Monthly Archives: March 2015

Star Wars in Seattle

By | |
Comments Off on Star Wars in Seattle

EMP Museum
Seattle, Washington

The Star Wars movies are one of our favorite things, so when we saw that an extensive Star Wars costume exhibit would be on display in Seattle we were eager to fit it into our visit.

The girls were happy to come with us, and we also met up with Meredith’s niece and former brother-in-law. The exhibit is in the EMP Museum, in the Seattle Center, near the Space Needle. The museum building is a funky and colorful asymmetrical building designed by architect Frank Gehry. The EMP (Experience Music Project) Museum was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000.

EMP1

We bought tickets both to the museum and separate, timed tickets to the Star Wars exhibit, for a total cost of $32 each. (Online discounts may apply.) EMP is the first stop for this Star Wars exhibit, which is part of a 12-city national tour; it runs at EMP through October 4, 2015.

The exhibit was lots of fun. There were costumes from all six movies, and extensive background information – text, video, and audio — about the design and fabrication of the costumes. There were also interesting displays grouping costumes, such as half a dozen senators’ robes. Several displays showed how costumes evolved as a character developed, for example four separate costumes worn by Senator and later emperor Palpatine, showing his evolution toward the Dark Side.

There are some great videos, with George Lucas, costume designer Trisha Biggar, and Natalie Portman, among others. Meredith particularly enjoyed an audio clip of actor Anthony Daniels who played C-3PO, describing his doubts when his agent sent him to see someone named George Lucas who was doing a “low budget science fiction movie” and was looking for someone to play a robot, because it might lead to bigger things. Daniels was captivated by a sketch of C-3PO in Lucas’ office and agreed to play the part.

The exhibit ends with – who else? – Darth Vader, and of course we all had to take our photos with him.

EMP2

After we had cruised the Star Wars exhibit and related gift shop we saw several more exhibits at the EMP: Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic; Can’t Look Away: the Lure of Horror Film; and Indie Game Revolution. Both the fantasy and the horror exhibits had some great artifacts on display, including some original Wizard of Oz costume pieces and weapons from the Lord of the Rings movies in the fantasy exhibit. We enjoyed the “guest curator” videos that were playing in the horror exhibit, particularly Roger Corman’s perspective on the evolution of horror pictures. We skipped the music exhibits at EMP and also the temporary Seahawks exhibit.

The museum has multiple levels and is a bit confusing to navigate. Wheelchair patrons can use elevators, but stairs (lots of them!) are a more direct way to get around the museum. It would be possible to use a wheelchair or walker in the Star Wars costume exhibit, but the crowds made it somewhat claustrophobic even for those of us on two feet. If we were going to bring a wheelchair to this museum, we would aim for a less crowded time than midafternoon on a rainy weekend.

There is a café on the lowest level of EMP, but we ate an excellent lunch at Chutneys, an Indian restaurant in the Queen Anne neighborhood nearby, before coming to the museum. We parked in a parking garage near Seattle Center. The trek to the restaurant took us through the center then back again, all in steady rain that turned out to set a record for March 15. We were pleased to have brought our ancient London Fog trench coats, both of which date from our undergraduate days at Yale.

Bainbridge Island

By | |
1 Comment

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
Bloedel Reserve
March 14, 2015
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Yes, we do know Bainbridge Island is in Washington State, not in Southern California. We spent a getaway weekend with our oldest daughter and our daughter-in-law, who live in the Seattle area, and we thought it would be fun to add a couple of short posts about what we saw up there. Hope you don’t mind this detour off topic, but if you do, just scroll down to the next post, which covers our latest trip to the Getty Center.

Bainbridge Island is just west of Seattle. We took a short car ferry ride over to Winslow, on the south end of the island. Right near the ferry landing we stopped at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. The staff were very friendly. We had fun exploring Cut and Bent, a special exhibition on the ground floor, of art made by various contemporary artists from tin and other found objects.

BainbridgeMA2

Then we went upstairs, where there were some beautiful wooden furniture pieces on display and also a large collection of paintings by noted regional artist Rosalyn Gale Powell called the Garden Path, featuring (but not limited to) her floral pieces.

