Category Archives: Art and Culture

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics

Day by Day

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Samhain                                                           Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Thursday is art day; Friday is Latin day.  Today Greg and I will go over my (rough) translation of verses 36-48 of Book I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.  Though slow going, I get a thrill each time I crack a phrase, write it down and it makes sense.  Even if Greg later points out I’m wrong.   I have a lot of opportunity for improvement and that makes the learning worthwhile.  Saturday is errand day and around the house work day.  Sunday, again, is Latin.  Monday is business meeting and Woolly day.  This leaves me Tuesday and Wednesday as buffer days.  So far, this schedule seems to work pretty well for me, though my lackluster performance yesterday made me wonder a bit.

(this graphic illustrates the verses I’ve translated for today.)

On the climate change front.  The world has begun to lurch forward on two aspects of climate change:  reduction of carbon emissions and adaptation.  In the more radical wing of the environmental movement adaptation or mitigation has been capitulation, something to avoid since it muddies the gravity of the problem we face.  A tipping point may be at hand.  Folks have begun to put forth adaptation in the context of realizing the global warming train has not only left the station, but is well on its way.  A certain, not insubstantial amount of warming is now inevitable, perhaps as much 2 degrees, possibly more.   Given that, mitigating projects that can help soften the damage, are not only a good idea, but necessary.  If proposed in the context of inevitable warming, mitigation projects can also underscore the need to take dramatic steps now to prevent more warming.  I’m hopeful we’ll see progress out of Cancun.

My comments above do fly in the face of polling numbers that suggest climate change has receded in the public’s mind, especially as the economic crisis has shoved personal financial peril forward.  Understandable, but not good.  My hunch about a tipping point comes more from the gradual roll out of an increasing consensus about the science.  We’ll see.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Humanities

Unthawed.

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Samhain                                           Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

So beautiful.  The moon floats above our cottonwood trees, a thin sickle, its horns pointing to the east.  I’ve never seen any art object that can compare to the sleek curves and understated lighting of a sickle moon.

When I ran out of sleep a couple of days ago, up for a while in the morning,  I set up today.  After my two tours at the MIA, I’m worn out, tired, a bit dejected.  Losing sleep fiddles with my emotional monitor, I become more sensitive, less able to assess accurately how I’m feeling or doing.

The Thaw exhibition has proved a puzzle for me.  I don’t seem too good at touring it and I can’t quite figure out why.  I base this on the flatness of all three tour’s responses to my guiding them, a flatness that is out of character for most of my tours.  I love this show and the objects in it.  They fascinate me and they shine with a fierce enthusiasm, witness to the powerful visions of people who live close to the land.  But somehow what I’m doing doesn’t convey my excitement.  I may approach this show too analytically, too much absorbed in the art historical arguments about native masterpieces and how to view native art.  Maybe.  I just don’t know.

As I said, when I’m worn out, like today, the negatives surface with ease and have more endurance, that may be an aspect of this problem, but it’s not all of it.  Perhaps I need to reconstruct my tour on different grounds, use different objects.  Maybe I need to develop actual questions for each object, something I resist doing because I prize the conversational atmosphere, just folks walking through the gallery sharing what we see and what we know.  That usually works well for me.  Not this time.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality

Touring the Thaw

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Samhain                                                      Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Working with the Thaw collection today, two tours.  As I’ve gone back over my notes, the collection becomes alive again, a collection of masterpiece art made by native American artists, women and men, in many materials from all the regions of North America save Mexico.  The Tsimishian raven frontlet is still my favorite, a compact work, well-carved with abalone inlay.  It features, probably, Raven Who Owns The Sun; the image of raven enhanced with an abalone sun that, when struck with light, flares back the rays of our home star.

The Yupik mask, too, with its feathery margin, fox teeth and diving seals, conveys the power necessary to hunt in the frozen world of the Arctic.  In order both to survive the hunt and bring back food essential for life shamanic prayer and ritual added itself to the hunter’s knowledge and weaponry, giving as much of an edge as possible to the Yupik hunter.

Though the phrase is from a current photography show, I would call the Thaw collection an embarrassment of riches.

