Category Archives: Uncategorized

Manet’s Later Years

By | |
Comments Off on Manet’s Later Years

Getty Center 
Sepulveda Pass, Los Angeles
November 16, 2019

We drove up to the Getty to see Manet and Modern Beauty, their special exhibition of over 80 works by Edouard Manet, created in the final years of his life.  We had read a preview article about it in the Los Angeles Times, and we were reminded of it by the monthly email newsletter we receive from the Getty.  Meredith’s sister Kathleen met us there.

The works on display included not only oil paintings but also pastels, watercolors, and letters Manet sent to friends that he decorated with small sketches or watercolor images.

The marquee work, Jeanne (Spring), is a beautifully executed painting of a well-dressed young woman who symbolizes Spring.  Manet had originally intended to paint all four seasons, each represented by a woman in seasonal dress. He did not live long enough to finish the project. He did paint Autumn, and that work is displayed near Spring in the Getty exhibit.

We enjoyed seeing images of the artist’s black and white cat Zizi, first eyeing a brioche and then curled up on his wife’s lap, in typical cat pose.

 Manet also painted friends’ dogs, and the portrait of one named “Bob” was included in the exhibition.

As we finished touring the Manet exhibition, we were treated to an outdoor musical and dance performance piece that was part of the Bridge-S series created and produced by Solange Knowles.  On the drive up to the Getty, we had read an article about her production in the Los Angeles Times. 

We stopped for lunch in the museum cafe, then went to see two other smaller temporary exhibitions, Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art and Peasants in Pastel: Millet and the Pastel Revival.

The magi who came to see the infant Jesus are not named in the Gospels; indeed they are not even stated to be three in number.  But legend has filled in the gap, and tradition has it that one of the three wise men came from Africa and was named Balthazar.  We were interested to see how depictions of Balthazar changed over the centuries, and some of the illuminated manuscripts on display were exquisitely beautiful.

The pastel collection only included about a dozen works, but they were very well done.  Jean-Francois Millet came from a peasant family and often depicted rural scenes.  He led a revival in the use of pastels; displayed with his works are some by other artists who followed his lead like Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro.

It was a beautiful day; we enjoyed the views both to the east to UCLA and downtown, and west toward the ocean. The Getty Center gardens are beautiful, and we made a mental note to leave time for a tour of the grounds when we next come.

Admission to the Getty is free, but parking costs $20 per car. The price drops to $15 in mid afternoon and to $10 in the evening. The Manet exhibition runs through January 12, 2020.  The Balthazar exhibition ends February 16, 2020, and the pastels run through May 10, 2020.

Masterpiece Double Header

By | |
Comments Off on Masterpiece Double Header

University of San Diego
Timken Museum of Art
September 27 & 28, 2019

Meredith’s USD alumni magazine alerted us to a special art exhibition several months ago, and Meredith explored it this past weekend.

The University of San Diego and the Timken Museum have joined together, in partnership with the British Museum, to bring to town a selection of outstanding Italian prints and drawings owned by the British Museum, mainly from the Renaissance period.

Some can be seen at USD’s Hoehn Family Galleries, in Founders Hall on the university campus.  The exhibition there is entitled Christ: Life, Death and Resurrection. 

The rest can be seen at the Timken Museum in Balboa Park, in the special exhibition room.  It is entitled simply Masterpieces of Italian Drawings.

The rarest and most exciting piece on exhibit is Michelangelo’s drawing The Three Crosses. That piece can be seen at USD. It figures prominently in the publicity for the exhibition, for instance on the cover of the alumni magazine, but it is by no means the only masterpiece on display.

Admission to both museums is free.

Postcript: both exhibitions closed in December 2019, but USD posted an excellent video online, with curatorial fellow John Murphy conducting a virtual highlights tour of the USD portion of the project.  It runs 28 minutes and can be seen here.

Spain’s Golden Age

By | |
Comments Off on Spain’s Golden Age

San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park
May 19, 2019 and July 28, 2019

We went to see the San Diego Museum of Art’s new featured exhibition, Art & Empire: the Golden Age of Spain, on its opening weekend and then again more recently with a friend.  In between our two visits we went to Spain, where we saw other Golden Age paintings at the Prado Museum in Madrid.  It was fun to put the San Diego exhibition in the greater context.

