• Tag Archives tours

  • Art and Religion

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    30  bar steady 30.06 1mph WNW windchill 30

         First Quarter Moon of Winds

    When I woke up, Kate was long gone.  It was 9:30.  I missed my nap yesterday and I picked the sleep time this AM.

    The rest of the morning, what there was left anyhow, I used looking over my notes for the religion and contemporary art discussion I will lead on Monday.  This topic follows two ancient trails I have followed for many, many years.  I would not characterize myself as an expert in either one, though I know enough to guide conversation.

    The result of this work has convinced me that there are several interesting tours at an encyclopedic museum like the MIA that do not follow either the cutesy or the artworld insider glimpse that most of our tours use.  With tours like love and scandal or chocolate whatever we give a cutesy turn to looking at art. It gets some people into the galleries I suppose and and the works themselves have many different facets, so these tours are not vacuous at all, but they don’t focus the mind.

    The other category of tour:  On Dragons Wings, a Taste of Asia, Art of the Americas, Art of the Ancient World give tour goers an insiders tour, a short glimpse of the world of art history, connossieurship and curating offered through a slice of an encyclopedic museum.  Nothing wrong with this either, though I often wonder about the value of this brief an introduction to six to eight objects.  It may spark interest that tour goers will pursue on their own.  I hope so.

    The kind of tour topic this religion and art material suggests could offer a third type of tour, one that takes a point of view and pursues an argument through use of various objects.  The relationship between religion and art has a long history with many chapters and in some senses the most interesting chapters come last in the world of contemporary art.   The MIA has a much better collection for pursuing this topic than, say, the Walker because we have art as old as the Lady of LaMouth and art as recent as Hirsch’s, Death of St. John.  Other interesting tours along these lines would involve the relationship between literature and art.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • Aramaic and the Democratic Primary Race

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    28  bar rises 30.06 5mph N windchill 28

        First Quarter Moon of Winds

    Yesterday I had tours with a group of 4th graders from Hastings and 1st graders from Apple Valley.  Though these tours don’t race the intellectual engine, they are fun.  These kids are thoughtful, attentive and excited about the art that they see.  It refreshes my eye each time I do one of these tours because the kids see things I don’t see and make conjectures about the works that don’t occur to me. 

    An example of the latter is a discussion I had with the kids from Hastings about the Fanatics of Tangiers.  Delacroix painted a Sufi sect as it engaged in an ecstatic dance to reach the wisdom of their saint.  (BYB-Fanatic is ethnocentric, not to mention xenophobic, but it is the name of the painting.)  The kids looked at the sect and imagined that the group surging foreward through the streets (the sect) might be being chased by animals; or, perhaps the people who stood around had sent an army to the crowd’s village and chased them back here. 

    Another great thing about tour days is the opportunity to connect with docent classmates and to make new friends from among the docent corps.  Today Stacy, Careen, Annie, Sally and Wendy were there.  They reveal, among them, the infinite variety our species takes, even among those who appear so similar.  All white, all well-educated and with one exception upper middle class at least, these women vary a lot in their personal details.  Stacy’s husband runs and owns a business recharging ink cartridges while she works at a Lutheran church in various capacities.  Careen is a Quebecois, an architect and a physician’s spouse like me.  Annie’s husband is from Lagos, Nigeria and contracted malaria while there.  Annie’s adopted.  Sally is a retired trainer and organizational development person whose daughter almost drowned in a ferry sinking off the coast of Thailand not too long ago.  Wendy has bright kids, and married an Italian.  She’s works on her conversational Italian for trips to the see the in-laws.

    Lunch with Frank.  We went to the Black Forest where we were the only customers in the dining room except for a couple at the very far end next to 26th Street.  We both had sausages and we both knew better.  We talked about travel, serious illness, Aramaic and the silliness, if it weren’t so damned serious, of the late stage Democratic primary race.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Friends 📎and tagged

  • How Does the Mummy’s Soul Find the Body If You Moved It?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    +20!  71%  18%  omph ESE  bar 30.08 steep fall  windchill19  Winter

                   Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    Out of the door early this am.  Wanted to walk my Safari route, check on the objects.  Also wanted to get a fresh look at the calligraphy.