Admission to the Museum of Art is free. There is a donation box by the front desk, and we made a contribution. Garden Path runs through June 7, 2015, as does the Cut and Bent exhibition.

After our museum visit we ate a great lunch at Bainbridge Bakers next door. Paninis for Bob and our daughter; quiche for Meredith. Other dining options on site include a small café inside the museum, and the Alehouse next to the bakery café (patrons must be at least 21 to get in). Parking is free but somewhat limited, both in quantity and time (3 hour maximum). Handicap access to and inside the museum is good. The art museum and eateries share parking with a children’s museum.

After lunch we drove to the north end of the island and walked through the Bloedel Reserve, a public garden founded by the Bloedel family on the site where they resided from 1951 to 1986. It first opened to the public in 1988. The walk around the grounds is about a mile and a half long, mostly flat with some gentle slopes in the second half of the walk. The main trail is bark covered and not suitable for wheelchairs; there is an alternate and shorter paved route that wheelchair patrons can use.

Halfway around the circuit is the Bloedel residence, a beautiful home on the bluff overlooking Port Madison Bay. The ground floor is open to visitors and staffed by a docent whom we found quite helpful. We enjoyed the walk and the variety of plants and environments we saw – meadow, woodlands, marshy areas, moss garden, camellia walk, and Japanese garden, along with a couple other areas.

BainbridgeBR3

Admission to the Bloedel Reserve is $15. There are no eating facilities on the grounds.

From Bloedel we drove north to catch another ferry, from Kingston to Edmonds.

Getty Center — Turner

By | |
Comments Off on Getty Center — Turner

Getty Center
Sepulveda Pass
March 8, 2015

We went to the Getty Center primarily to see the special exhibition J. M. W. Turner, Painting Set Free. We first stopped in the museum café, though, and had some sandwiches. It was a beautiful sunny and clear day, so we seated ourselves near the windows and had a good view of the gardens and the surrounding hills while we ate.

We then went to the Research Institute building on the Getty campus, to see a special exhibition of art associated with the First World War: World War I: War of Images, Images of War. There were propaganda images from all the major countries involved in the war, both Allies and Central Powers. They were also drawings by artists caught up in the war, illustrating the horrors of war and its aftermath. At the end of the exhibit short video clips were running, from silent movies made soon after the end of the war. Those videos recreate the battlefield, as imagined by filmmakers soon afterwards. That exhibition closes on April 19, 2015, and we had been planning to see it for quite a while, since we are both interested in history generally and the history of World War I in particular.

Getty_Turner_MB&RA

We then went on to the special exhibition building. The Turner exhibition focuses on the last decade and a half of his life. We both liked his nautical paintings, particularly Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, which is the iconic painting used in the museum’s poster for the exhibition. Also of interest were the series of watercolors he did while traveling in Europe. He used those as studies to show potential patrons, who could then commission a larger oil painting of the subject. The watercolors themselves were well done and capture the imagination although they are smaller and simpler than his oil paintings. Several of the large oil paintings in the gallery were unfinished. Turner painted the base and general background on those but had not added detail. Bob was very interested in his painting Hero of a Hundred Fights, showing an industrial forge and reworked to add a bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington being removed from its mold. The Turner exhibition will be at the Getty through May 24, 2015. There was an extensive review of the exhibition in the Los Angeles Times about two weeks before we went.

Margaret grew tired near the end of the exhibition and wanted to leave early, so Meredith took her out while Bob finished looking at paintings in the last gallery, then we swapped off, and Meredith went back into the exhibition. Bob and Margaret strolled around on the plaza level and enjoyed the view out over the pass looking south.

Admission to the Getty is free, but parking costs $15. Despite numerous signs telling people to pay at a machine before going back to the car, we managed to get stuck in the exit lane behind someone who failed to do so. After that minor delay we headed back to the Valley and met up with Kathleen, Meredith’s sister, for coffee.

Wheelchair access at the Getty is very good. There are several levels but the buildings mainly connect just at the plaza level, so one has to go up and down in elevators as you move from one building to another, and the elevators can be a bit slow.