The SDMA Golden Age exhibition features more than 100 art works, mostly paintings, from Spain’s imperial age.  The works include not only those by Spanish artists, but also many by contemporaneous colonial artists.  They are grouped thematically, with religious art making up a majority of the pieces on display, and many secular subjects shown as well.  The museum’s own Spanish art is gathered here, together with many borrowed pieces.

There were many great works, and we cannot name a favorite.  A very memorable piece was Velazquez’s Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus, which is interesting for its focus on the maid, with Jesus and the disciples in the background.  It is displayed near a more traditional treatment of that subject. 

We entered the museum for free as part of our annual Balboa Park Explorer Pass but paid $5 extra to get into the Art & Empire exhibit. It was well worth it!  Without the pass, museum admission is $15, $10 for seniors, and the exhibition is an extra $5. 

The exhibition runs through September 2.

After we were done at the museum on our first visit, we had fun riding the carousel over near the zoo. Meredith succeeded in grabbing the brass ring and won a second ride for free.

 

Blog-iversary Number Five

By | |
Comments Off on Blog-iversary Number Five

Five years ago today we put our first post on line.  For several years before that, the two of us had been taking Meredith’s mother Margaret to various museums and historic sites around Los Angeles.  We went up to see her once or twice a month at the board and care home in the San Fernando Valley where she was living at the time.  Taking Margaret on those outings was both a way give her some fun diversion and also a way for us to visit with her that was interactive and meaningful.  After a while we thought, if we are going to all these museums, why not review them?  Our eldest daughter helped us create the blog, and we have been posting ever since.

Margaret passed away in June 2016, and not a day goes by that Meredith does not think about and miss her.  We continue to blog about museums, and occasionally hikes and other discoveries.  Our focus has shifted more to San Diego, but we still go up to Los Angeles from time to time on the weekend to see special exhibits at museums up north.

On our calendar for the coming months are: (1) the Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Sci-Fi and Fantasy exhibition at the Petersen Automotive Museum, which is open now and will run through March 15, 2020, and is co-sponsored by the Comic-Con Museum; and (2) the University of San Diego’s Christ: Life, Death and Resurrection art exhibition, which runs September 13 to December 13 and will include Michelangelo’s brush drawing The Three Crosses along with other Italian Renaissance master works on loan from the British Museum.

Stunning Landscapes

By | |
Comments Off on Stunning Landscapes

San Diego Natural History Museum
Balboa Park
May 19, 2019

On the spur of the moment, we went to see the 50 Greatest Landscapes exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park, because we saw an article about it in the San Diego Union Tribune that morning.  Fifty of the best landscape photographs published in National Geographic magazine are displayed in the museum’s fourth floor gallery.  They are arranged by season.

All of the photos were striking.  Among the Winter photos, we particularly liked one that showed a dusting of snow in Monument Valley and another that showed the Norway sky lit up by the Northern Lights.  In the other sections we liked an interesting time lapse photo of firefly trails at night; autumn frost on trees in a Romanian forest; and chinstrap penguins on a blue iceberg near Candlemas Island in the remote southern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean.  The landscape photos will be on display through June 23; after the exhibit closes, a similar collection of National Geographic wildlife photos will open June 29.

Admission to the museum was included with our annual Balboa Park Explorer pass.  Regular adult admission to the museum is $19.95; there are discounts for seniors, children, students, and military.

Looking out from the fourth floor we could see a bird’s eye view of the giant fig tree next to the museum.  We remember years ago, when we could walk under the tree and climb on its roots and lower branches.  Now, for the protection of both tree and park visitor, there is a fence all the way around the it.

Desert Interlude

By | |
Comments Off on Desert Interlude

Borrego Art Institute
Borrego Springs Natural History Association
Borrego Springs
May 5, 2019

We took a Sunday trip out to Borrego Springs to meet up with some high school friends of Meredith‘s for a picnic lunch.  Their school was in Palo Alto, and just one classmate lives out in the desert, but several others came from different parts of southern California and two friends from further away.  It was a nice gathering.

We arrived in town early and puttered around for an hour before meeting up with the group.  Our youngest daughter jokes that our super power is that we can find a museum anywhere, and sure enough we found two different educational offerings to while away the time.

We very much enjoyed the Borrego Art Institute gallery.  The exhibition was summer themed and featured local artists’ paintings and photographs with mostly desert scenes.  It is a gallery, not a museum strictly speaking.  The art is offered for sale, but the Institute is a nonprofit organization and runs classes as well.  There was no charge for admission.  We put a donation in the box by the door.  There is an excellent restaurant next to the gallery – Kesling’s Kitchen — which is owned by the Institute.

