Monthly Archives: November 2014

Fowler Museum (UCLA)

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Fowler Museum
November 29, 2014
Westwood

We went to the Fowler Museum of Cultural History on the UCLA campus. It is a small to midsize facility which at any given time shows several special exhibitions and also has two galleries devoted to items from its permanent collections. The main focus of our visit this time was a set of exhibitions with textiles as the theme. In a press release last summer, the museum’s curators referred to it as a “textile trifecta”, and so it was.

The first exhibition we looked at was Bearing Witness: Embroidery as History in Post-Apartheid South Africa, which featured some hand embroidered modern pieces made in South Africa. They were mounted on the walls around the central atrium, and we strolled along looking at each piece in turn.

We then saw Yards of Style, a display of African print cloths from Ghana. The bright colors were a feast for the eyes. The explanatory material in the gallery described the different manufacturing methods and contrasted qualities of the higher end fabrics, made in the Netherlands and in Africa, with the less expensive ones made in China. There was an interesting array of prints, from traditional geometric and abstract designs to common everyday items like cell phones and clothespins.

We next went into the exhibition called Textiles of Timor, Island in the Woven Sea. The gallery featured many hand woven items, both women’s tube skirts and men’s shoulder cloths. There were several videos playing inside the exhibition, with interviews of native weavers and displays of the dyeing and weaving processes.

Margaret particularly liked the hand embroidered pieces and the videos showing the hand weaving process in Timor.

The Fowler sometimes showcases a modern artist, and this time was no exception. We strolled through World Share: Installations by Pascale Marthine Tayou. There were some interesting pieces, but all in all it was not really to our taste.

We decided not to visit the anthropological permanent collection gallery this time, but we did revisit the Francis E. Fowler Jr. silver collection, which we have seen several times before. It includes a number of strikingly beautiful pieces both American and European.

Admission is free, but visitors have to pay for parking. We parked in the hourly parking section of parking structure 4, off Sunset Boulevard, as recommended on the museum website. From the underground garage a visitor can take either the elevator or the stairs up to the plaza level, and it is a short walk to the museum from there. After our visit to the museum we strolled around the campus a little bit, over to the campus store and to visit the UCLA Bruin statue, then back to our car.

Getty Center — Tapestries

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Getty Center
Sepulveda Pass
November 15, 2014

We took Margaret to see the special exhibition at the Getty, of tapestries and related paintings by Peter Paul Rubens. The tapestries are part of a larger set celebrating the Triumph of the Eucharist, commissioned in the 1620s by the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, the ruler of the Spanish Netherlands. The tapestries were woven in Belgium and installed in the Convent of the Poor Clares in Madrid, an institution closely associated with the Habsburg monarchy. We first learned about the exhibition through a preview piece Joyful Weaving of Art in the Los Angeles Times. After it opened there was a longer review in the Times, Wonders Unfurl, as part of an article which also looked at a tapestry exhibit in New York.

Getty-Rubens

The tapestries are of monumental size. Next to them were paintings on oak panels that Rubens had made as models from which the weavers could work. It was interesting to note that the paintings are mirror images of the tapestries. The weavers were working from the back side of the tapestries and this reversal of the pattern image made their work easier. Although the colors have faded slightly with time, the tapestries still show remarkable shadings of detail.

The overall spirit of the series is triumphalist, very much in keeping with the Counter Reformation period in which they were made. They are devotional works and celebrate one of the central mysteries of Catholic Christianity, the sacrament of the Eucharist. Some panels are allegorical, such as the victory of Truth over Heresy. Other panels illustrate scriptural stories which Catholics see as prefiguring the Eucharist, such as the sacrifice offered by Melchizedek for Abraham, and the gathering of manna in the desert.

After touring the special exhibition we went over to another building to see a Rubens painting in the permanent collection, of the Caledonian boar hunt. We strolled through that gallery and looked at other period paintings, mainly by Flemish artists. Margaret enjoyed a Rembrandt self portrait in which the artist is laughing.

