Monthly Archives: September 2015

Timken — Vermeer

By | |
Comments Off on Timken — Vermeer

Timken Museum
Balboa Park
San Diego
September 5, 2015

We went back to one of our favorite museums, the Timken Museum in the heart of Balboa Park, near the arboretum and koi pond. We recommend this museum highly, and suggest anyone living in San Diego who has not been there should check it out. It is a totally FREE, small (right sized) art museum with an excellent collection of American and Western European paintings and a large collection of Russian icons. Although admission is free, we made sure to drop some cash in the donation box at the entrance, and we encourage others to do likewise.

Timken_Vermeer

Our most recent visit, back in May, had been to see a special exhibition of a Raphael painting that was on loan at the time. We went this time to catch a visiting Vermeer painting, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, on its final week here in San Diego. We arrived a little before the museum opened at 10:00 a.m. and joined a group of patrons waiting for the doors to open. Among that group was a man who had come all the way from Washington State to see the painting. He told us the painting is the 15th Vermeer he has seen; an impressive life list! We were enthralled by the painting, particularly by the use of light and color, and also the subtle details. It is a momentary glimpse into the life of its subject. She is caught in the drama of the moment, reading the letter, perhaps sent by her husband traveling far away. Other pieces of Dutch art from that era, including some outstanding watercolor paintings of tulips, were displayed in the same room, giving a context to the central piece.

The museum website had this information about the painting, which was on display through September 11, 2015:
The “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” one of about 36 known paintings by world-class master artist Johannes Vermeer….Luminous and exquisitely rendered, “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” (about 1663-1664) is one of Vermeer’s most captivating portrayals of a young woman’s private world. This generous loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam marks the first appearance of this remarkable painting in San Diego. Praised as one of Vermeer’s most beautiful paintings, “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” demonstrates the artist’s exceptional command of color, light and perspective.

Meredith put a heads up email out to her rowing team, to let them know that week was the last chance to see the painting. Several of them made a point of going to see it that final week, one for the second time. A teammate commented: “Vermeer is one of my favorites. His use of optics, exaggerated perspective and special pigments are fascinating.” Another was pleased that the exhibit tied into a lecture series she had attended recently, about Dutch art.

While it is no longer possible to see the Vermeer, the Timken’s Rembrandt, St. Bartholomew, is back in its place of honor and well worth a visit.

Avila Adobe

By | |
Comments Off on Avila Adobe

Avila Adobe
Downtown Los Angeles
September 3, 2015

Meredith saw the Avila Adobe on the same downtown L.A. trip with her niece and our youngest daughter that included the Chinese American Museum, Olvera Street, and the rest of the Pueblo area. (See the two posts immediately below.) This site also participates in the Passport 2 History program, so together with the Plaza Firehouse and the Chinese American Museum, written up below, Meredith was able to collect three stamps for our passport in a single outing.

Avila_front

The Avila Adobe is open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m, and admission is free. It was built in 1818 by Don Francisco Avila, who had served as the alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles in 1810. It is the oldest residence still standing in Los Angeles and is well appointed with furniture and furnishings from the 1840’s which are typical of the upscale California ranchero of the time. A well-informed docent wearing period costume was stationed in the first room. She told us about the history of both the building and its contents. We walked through several rooms, then out into the courtyard which features a tree sized prickly pear cactus, then on into the visitor center and gift shop.

Avila_cactus

The adobe is located in the middle of Olvera Street, surrounded by shops and stalls and restaurants. Growing out from the front porch of the adobe, out onto a trellis over Olvera Street, is a set of lush grape vines. We did not notice them much at the time, but then saw an article in the Los Angeles Times about the vines a couple of weeks later, What to Do with Grapes from 150-Year-Old Vines at Olvera Street? Make Wine, Of Course. The city archivist, Mike Holland, had long been curious about the vines, and recently had U.C. Davis run a genetic analysis of them. They are identical to the Mission grapes of the Viña Madre, introduced by Spanish missionaries and grown at the San Gabriel Mission. That grape “is a first-generation hybrid between a native Southern California grape (Vitis girdiana) and the European grape (Vitis vinifera) variety Mission,” according to Jerry Dangl, lab manager at Davis. Because the vines are a genetic match to the San Gabriel Mission plants, presumably they grew from cuttings that came from the Mission. No one knows how old the vines are exactly, but they may date as far back as the building of the adobe itself in 1818 or soon thereafter. If we had known how historic the plants were, we would have looked more closely at them, but one can see a little bit of the leafy vines overhead, on the trellis in the background of the photo Meredith took of the girls by the fountain in front of the adobe.

Olvera

Chinese American Museum

By | |
Comments Off on Chinese American Museum

Chinese American Museum
Downtown Los Angeles
September 3, 2015

Meredith saw the Chinese American Museum with her niece and our youngest daughter, as part of their tour of the Pueblo area. (See the post immediately below.) The Chinese American Museum is open from 10 a.m to 3 p.m. daily except for Mondays, and admission is free. It is located in the historic Garnier Building, which dates from 1890 and is the last surviving building from Los Angeles’ original Chinatown. (We learned that the original Chinatown was largely demolished to make room for Union Station, and a new Chinatown grew up nearby.)

The museum makes good use of its small space. Our group started with the timeline display in the first room, with explanatory text and photos and representative artifacts. That timeline takes the visitor through a century and a half of Chinese immigration to the United States, chronicling both the milestones that immigrants attained and the hurdles they faced, such as the exclusionary legislation which drastically limited the numbers who could come to the U.S. The nadir of their experience may have been the Chinese Massacre of 1871, when a mob lynched 17 Chinese men and boys in old Chinatown, perhaps with the complicity of the police and leading Angelenos.