We had a little time left before the friends gathered so went across the street to the Borrego Springs Natural History Association.  They operate a bookstore, and there is a garden behind that building with a variety of native plants.  We enjoyed strolling around.  They had a lovely stand of about eight or 10 native palm trees.  There were several butterflies in the pollinator area, but we did not see any hummingbirds.  Maybe next time?

We first visited Borrego Springs in 1986 when our oldest daughter was a baby.  We went in the spring to see the desert flowers.

We have been back several times since.  The desert landscape is stark, but beautiful.  The most memorable trip was probably our worst experience – when the three girls were very little, we drove there and back (about 2 hours each way) with two small children and a baby in the back seat of Bob’s compact Toyota Tercel.  Nonstop complaints of “she’s touching me” spurred us to trade the Tercel in for a minivan; spread the kids out so no one could touch anyone else!

Daley Ranch

By | |
Comments Off on Daley Ranch

Daley Ranch
Escondido
February 17, 2019

We had fun exploring a new (to us) place to hike, the Daley Ranch in Escondido. We had originally planned to hike out in East County, at Mountain Palm Springs in the Anza Borrego State Park, a place we had enjoyed exploring a year or two ago, but there was a high wind advisory. We figured that although our low-profile sedan could get us there safely, it wouldn’t be fun to hike in the desert with high winds blowing sand in our face. Another time!

We took out our Coast to Cactus book, a guide compiled by the Canyoneer volunteers of the San Diego Natural History Museum, and looked through it for something new. We had only vaguely heard of the Daley Ranch before; we found out that it offers a variety of hikes, of differing lengths and levels of difficulty. There are over 20 miles of trails.  We elected to hike the Pond and Lake View Trail, a four mile loop that offers a glimpse of Dixon Lake and then meanders past Mallard Pond, Middle Pond, and a couple of unnamed smaller ponds. We saw a coyote on the verge of one of the ponds, eyeing some ducks who were too smart to swim close to him. Ultimately he gave up, and we watched him saunter off on one of the many game trails. We saw many birds in addition to the ducks and a profusion of lilac bushes, which the guidebook told us are Ramona-lilacs (Ceanothus tomentosus).

The Daley Ranch used to be a working ranch. Robert Daley settled there around 1869 and built a small cabin. The over 3,000 acre property was slated for development until the City of Escondido purchased it in 1996. It is now a wide life refuge and open space park. A short history of the ranch can be seen on the city’s website here. Someday soon we would like to go back and try the Stanley Peak hike, which is longer and steeper than the pond trail we hiked this time.

The ranch house which currently stands on the property was built in 1925 and is open for tours on some Sundays from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm. (The city’s website says the second Sunday of the month, but a recent calendar posting listed a tour on March 24, the fourth Sunday, so check ahead of time.) The ranch house was not open when we were there; something else to go back for!

Knights of Columbus

By | |
Comments Off on Knights of Columbus

Knights of Columbus Museum
New Haven, Connecticut
January 26, 2019

We went back to New Haven at the end of January for the annual gathering of a student group we both belonged to when we were students at Yale. While most of our time was spent socializing with fellow Old Blues and current undergraduates, we took a little time for – what else? – checking out some local museums.

We had found information online about the Knights of Columbus Museum, when we were looking up Sunday Mass times at St. Mary’s church near campus.  The Knights were formed in New Haven in 1882, at St. Mary’s parish by Father Michael J. McGivney, so it is appropriate that their museum is located in that city.  We were impressed with the museum.  It is large, newly built, and well furnished.  We had not realized how big it was when we planned our visit, so spent our limited time viewing mostly the special exhibitions.  We left the permanent collection for another time.

There is a gallery near the museum entrance devoted to Father McGivney. When we visited, a relic of St. John Paul the Great was also on temporary display in the McGivney gallery, namely a piece of the cassock the pope was wearing when he was shot in 1981.  We spent a few minutes in silent prayer then moved on to the other exhibits.

We were particularly interested in the special exhibition on World War I, which will continue its run through April 14.  It offered general information about the causes of the war and other general information, but most of the displays focused on the experience of the soldiers.  There was an excellent video playing with archival footage near the entrance.  In another area there were replica uniform jackets and helmets that visitors can try on, which we did.  Near that was a sample pack visitors can lift, to get an idea what infantry soldiers had to carry when they were on the march.  Actual historic uniform jackets, helmets, and caps were also displayed.  One room was designed as a sample trench, and it gave a good idea of the height and dimension of an actual trench.  It was clean and dry, though – not at all like the miserable muddy and vermin infested reality the troops had to endure.