    Went upstairs to the second floor and started back in the Americas.  There are some fine additions to the America’s galleries:  an Annishinabe/Lakota blanket with a stunning design on a black field, an Olmec jade mask (it’s been out a while, but it’s still new to the collection.), a wonderful Haida bear-headed dagger and some new Inuit prints.  These last looked very Chinese to me, even down to chops in red.

    The Safari tour had a wide ambit since these kids had an interest in many things.  We discussed the art, saw some animals.  Peri, a young girl in a soft white coat, asked questions like:  How did they get the tusk off the elephant?  She also wanted to know, “How does the soul find the body if you moved the body?” (Lady Teshat).

    In the couple of hours plus between tours I ate lunch upstairs at D’Amico’s and read a catalogue from the National Museum at Taipei.  It had an excellent chapter on calligraphy.  After lunch, I wandered the galleries, checking out calligraphic styles, trying to learn how to recognize them, distinguish them.  Allison suggested using an abstract expressionist piece to talk about feeling in brushstrokes.  I did that. It seemed to work.  These kids, too, found all manner of things they wanted to see.  The Nevelsen.  The Tatra.  The Wu Family Reception Hall.  The Imperial Robes.  On the robes Darius thought it looked like a place where you hung clothes out to dry and then a place to fold them (the Imperial throne.).

    After the tours I hopped over to First Tech to see the Mac Air, but they don’t have any yet.  Not until the first of February or so. 

    Home.  Snack.  Write.  Workout.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • Not a Good Sign

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -6  68%  29%  2mph  WNW  bar30.24  steep rise  windchill-8  Winter

                                  Full Winter Moon

    “Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.” – Albert Camus

    When I went out to get the paper this morning, the full winter moon again hugged the horizon, this time a bright silver coin visible through the bare trees of our woods to the west.  Our paper comes, like most of us in the ‘burbs, to a rectangular box below our mailbox, perched on the road so both paper delivery and mail delivery can happen from the seat of a vehicle. 

    The trash man cometh at about the same time I goeth to get the paper.  As I stood and watched, the trucks long robotic arm moved out and away from the truck, gripped our black plastic trash container, moved a bit further out, then swept up and over the truck, inverting our container in mid-air causing the lid to fly open and the trash to spill out, white plastic bags full, into the maw of the truck.  The process reversed; I waved at the trash man as he pulled away, grabbed onto the handle and pulled the container on its ridiculous plastic wheels up the 100 foot incline of our driveway.  It scrunched in the below zero temperatures as it rolled and slid behind me.

    On the paper’s front page I could see a picture of our central banker, Ben Bernanke, with his head in his hands.  Not a good sign.

    Though I’ve done it less than Kate in recent months, getting the newspaper in the morning is an immersion in the weather and season at a point when it all seems fresh, just as dawn begins to break.  It is a meditation, at least for me, since I do it half asleep and therefore more open to the subtle messages of partially hidden moon, the screech of snow and the bite of the wind as it blows across my ungloved hands.

    This morning finds me at work on a safari tour for 2nd graders.  2nd graders are great; they respond and most without an inner censor.  I plan to use:  Moche pelican, Benin leopard, (the mummy, because the teacher wants it), the Cambodian lion, Corot’s deer nibbling leaves in a tree, Copley’s Fishing Party, Gaugin’s Under the Pandanus, Picasso’s Baboon and, perhaps the installation of children’s photographs.  Also today I’ll plan a calligraphy tour for 4th graders who’ve used ink, inkstones and brushes while learning brush painting and calligraphy.  Both should be fun.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel 📎and tagged

  • Buddha Natures Come Out

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -1  47%  24%  0mph WNW bar30.21 steady  windchill-5  Winter

              Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

    Today I used the Templeman Tea Service and I went in early to find the damned thing.  It was in the hall where the period rooms are, not in with the other silver.  No wonder I couldn’t find it last week.  Well, now I know.  Two very different groups: white bread Catholics from Coon Rapids (near home) and a group of African-American, African, and Asian kids, three with headscarves.  The Catholics got the highlights tour and the diverse group wanted a Taste of Asia.