Art and Culture, Asia

More Tales From the Art Crypt

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Samhain                                           Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Fire extinguisher training.  All guards and registrar personnel get trained in the use of fire extinguishers.  Ken reports this is a lot of fun.  “They put pans of fire all over the room and you have to practice figuring out how to put them out.”  Waving a hand like a fire extinguisher, he went on, “See.  A double layered fire, you have to go up and down, starting at the bottom and moving across it.”  Imagine a spirited faux demonstration.  Then, one day there was a real fire.  “A contractor (notice who the bad guys are here) was smoking in the building.  Not supposed to.”  Wags finger. “Throws his cigarette in a wastebasket with…”  Wait for it.  “Sawdust in it and a fire started.”  His eyes light up, “We all jumped for it and Steve won.  He put it out.”

On a more serious note, Ken monitors scholars who want to use objects in our collection for research.  A recent example is a gentlemen who specializes in the study of Chinese Imperial silks, especially Imperial robes.  He used our collection to observe and make notes about the Chinese tendency to alter robes to fit new Imperial court members, rather than disposing of the old ones and making new.  One of our robe’s has, he pointed out, a Song dynasty fabric sewn in as part of alterations to its sleeves.  When robes would become too deteriorated to use, still usable sections would be cut out for use at a later time.

In enameled cabinets with glass windows in them, Ken opened one and pulled out a drawer.  It had a full silver setting, made by Tiffany, with hammered grips and small Japanese objects: pumpkins, turtles, grass affixed near the grip’s end.  I’m not a big silver service guy, but seeing this made me want to own one.  Just like that one.

The drawer below the Tiffany set, which held the serving utensils, there were spiral cuff-links and a tie tack made Alexander Calder.  Along side them were a pair of old eye glasses, some snips and other assorted oddments that might have rested on a table at Grandma’s garage sale.  Except these were really, really nice.

Art and Culture, Retirement

An Actual Art Emergency

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Samhain                                                     Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

One story from the MIA storage tour.  On a February morning, after days of below zero weather, the registrar for the permanent collection comes to work.  Blam!  Blam!  Blam!  Vibrations pound the main storage facility.  He hears clinking as Chinese ceramics move in their storage cabinets.  The phone.  “Tell them to stop!”  A burly contractor comes down, a scowl on his face, “Finally we’ve got warm enough weather to compact the soil.  We have to do it to protect the curtain wall of the Target Wing we’re building. What’s the problem?”

“Oh,”  the registrar says, “Let me show you.”  They walk over to the Chinese ceramics.  “That one, $750,000.  That one, $250,000.”   “Fine.  You have 45 minutes.”

The registrar calls all registration staff, “We have an actual art emergency.  Drop what you’re doing and come down here.”  45 minutes the T’ang, Song and Ming dynasty ceramics had a location safe from the pounding and the brutal world of building construction continued its work.

Yet one more meeting designed to get our retirement finances in order before Kate’s retirement.  We’ve got everything lined up, just need to cross ts and dot is.

A lot to it, but really a lot less than starting, say, a career.  An interesting comparison since the possible 25 to thirty years of life left is a good chunk of a career.  Now our career is to stay alive and not go broke.

Art and Culture

Registration and Storage: MIA

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Samhain                                                                          Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Toured the Minneapolis Institute of Arts storage main storage facility today with other members of the docent discussion group.

Brian Kraft gave a presentation about Registration, a hidden facet of museum life, hidden at least from the museum going public.  They accession all objects, giving them a number with the year and the number in sequence from the beginning of the year, one for each object acquired.  The condition of the art work gets a record, good enough for legal and museum purposes, though perhaps not good enough for conservator’s eye.  A conservator gets a call if anything in the piece looks wonky.

The museum loans out about 350 pieces each year and any piece worth more than a significant amount of money has to have a courier who never leaves the art.  Brian, for example, last month flew to Australia with an object.  This involves sitting in warehouses, following art out of the plane, waiting at customs.  Not glamorous.

Though the museum used to accession about 1,000 works a year, in recent years the number has declined to around 400 with a renewed emphasis on quality over quantity.

Registration cleans the art and its various vitrines, frames and mounts.  Registration also moves art, both for special exhibitions and for regular curatorial determined rotations back into storage.  The large Chihuly sunburst, permanently fixed to the lobby ceiling, gets cleaned once a year, for example, when a skyjack, a rental, comes into the museum for that and a few other high tasks.

