Hello everybody and welcome back to My Weekly Flickr.
While I regret that my vacation has come to an end I can honestly say that I’ve had a splendid week. The weather cooperated all week, this morning was the first time it’s rained and that was just while I was at the grocery store. It was hot but not oppressively so and I spent every day at a museum as I planned.
On Monday I walked up to the Metropolitan Museum and spent two hours in the new European galleries. Rooms in the galleries were closed for quite some time while they moved everything around. I’m very pleased with the way they’ve rehung the collection. It’s now in chronological order as it goes through the history of European art. And they have an enormous collection with many, many great masterpieces. It was wonderful to visit with my Dutch and Netherlandish friends again. To be in a room with one wall of Franz Hals and three walls of Rembrandt is very special. So many museums would kill for just one of each. In the drawing corridor, on the right side as you make your way from the Impressionists to the European galleries, are two Ingres drawings, pendants, a husband and wife. Very nice. Ingres always felt that it was his religious paintings that would be his legacy while he just knocked out portraits, paintings and drawings, left and right to pay the bills. But it’s the portraits that are outstanding.
Tuesday morning I got up very early, actually I had a very restless night and didn’t sleep much from about Midnight until I got out of bed at 6:15 AM. But as I normally awake at 4AM this still constituted sleeping in. I went to Grand Central Station and took the Metro North to Greenwich, Ct for a drawing exhibit at the Bruce Museum. When I got off the train it took me a minute to remember the way. But luckily I remembered that I had to cross over to the NY side of the tracks, enter the small station and then go out onto the Main Avenue, walk up the block and turn right. It’s a short walk to the museum steps. If anyone on the board has ever been to the Bruce you will understand my next comment. The museum is on a hill, a very steep hill, and climbing the stairs is akin to climbing a mountain. You have to lean forward as you climb otherwise you are in danger of falling over backwards. And either the steps have gotten steeper or I have clearly gotten older because I was grateful to reach the top. At the top of the stairs you still have to walk up a driveway ramp which is also uphill. This is a museum that made me work for my art. The descent is only slightly easier, my brother fell once going down. But I was as surprised as I’m sure you all are that I was able to get there and get back knowing my total lack of sense of direction.
I wasn’t expecting much but it was the only museum open on Tuesday as I had already been to the Met on Monday. But it was a very nice exhibit. It could have been a Rembrandt exhibit, 28 of the prints were his. Many that I had never seen before and several that were much larger than usual. I can’t remember ever seeing Rembrandt prints that weren’t postcard size more or less. A very nice one of an elderly woman rumored to be his Mother. In addition there were several Goya Caprichos, a bunch of Whistler’s and a number of Durer’s. Not a bad little collection for Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly. Here is a link to the museum website that discusses the exhibit and offers images.
http://brucemuseum.org/site/exhibitions_detail/duerer-rembrandt-whistler-prints-from-the-collection-of-dr.-dorrance-kellyWednesday I visited The Hammer Gallery on 57th Street and Park. Galleries have art for sale but if you are interested in art you may go in and enjoy the art as if it was a museum, there is no admission fee and no one hurries you along. They had an Impressionist exhibit that was splendid, Renoir and Pissarro, generally. Head shots of Renoir’s children, Pierre and Coco and Gabrielle, their Nanny, seated. Landscapes by Pisarro. For those of you not in a position to see it you may take the virtual tour.
http://www.vtg360.com/0172/index.html#p=scene-3 Afterwards I visited the Whitney museum for an exhibition of Edward Hopper. The Whitney is the repository of Hopper art, his widow, Jo, left them his estate in a bequest so they have 1000’s of his artworks. They really went all out for this exhibit. Lots of his paintings from the collection displayed on the Fifth Floor, then on the third floor, the exhibit consisted of paintings and the sketches he made prior to the actual painting. And watercolors and drawings. And they managed to get the Art Institute of Chicago to loan them Nighthawks which really surprised me. It’s a long exhibit and a long time for it to be missing from the Chicago collection. It’s probably the most iconic of his works. And they had two paintings from MOMA, one of them a real favorite of mine, the Esso station on the dark Country road across the street from a very forbidding forest. Loans from other museums including the Met and some from private collections. A painting from Yale which I missed when my brother and I were there last month. A number of paintings I hadn’t seen before and others that I had seen and enjoyed seeing again. Couldn’t have been more pleased, really an excellent display. This is a link to the Whitney website with a sketch he did for Nighthawks and a description of the exhibit. Other images as well.
http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/HopperDrawingFriday I visited the National Academy of Design and saw William Trost Richards. He was an American landscape painter of the 19th Century and I’ve always enjoyed his work. He’s one of my brother’s favorites. He became aware of him when the Brooklyn museum did a retrospective exhibition 40 years ago that brought him back to renewed interest. His daughter left a bequest of 500 items to the Academy and they kept 100 and distributed the rest to other museums. Most of the exhibit has never been on display before. And it was a nice mix, his oils, some watercolors and drawings. And in a glass case, a number of his sketch books open to his sketches. One of the oils was a collaboration between Richards and his daughter who was also an artist. It was a portrait of Richards sitting at his easel painting a landscape. The daughter painted Richards and Richards painted the landscape. Very neat.
This is a link to the National Academy website, with a description of the exhibit and many images.
http://www.nationalacademy.org/william-trost-richards-visions-of-land-and-sea/On Thursday I took a friend to the Met but while it was a fairly pleasant visit, my friend was in a remarkably dark frame of mind owing to family problems involving her Mother who if she hasn’t suffered some sort of medical injury can only be viewed as an absolute monster. Not a good situation but I try to help as much as I can.
And so, hope some of you enjoyed my week of great art and for those of you who didn’t, well there are always the Flickrs to keep you amused.
Andy G.
Could This Happen ?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22064365@N05/9223370461/joanne 019
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tranvestite/8077076503/ Wedding Dress En robe de mariée
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87668730@N02/8248983822/Alice_Mad_Hatters_01
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarah9330/8039909717/ boy's play dress up July 13th 2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30616213@N04/4790521284/ Cheryl Sissy 80
http://www.flickr.com/photos/braman424/8905887322/ Dimpled Cheecks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8457667@N08/8922948746/ Nice Dress
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79199961@N06/8916604333 Happily Kilted
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75446088@N00/8887190819Yes hunty, Richard Pryor's oldest son is a fierce drag queen!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34601587@N00/8917747268Lauren 2013 Photoshoot (9)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47184151@N03/8830328432Erica Scott
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62740346@N08/8927695156
Betty's Pub 20.1
Topic: It's the it might as well be Spring Flickr as the Winter Flickr is now locked! (Read 29895 times)