Admission to the museum is free, but parking costs $15. The parking system has been changed so that one pays on leaving, rather than entering.

We ate at the museum café. A nice feature is that there are half a dozen different stations, so one can select from a variety of choices. We each enjoyed Mexican food; Margaret had a fruit salad from the grab and go section.

We enjoyed the tapestries and related panels a great deal. Margaret was not particularly interested in them. Her preferences run more to historical and anthropological museums, and less toward art. After the museum visit she was very interested to hear about our trip to Ontario last week, where we met three of her cousins. They had asked to be remembered to her, and she enjoyed hearing about our dinner with them. After we left the Getty we met up with Kathleen for coffee and showed both Margaret and Kathleen our slides from Brampton and Toronto. We gave Margaret a framed photo of Meredith with the cousins which she was very pleased to have.

Skirball — Films

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Skirball Cultural Center
November 2, 2014
Sepulveda Pass

We took Margaret to see the “Light and Noir” exhibit at the Skirball. For more information about that museum generally, see our post from July 2014. This exhibit was about émigrés and exiles who came from Europe to Hollywood, and about their role in making movies in the 1930s and 40s. It dovetailed nicely with our prior visit to LACMA, with its “Haunted Screens” exhibit about German expressionist filmmakers in the 1920s. (See the immediately preceding post.)

We followed a red carpeted walkway from the main Skirball museum over to its special exhibition space. The hallway was lined with movie posters from Academy award winning movies associated with émigrés and exiles, including for instance The Lost Weekend written by Billy Wilder. The first part of the exhibit had photos from the building of Universal City in 1915. Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal Studios, is a leading example of one of those who emigrated to the United States for better opportunities. The exhibit then shifted from émigrés to those who were exiled from Europe, that is who had to flee Nazi persecution. One display case had immigration papers for a number of well-known Hollywood personalities, including Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, and S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall. There was a whole room given over to Casablanca, a movie whose cast was made up largely of exiles. We knew this from having read the book Round Up The Usual Suspects by Aljean Harmetz some years ago, but we love the movie, so it was fun to watch the film clips and see the rest of the items in that room.

In the main exhibition space there was a clever division, with one side given over to displays about comedy movies made by exiles and émigrés, and the other side given over to noir movies. The comedies included, among others, Harvey and It Started with Eve. The noir side included Mildred Pierce and Sunset Boulevard, another one of our favorites. Looking at the Mildred Pierce display, Margaret commented that she had never liked Joan Crawford. Meredith replied that was probably a common sentiment. Bob, the contrarian, suspects that was not a common sentiment until the biographical movie Mommy Dearest came out, based on the book by Christina Crawford.

The last part of the main exhibition had a section with displays about the Hollywood 10 and the House Committee on Un-American Activities and another section about the émigré salons and social life in Los Angeles.

We then returned to the main part of the museum and toured a related special exhibition about the “noir effect.” That exhibit featured contemporary art, such as paintings and graphic novels, which draw on the noir film genre. One wall had a large photo of a street scene, in front of which the visitor was invited to take photos. We did.

Skirball noir effect

We ate in the museum restaurant, which we have always enjoyed. Lately Margaret has seemed to want quesadillas whenever we go someplace that offers them. Zeidler’s does not. We had joked before we picked her up that maybe she would want a cheese blintz, which is the closest thing to a quesadilla on this menu. Without prompting from us, she did in fact ask for cheese blintzes when she saw them on the menu. She enjoyed them, as did Meredith. The blintzes were served with a large side portion of fresh melon and pineapple slices. Bob had a salmon pastrami sandwich, which he also enjoyed.

The museum was quite busy. In addition to many regular visitors like us, there was also a conference going on and a wedding party on the central terrace. Usually we visit on Saturdays, and we did not recall the museum being this crowded before. This time we went on a Sunday, and perhaps the facility is busier then, since it is not the Sabbath.

Parking is free, and there is a large parking garage. Wheelchair access is easy. The museum participates in the Bank of America Museums on Us program.