The museum has 173 galleries, 82,000 plus accessioned works and 2,000 + in “record book” art, art not considered museum quality but that does fill a blank spot in our collection.  This last never goes on show.

When a loan is made, the borrowing institution pays for packing, insuring, moving, and installation, then return.  This means that in the case of big exhibitions mounted by our curators the price tag for the show can be quite high.

The MIA now has an in-house frame maker who can make a $30,000 frame for $5,000.  A significant cost saving.  There are several specialists on staff, art packers, the frame maker, a lighting person responsible for 5,500 light bulbs and assistant registrars for exhibitions, loans and acquisitions.

To get to the storage area we left the public side of the museum and got in the freight elevator.  The freight elevator came into the museum during the renovation and expansion before the target wing.  They built it big enough to side-load a 1957 Cadillac, a car anticipated for an exhibition that never came to fruition, though when the Tatra came in  the elevator was plenty big.  Ken Krenz, the registrar for the permanent collection, took us down to the storage level and opened the white 15 foot high doors into a treasure house.

Think of  a below ground attic chuck full of interesting things one of your crazy aunts might put out for a garage sale.  When we came inside, stored items from the Oceania collection sat on a tall, all metal cabinet to our right.  To our left a small work table with a computer and a work area serve as Ken’s throne room for his domain.

Just beyond his computer, down a long hall way, were racks on either side, ceiling mounted and made of heavy gauge screen.  They pull in and out, bringing with them paintings hung from ceiling to floor.  I imagine there were 20 or 25 racks on each side, some 50 in all.  In the hallway were the inverted v-shaped, carpeted, rolling carts used to take paintings to and from the galleries or to conservation.  Beyond these racks on both sides were rows of enameled white cabinets, locked, some with windows and some with no windows.  Beyond one such row on our right were storage areas with large sliding anodized aluminum holders covered in a mesh that allowed air but not water to pass through.  On each aluminum mesh holder was a Chinese imperial robe.

In an enamel cabinet beside the bays devoted to Imperial robes, cabinets with no windows, Ken showed us floor to the top of the 6 foot cabinets shelves filled with Japanese scroll paintings, each box a work of art in itself.  Some of the boxes had the works title on the outside, some, too, had a small essay by a famous art historian written in Kanji on the inside cover.  These scroll boxes had u-shaped holders that kept the scroll from resting on the box’s bottom, avoiding flattening a scroll over a long time in storage.

Toward the rear wall there were rows of sturdy metal shelving, ceiling to floor, stuffed with sculpture, chairs, tables, cabinets and other bulky items.

Other hand moving items similar to those in grocery stores crowded aisles and made easy access difficult.

More on this tomorrow.

Art and Culture, Asia, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story, World History

Heed The Oracle Well, Boy. Heed the Oracle Well.

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Samhain                                                 New Winter Solstice Moon

Fourth week A.V.  No, not audio-visuals, but after Vikings.  I find my life just fine without the consummate misery of watching our various teams implode, year after year, often at the most heartbreaking moment.

So, again, in the spirit of decline and fall, I will spend Sunday working on my translation of Ovid, using him and his work as a window through which to view Roman culture and life at the turn of the first millennium of the common era.  I hope to include more Roman reading in Latin, too, but my focus for now, and for the foreseeable future, lies with learning the language and the Metamorphosis.

After several months of fiddling–hey, amateur here!–I have the TV, tivo, blu-ray and cd player all functional through the amplifier and therefore through all of our speakers.  That means I can read in my red leather chair while listening to jazz, beethoven or dvorak or whatever else we have on our increasingly antique cd collection.  Last night Beethoven’s late sonatas played while I read Herodotus, the story of Croesus.

Croesus did an empirical study of the oracles available to him before deciding to go to war with Persia.  He sent messengers   throughout Asia and Greece, asking them to inquire of the oracles what he did on the one hundredth day after they left his capitol.  Only two, the oracle at Delphi and of Amphiaraus, saw that he took a tortoise and a hare, cut them up and cooked them in a brass pot with a brass lid.  He chose this combination for its unlikeliness.

Upon learning of their accuracy he put together elaborate gifts and sent them to the Oracles, asking this time about a possible war with the Persians.  The reply from Amphiaraus is not known, but the one from Delphi stands as an example to future seekers.  When you go to war against Persia, a great empire will be destroyed.  That’s what the Oracle, the Pythoness, said.  And she was right.  Only it was Lydia, Croesus’s empire, that fell.  Oops.