    The diverse group, sixth graders, had a street-wise look and I wondered if they’d pay attention at all.  Turns out I had to pry them out of the Japan galleries.  They got interested in the Buddha and then the bodhisattvas, how to identify them, what enlightenment was.  They got me off my route entirely, so we went in the Wu family reception hall and spent time figuring out Chinese families lived.  By the Shiva Nataraja, the last object, their attention had begun to wane, but they were delightful.  Both groups were wonderful.

    It’s cold now, the windchill has dropped to -8 and we’ll see lows of maybe -20 by tomorrow.  This is Minnesota.

    A long nap and now some treadmill time. 


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • One Month and Three Belt Notches Later

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    22  80%  28%  0mph WSW bar29.78  windchill 22  Winter

             Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon

    Fifth graders today from Harambee Community Culture School.  We marveled at Shiva’s four arms, heard a Tibetan monk who happened to be in the gallery explain the Mandala, walked through the Celebration of Bestowed Glory and looked at the four noble professions.  We investigated the scholar’s study and found implements for calligraphy, poetry, painting and music making.  We teased out differences between the Greco-Roman influenced Ghandara Buddha and the Japanese depiction of Amitbha Buddha.  Both groups were fun, responsive.  My questions helped somewhat, but generally I just went with the flow, answering questions, prodding, making linkages.  So my project manager can rest easy about this one.

    Of course, there’s that highlights tour and another Asia tour next week…  But, shh.  We won’t tell him just yet.

    The second nutrisystem order came. It is a sensible, straight forward weight loss program.  It works.  Don’t know how much I’ve lost but I’ve gone in three belt notches and can wear pants I gave up on long ago.  Tomorrow I plan to weigh in and take my fasting blood sugar.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • Oh! Blessed Rage for Order, Pale Ramon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    20  83%  28% 3mph N  bar29.94  falls  windchill17   Yuletide

                    Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

    “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.” – Wallace Stevens

     excerpts from Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West”

    She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
    The water never formed to mind or voice,
    Like a body wholly body, fluttering
    Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
    Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
    That was not ours although we understood,
    Inhuman, of the veritable ocean…

    Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
    Why, when the singing ended and we turned
    Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
    The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
    As the night descended, tilting in the air,
    Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
    Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
    Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

    Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
    The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
    Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
    And of ourselves and of our origins,
    In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

    A tour today with blue t-shirted Minnetonka Explorers:  Maddie, Kaly, Ashley, Harry, Ryan, Nelson and Sophia (twins), Katie, Ellie, Lucy.  When asked what grade they were, Maddie said, “We’re all kindergartners!  And Katie is my moustache.”  She went on to explain that, though Katie is her elder by some months, she only comes up to Maddie’s upper lip and is therefore her mustache.  Giggles.

    We had a great time looking at paintings and installations.  We sang Jacob’s song along the way.  When asked where it was from Maddie said, “It was Jacob’s Colorful Dreamcoat. And we got to sit on stage for the whole performance.”

    We found bunnies and boats and radishes and ghosts and monsters in the Yves Tanguy, marveled at how much the cords looked like both waves and mountains in the installation with children’s portraits (and wondered where they plugged it in.)

    In Van Dyck’s Betrayal of Christ conversation focused on the man choking the monster in the lower left.  A fun group.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • China With Elementary School Kids

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Two tours today.   I went through China with fourth graders and 6th graders from Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts in Anoka.   They were bright, receptive kids though they had a rigid teacher who had given them a booklet to fill in with information about objects in the museum.  This would have been ok if we’d known about it, but we plan our tours in advance and of the objects she wanted them to see only a few were in on our tours.   It would have been easy enough to include each object on a tour, but with no information in advance, it makes the situation difficult, not the kids fault, of course.    The kids enjoyed learning about the literati and the court aesthetics.  They were good at comparing and contrasting the two art forms.  Give me hope for the future of American education.

    When I came home, Kate had sorted out all the Nutrisystem foods and stalked them in neat rows.  Tomorrow morning we’re going to start two months of nutrisystem.  I’ll report here on what I think of the food.

    After a nap, with little Hilo snuggled in close, I worked out.  The endurance part of the program I’m using right now I like a lot, but the resistance work doesn’t seem to fit.  I’ll probably go back to one of the other resistance programs next week. 


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged