Winter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of the Cold Month<\/p>\n
The last Thaw tours are over and they were good ones.\u00a0 I’m glad I leave the exhibit with a positive feeling.\u00a0\u00a0 This art, important and beautiful as many of its pieces are, doesn’t engage my heart in the same way European and Asian art does.\u00a0 Individual pieces and cultures do, but not all of it, though I suppose that’s really not too different from the rest.\u00a0 This was an opportunity to see and become familiar with some remarkable objects from an unusually broad and deep collection.\u00a0 If I’m ever in Cooperstown, I’ll stop in to see the rest.<\/p>\n
The museum is such a peculiar place, bricks and mortar, bureaucracy and guards, elitist opinion all woven around the true stars, mind bending, heart wrenching, beautiful, disturbing works from all over the world.\u00a0 Many of the works are old friends now, The Cardinal, the Man of Sorrows, Germanicus, Doryphoros, Song dynasty ceramics, the collection of Chinese paintings, the Tea House and the tea wares, the ukiyo-e prints, the Benin head and the Bierstadt, Moran and Copley American paintings.\u00a0 Dr. Arrieta.\u00a0 The Delacroix, the Cezanne, the Monet.\u00a0 Kandinsky.\u00a0 the tryptych Blind Man’s Buff.\u00a0 the Bryce Marsden.\u00a0 The strange and disturbing telegraph operator.<\/p>\n
When I come into the presence of these and many other pieces, we pick up things where we left off the last time I visited.\u00a0 Hello, Cardinal.\u00a0 You’re looking serious today.\u00a0 Does Jerome bother you or does he give you inspiration?\u00a0 Mr. Marsden, are you there behind the surface, the paintedness?\u00a0\u00a0 You gods, the jam session must have been a good one, you look exhausted.\u00a0 Yes, your colors still move me today as they did they last time, Mr. Kandinsky.<\/p>\n
Do you ever wonder what the paintings and the sculpture think after the lights have gone out and all the art lovers have gone home?\u00a0 Many of them are, after all, of vampiric age.\u00a0 Lucretia is a spry 345.\u00a0 The Jade Mountain 225.\u00a0 Doryphoros?\u00a0 2,100 years young.\u00a0 A real antidote to that sinking feeling when you turn 64.\u00a0 As, for example, I will do next month.\u00a0 Over all those years they must have accreted some wisdom, some knowing.\u00a0 Think of all things they’ve been around for.\u00a0 To be in their presence is to inhale the passage of not just days or months or years, but centuries and millennia. As I said, the museum is a peculiar place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of the Cold Month The last Thaw tours are over and they were good ones.\u00a0 I’m glad I leave the exhibit with a positive feeling.\u00a0\u00a0 This art, important and beautiful as many of its pieces are, doesn’t engage my heart in the same way European and Asian art does.\u00a0 Individual pieces and … Continue reading A Peculiar Place<\/span>