After I finished with Herodotus, I turned off the lights and listened to the music.  A calming transition to bed.  And I did not wake up again until morning.

Aging, Art and Culture, Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

Good Tired

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Samhain                                                   Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Two days of interviews plus a tour day and all the attendant driving, 3 trips in and back, has left me with a good tired feeling.  Participating on a hiring committee puts me in the guts of an organization again.  I like that, even if it is only a volunteers part.  It’s true, though, that in my work with the Presbytery much of my work came in situations where I had an extra-organizational role in what was happening, so this is not so different from that.

My embarrassment of riches tour today went well.  Three folks came along and we spent our way wandering through the whole exhibit, talking and oohing and awing right along.  I like this smaller, adult tour where we can work it as a casual stroll, thinking together about the art, offering ideas as we go along.  I have two Thaw tours next week and I’m hoping for a better performance than with the Rochester Friends.

Another snow storm appears imminent, coming tomorrow night and Saturday.  Thankfully I don’t have a commitment outside in that time frame.  That way the driveway can get plowed, I can do the sidewalk and spread granite grit if necessary afterward.  I’ll be able to enjoy the snow this time.

One of these days, when life slows down a little bit, I need to get the chainsaw out and take out the cedar and the amur maples broken by the first heavy snowfall.

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Writing

Night Talk

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Samhain                                   Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Though the pain has subsided, it still keeps me awake without medication.  So, I’m up at 6 am, a rarity for me these days.  When Kate shifts off regular work, no longer comes home around 10 pm, then I’ll go back to an earlier bed time and 6 might not be so unusual.

I understand the attraction of the night.  I feel it myself.  The quiet, the dark has a friendly feel to it, a time when the home becomes a hermitage or a studio or a writing garret, far off from the demands of mundane life.  Reading late has an appeal, the book, the words float up and occupy the whole, not reading anymore, but traveling along, carried on a river of narrative.  Writing has the same free, anchors away momentum.  The ship sails away from the dock, following the rhythm of an ocean current, one that runs just along the border between the conscious and unconscious realm, between the warmer, busier, lighter waters near the surface and the benthic deeps, unvisited, stygian, fecund, down there the ocean reaches its source, the collective unconscious, yet deeper and universally expansive, the holy well from which archetypes, genetic memory, forces creative enough to bring life itself into existence make their slow way.

Night talk.  Or, rather, very early morning talk.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Bees, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Great Work, Memories, Retirement

Not Stepping In The Same River Twice

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Samhain                                                      Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  You, too, tiny Tim.

Stayed up late last night reading a novel about a Chinese detective in Chinatown, NYC.  Not sure how it happened but China has become my favorite country, much like Germany used to be and Russia before that.  Instead of Buddenbrooks I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, instead of Steppenwolf I read Chinese mysteries.  No more War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, though I could read them again, I choose, as I always have, to plow new ground, read things I have not read before.

I tend not to read things twice, except poetry.  A big part of reading for me is the journey to somewhere new, following a trail with no known ending, a similar joy to the one I find in traveling, especially to countries where the culture disorients me, leaves me little room for my old ways.

New disciplines give me a similar boost:  art history, Latin, writing, vegetable gardening, bee keeping, hydroponics.  I’m sure I miss something in my search for the novel, which may explain why I find living in the same house for 16 years, driving the same car for 16 years, being married to Kate for 20+ years soothing.  As Taoism teaches,  life is a dynamic movement between opposites, the new and the old, the familiar and the strange, the taxing and the comfortable.  The juice flows as the pulls of masculine and feminine, life and death, youth and age keep us fresh, vital.

My buddy Mario uproots himself and moves along the earth’s surface, finding new homes and new encounters.  He changes his work with apparent ease, finding new friends and new experiences as he does.  Brother Jim, Dusty, constantly challenges his present and his past, leaving himself always slightly off balance.  Both of these men take the juice and mold it into art.

There are many ancientrails through this life, including intentional disorientation, familiar surroundings, ambition, compassion, politics, nurturance, keen observation, delight, dance.  The key lies in finding yours and staying with it, getting to know it and to be it.

When you can, you will find every day (well, most days) are Thanksgiving.