Adventures in birthday presents

[fbhjr]

For Christmas I had given my wife some show tickets for yesterday evening in Boston.
So, about noon we set off for the city. (I’m trying to make this sound adventurous, so I’m not saying “we drove the 40 miles of superhighway”.)

It may look like Boston was foggy, but it was really a light snow.


We had not been to the Art Museum since they opened their new wing.
So, we headed there.




My wife (who has been known to perform in front of thousands) does not like crowds. So, we usually go to the museum when they first open and then leave when it gets crowded. This time, we got there about the time we usually leave. So, it was a bit more crowded then she likes. And, since the new wing is still fairly new, that’s where everyone heads when they get there.
But, we still found some areas that weren’t too crowded that still had stuff she wanted to see.


Two of the floors of the new wing have an area behind all of the exhibits where they talk about “behind the exhibits”. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
There they show examples of restoration, choice of what to display and how things should be displayed in the museum. As much as I like the exhibits themselves, some of this information on how it came to be that way I like just as much, or more.
And, they put some pieces back there off the beaten trail as well.


They also have some very interesting benches back there that my wife really liked.


Of course, the green glass one was her favorite.


It did take us a while to find the stairs. Not that they’re overly hard to find. It’s just at first I thought this was just an example of modern art sticking out of a wall and not the sign.


My wife likes glass items and ceramic items. Especially ones that are green. So, she really liked this.


And, this is one of her favorites.


I liked this one.


They have one room which is all model ships.


The upper floor is the more modern art. I am not trying to criticize it in any way, but it doesn’t do it as much for me as other art. I am not saying it isn’t art, doesn’t belong there or anything like that. It’s more me saying: “What is this trying to tell me?” and not getting it.



There was one that my wife pointed out that I do think I got, but it isn’t overly modern.


My grandfather was a country doctor who did make rounds by horse drawn carriage in the summer and sleigh in the winter. My father told me a story of my grandfather being called to come out for a sick child on a stormy night. After he hitched up the horse, drove it across the valley, he got there to be told the kid was OK and he should go home.
“NO!” my grandfather told them. “I’ve come all this way at night in a storm for you, the least you’ll do is feed and water my horse!”
That painting reminded both my wife and me of that story.

One of the things I like about the new museum wing is they have a lot of interactive things. You may think that would be bad at an art museum where you shouldn’t touch things, but they do it with interactive touch screens.

Hopefully they’ll keep working.

The crowds did get to my wife eventually, so we headed out with several hours before the show.
The show was at Boston University, which isn’t a part of town I used to visit often. So, I don’t have a good idea what is there in the way of places to eat.
(Much like my direction sense doesn’t work in Cambridge, where my mother was born, I have similar problems near BU where she went to school...)
So, we started in Kenmore Square and drove down Commonwealth Avenue looking for places to eat.
We saw a lot of them. But, none that both looked good and had parking.
My wife had seen one way back in the square, so we turned around and went back to Kenmore Square. We found parking on the road, which is rare there and went over to the place she wanted to try.
It was not yet open.
So, we went next door to a sushi placed called Fin’s.
The food there was pretty good, but when done we still had 2 hours until the show.

We drove down to BU anyhow. The tickets said we couldn’t park until 90 minutes before the show, but when we got there they let us in the garage anyhow. (I say let. They took our $25 parking fee and let us in anyhow...)

Before heading up to the show and waiting around outside to get in (in the snow) we decided to stay in the car and watch some TV shows on my iPad. This turned out to be a mistake.

We left the car and headed up the stairs about an hour before the show. We got halfway up one flight of stairs before the crowd coming the other way from the previous show reached us.
We got trapped on the stairs by those folks.

So, we sat in the stairwell for about 1/2 hour while the crowd filed slowly past.
At one point we thought it let up and tried again, only to find it was a pause between halves and we got stuck on the next stairwell again.

But, eventually we got to the top. We got let into the auditorium. We saw the show.
We both liked it quite a bit. My favorite was the people on the trampoline walking up the wall after the bounce. Never seen anything quite like that before.

After the show, the 3300 people with us tried to re-enact the stair way scene from earlier.
“Let’s go around back,” my wife said.
The back stairs were much less crowded.

As near as I can tell, the front stairs had 3294 people the back had 6.
I’m glad I was in the 6.

It still took a while to get out of the garage. But, we had just seen a good show so we spent the time talking about our favorite parts. When the line of cars disappeared, we started ours and drove out pretty quickly.

The snow had been light all day, so the roads were a bit slick, but not too bad. We got home before midnight and didn’t have any troubles.

Comments

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad you and her enjoyed the day and the performance despite the dense crowds.

I hope to see the new MFA wing sometime this coming year. I'm really glad the model ships are back, I haven't seen them in years.

I agree with you, I like seeing more of the "behind the scenes", the technical side of making, display, conserving the art - sometimes more than the art itself. And things that may not be considered 'standard', like the books Albrecht Durer worked on that were on display during his show. Those were wonderful.

for instance when they have printmaking shows, I really appreciate and enjoy it when they have a block or plate and the tools on display to show part of the process. Even though I know a lot about the process itself since I've done most of them, I still find it really intriguing to see the 'actual' plate/block that artist used, and try to study -what- they did when they cut the image to get a better sense of the effect created in the impression. That really helps sink it in for a show.

[pallid-regina.livejournal.com]

Neat museum!