We went on into a room set up to look like typical 19th century stores one might have found in Chinatown, with a general store counter and shelves on the left side and an herbal medicine counter, shelves, and jars on the right side. Two smaller rooms with sample artifacts completed the museum displays.

Ch_Am_herbs

This museum participates in the Passport 2 History program, as do the Firehouse Museum (immediately below) and the Avila Abode (see the next post), both at the Pueblo also.

El Pueblo de Los Angeles

By | |
Comments Off on El Pueblo de Los Angeles

Olvera Street and Los Angeles Pueblo
Downtown Los Angeles
September 3, 2015

Meredith took the day off work and traveled by the earliest Amtrak train north to Union Station in Los Angeles, to meet up with her niece from Seattle and our youngest daughter. They spent the day in downtown Los Angeles. The group walked around Olvera Street and the historic Pueblo area, then went on to the Fashion District. This post gives an overview of the day; separate posts will follow for the Chinese American Museum and the Avila Adobe.

The Pueblo area, including Olvera Street, is the original area of European settlement in Los Angeles. There are several small museums located in it, all of which offer free admission. There are several other historic buildings as well. Olvera Street is now a pedestrian zone with vendor stalls and small shops, offering souvenirs and Mexican themed merchandise. We have considered visiting the Pueblo area museums before but were intimidated by the fact that they are in downtown Los Angeles. That location is a fairly far drive from where Margaret lives, and we were also afraid that parking would be problematic. Recently we learned that Union Station is right across the street from the Pueblo, and we resolved that when one of us next had the opportunity to travel by train to LA, we would try to include a visit to those historic sites.

Niece and daughter met Meredith at Union Station, and the three of them took a brief walk around it. The station is a wonderful building dating from the 1930’s, worthy of study in itself.

Union_station

We then crossed Alameda Street, and walked around the central plaza in the Pueblo park, which has a very large bandstand and some impressively large ficus trees. We had arrived a little too early for the museums which open at 10 a.m., so we went northwest across Main Street to the oldest church in Los Angeles, Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles, dedicated in 1822 and rebuilt in 1861. The church was open, and a number of parishioners were in there praying, so we stopped in for a moment of quiet reflection. We walked back to the plaza and then started walking on Olvera Street, looking at the merchant displays.

Olvera

Halfway along Olvera Street, we stopped in at the America Tropical Interpretive Center. This two-room museum explains the historic, economic, and cultural background to the America Tropical mural painted by David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1932. Unfortunately the mural itself was closed to public view that day, due to some sort of problem with the protective shutters which cover it at night. The center gave us some very interesting information, however, about Los Angeles in the 1930’s and the painter’s life. Olvera Street was being revitalized at that time, and those who commissioned the mural were looking for an idealized tropical scene, to be painted on the second story exterior wall at the center of the street. Siqueiros, an ardent communist and labor organizer, instead painted a crucified Indian peasant surmounted by an American eagle, with revolutionaries on the right aiming rifles at the eagle. The mural was very controversial at the time, and within a few years had been covered with whitewash. In recent years, through the work of the Getty Conservation Institute, the whitewash has been carefully removed, and the mural can now be seen again. (Well, when the protective shutters can be reopened!)

We next saw the Sepulveda House. It is billed as the “only Eastlake Victorian building” in the Pueblo area. There had earlier been an adobe building on the location, which was demolished to widen North Main Street. In 1887, Señora Sepulveda used the condemnation funds to build a two-story Victorian business and residential block. The new house consisted of 22 rooms, with two commercial stores on the Main Street side and three private rooms on Olvera Street. We looked at the kitchen exhibit on the lower level, which re-creates the 1890’s kitchen for the boardinghouse portion of the building, and we then looked in the bedroom exhibit, with decor from the same era.

We then toured the Avila Adobe, which will be the subject of a separate blog post. We finished our walking tour of the merchant area on Olvera Street and went back to the plaza area. The girls decided to see the two small museums off the plaza before lunch, so we proceeded on to the Plaza Firehouse Museum.

Plaza_fire

The Plaza Firehouse is a red brick building which dates from 1884. It is the first building constructed by the City of Los Angeles for housing firefighting equipment and personnel. It was originally occupied by volunteer firefighters, and then by the new professional fire department starting in 1886. Horses were stabled on the ground floor, and the firemen slept on the second level. The horse stalls can still be seen, and a horse drawn hose wagon with harness is on display. There are numerous historic photos on the walls. Admission is free. This museum is one of three sites within the Pueblo which are part of the Passport 2 History program, which is one of our main go-to resources.

We then visited the Chinese American Museum, which will also be the subject of a separate blog post.

We went on to lunch from there, eating at the La Luz del Dia restaurant on the plaza. The prices were very reasonable, and the food was excellent. We ordered at the counter, and then food was carried to our table. Meredith particularly enjoyed the tamales. The girls enjoyed their food also and drank Mexican soft drinks.

There are several lots parking lots right around the Pueblo. Our daughter had driven her car, and she parked in the lot on the south west edge of the Pueblo for a flat five dollar price.

Some of the areas of Olvera Street are on multi levels without wheelchair ramps, but there are several wheelchair lifts. We did not have Margaret with us, so did not have to deal with accessibility challenges hands-on, but it appears that a wheelchair visitor could enjoy all or most of the Pueblo and Olvera Street attractions.

After lunch we drove down to the Fashion District and walked Santee Alley, a high energy marketplace with many small shops. Most were clothing or shoe stores, but there was a variety of other merchandise. Our niece bought a skirt she spotted, and Meredith and the girls enjoyed 10 minute mini-massages.

Santee_alley