Winter Seed Catalog Moon
Went into the MIA today to see the Audacious Eye exhibition. It contains representative 
objects from an entire collection, the Clark Collection, acquired in the last year by the MIA. It was an uneven show with several spectacular pieces and several not-so spectacular ones. Many of the nicest pieces were screens and paintings in the Chinese tradition, a substantial influence on all of Japanese culture.
(detail_of_daruma Tsuji Kakō, 1870–1931)
Lesson from this. Go in the first days of a new show so a later visit, more focused, can result in greater depth. Several of the pieces I would like to see again will, I imagine, be up in the permanent collection over the next few months.
Ran into docent friend Bill Bomash. We had lunch and talked about the museum and his life. He went to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. His roommate came back one day and said he’d signed up for a year abroad. Bill thought that sounded good, went to the library and looked at the bulletin board with year abroad brochures. The Scandinavian Seminar had no prerequisite language requirement. Aha, he said, that’s for me.
His year focused on Denmark where he discovered an affinity for the Danish language which he spoke with almost no accent. The director of the Seminar, whom he met by chance while working in Copenhagen mistook him for a Dane, complimenting him on his English. This proved significant later on when he applied for Ph.D. work at the University of Minnesota. A letter of recommendation from this same man produced an offer of a teaching position in Danish. He funded his Ph.D. work teaching Danish. All because of that brochure on a bulletin board.
After the MIA, I went over to Verdant Tea where I met the general manager, Brandon, purchased two clay tea jars and a new teapot, one Brandon purchased in San Francisco some time ago. Verdant Tea is a very Seward neighborhood kind of business with latter day hippies and contemporary hipsters sitting around sipping tea and discussing the issues of the day.
Found the exhibit, which was quite large, induced museum fatigue two galleries from the end, so I began to look with only cursory interest. Still, it was good to be back with the art. Trying to figure out how to get in often enough to satisfy that itch.
