and wall space, right?)

blue_micha really likes the baroque stuff.


I’m told this painting of the canal in Venice does not contain the boat chase out of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But, I think I could see it going on in the back.


Back in the 70’s my father tried to come up with a “silent violin” that he could play in hotel rooms while on business trips and not get in trouble with other hotel guests. He went to a lot of work to “invent” this. Too bad we found one that looked just like it that was made 250 years before.




My dad still came up with it on his own..

I thought this was a very interesting horn as it was sounded through the side.



My wife and I liked seeing the serpent on display as we had seen two in concert at the Revels last Christmas.

The only real downside of the night was the traffic. It seemed to be against us everywhere. There was a Red Sox game in town, so traffic into the city was horrible. Coming back out we took Storrow drive that was under construction and down to one lane. Then, when we got off of the Mass Pike, the exit ramp was closed and we had to go south 5 miles and turn around to get home.
I put it down to not commuting for a month. All the traffic problems I’d have had waited and got me all at once.

But, even with that, it was a fun night.