Other display cases contained a wide range of personal items once carried by soldiers, such as books, playing cards, a sewing kit, soap and other toiletries, and musical instruments, to name just a few.  There were also several pieces of trench art – some soldiers carved bullet and shell casings during their waiting time in the trenches, making pieces like the scrimshaw carved by sailors in earlier generations.  One soldier had carved the Knights of Columbus logo on the wall of a limestone cave, and a cast of that piece was on display.

Near the end of that exhibit was a large display devoted to Father John B. DeValles, the “Angel of the Trenches.”  Father DeValles was born in the Azores in 1879 and immigrated to the U.S. with his parents as a young child.  He served as a parish priest in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  When the war began, he was appointed as the Knights of Columbus chaplain attached to the 104th Regiment of the 26th Infantry Division and was one of the first K of C chaplains to arrive in France.  Later he was commissioned as a chaplain in the regular U.S. Army.  He often entered No-Man’s Land to search for wounded and dying Allied and German soldiers.  Father John, as he was known to the troops, risked his life on many occasions.  Once, he did not return to the trenches, and searchers found him unconscious and wounded next to a dead soldier whom he had been trying to help.  His injuries damaged his health, and although he survived to return to the U.S., he died from complications of his wounds in May 1920.  He was only 41 at the time.  He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Croix de Guerre, and the Legion of Honor.  General Edwards, who presented the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously said that he had known men as brave as Father DeValles but not braver.  Photos and a summary of his service can be seen on this video of a recent Massachusetts National Guard ceremony honoring him.

After the World War I exhibit, we strolled through the Christmas in Poland exhibit.  There were some beautiful creches of a type known as szopka, commonly made in and around Krakow. They are shaped like miniature churches, often with multiple floors, and contain nativity figures and other scenes inside them.  Some looked a bit like dollhouses, open to show the rooms and figures inside.  In addition to szopkas from Poland, the museum also displayed many made by local Connecticut students, as part of a competition sponsored by Polish cultural groups.

The museum is free, and it offers free parking under the building.  Donations are welcome, of course.  It is fully accessible.  Staff were numerous, cheerful, and helpful.  We really enjoyed our visit, and to any Knights who read our blog, we say thanks for supporting this excellent facility.

Art Sampler

By | |
Comments Off on Art Sampler

San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park
January 6, 2019

Our first museum trip of 2019 echoed our 2018 start. We used our Balboa Park Explorer passes to visit the San Diego Museum of Art. This time we concentrated our attention on two temporary exhibitions. The first showcased World War I propaganda posters; the second featured early 20th century prints that are not often displayed, due to light sensitivity.

We also spent some time in the permanent collection, viewing the gallery with European devotional art. El Greco is one of Meredith’s favorite artists, and his painting The Penitent St. Peter hangs at the entrance to that room. Further inside the room we got into a spirited discussion with a fellow enthusiast, comparing notes about the historic St. Nicholas, 4th century bishop of Myra, whose legend has evolved in odd ways to become the modern Santa Claus.

Family Holiday

By | |
Comments Off on Family Holiday

Timken Museum of Art
Balboa Park
December 28, 2018

We closed out 2018 with a trip to our favorite local museum, the Timken. It was a banner week for us because all three daughters, our son in law, and our new grandchild all visited together, overlapping by several days.

We first bought lunches from food trucks and ate out on the Plaza de Panama.

We then strolled through the Timken Museum lobby, looking at the hand made holiday decorations which were hanging both overhead and on the large tree at the back of the lobby.  They are an annually recurring exhibit, Jewels of the Season.

We next viewed the special exhibition of Rococo art.  (It closed a few days after our visit.)

We then dispersed to enjoy the permanent collection, particularly the Russian icons and San Diego’s only Rembrandt, “Saint Bartholomew.”  He is back in town after being loaned out to museums elsewhere.

The Timken offers free admission, so it is a great option for the thrifty or an easy add-on to other activities in Balboa Park.  Donations are welcomed and encouraged, however.

The next special exhibit at the Timken will be Metonymies: A Dialogue with 20th Century Works from the Sonnabend Collection, which runs from February 8 through April 28. We plan to visit again soon.