Tag Archives: sculptures

Hello, Dali!

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Museum of Fine Arts
Boston, Massachusetts
October 3, 2024

Our recent trip to Massachusetts included a day in Boston, and we spent the afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts. Neither of us had been there in many years.



The museum is showcasing art by surrealist painter Salvador Dali, alongside works by older artists who influenced him. The exhibition, Dalí: Disruption and Devotion, runs through December 1, 2024. It is arranged chronologically and contains good biographical material. Many of the paintings and sketches were on loan from the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Meredith was bemused by the Evangelical Council painting done in 1960, commemorating the Vatican Council. Three large figures representing the Trinity dominate the top of that canvas, the installation of Pope John XXIII is pictured in the middle, just above the artist’s wife depicted as an angel, and the painter at his easel can be found in the lower left corner.

After seeing Dali, we headed to the European section. We lingered in the Monet room.

The MFA has 35 Monet paintings, one of the largest collections of his work outside France.



We then strolled through a couple dozen galleries in the European and American sections with a brief shortcut through some ancient sculpture rooms.


We ate a delicious lunch at the museum restaurant, sharing the courtyard with a giant Chihuly glass sculpture known as the Green Icicle Tower.

Timken Reopens!

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Timken Museum of Art
Balboa Park
San Diego
June 5, 2022

We are delighted to say that the Timken Museum in Balboa Park has reopened after more than two years. During its hiatus it has undergone a major refurbishment and systems upgrade. The Timken is probably our favorite museum, and it was delightful to get reacquainted with an old friend.


We attended a members’ preview on the first weekend in June; the museum reopened to the public on June 8. The San Diego Union Tribune did a pair of very thorough articles, a long piece about the reopening which covered the history of the museum and what’s new, and a second, shorter piece that highlighted ten “must see” works of art in the collection. We recommend those articles highly and will not try to repeat all that they covered.

Here are some highlights from our visit:
We enjoyed seeing the two new works on display as part of the permanent collection. The first is an 1874 marble bust Eve by American artist Thomas Ball.

The second is an 1890 oil painting Salome by American artist Ella Ferris Pell.

Hearty thanks to the donors who made those acquisitions possible! (Kevin and Irene Rowe, for Eve, and Sandra and Bram Dijkstra, for Salome.)
The gallery walls have been repainted, and the overall effect is to make the interior lighter and more pleasant. The collection has been rearranged in chronological order. The prior grouping was by category. The new system makes sense and is pleasing, and it did not take us too long to find our old friends. Every work of art now has an explanatory text on the wall to inform visitors. The bronze details have been refinished, inside and out, and this beautiful mid-century modern building really shines now. The air conditioning system has been completely revamped, an invisible but important upgrade.
Among our all-time favorite works in the collection are:
Eastman Johnson’s 1880 painting, The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket:

And the 1557 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Parable of the Sower:

Early in the pandemic lock down, Meredith ordered a mask from the museum store online with that Brueghel image, and she wore it for our recent visit.
The museum website has photos of all the works in their permanent collection, along with facts about each piece.
The gallery that houses special exhibitions was not open when we visited. There is a planned exhibition of works by summer artist-in-residence Marianela de la Hoz set to open July 10. Something to look forward to!
Things to know: The museum is open Wednesday – Sunday 10 am – 5 pm. Admission to the museum is free. Please make a donation! Parking in Balboa Park is also free, but located at a distance from the museum, so you will need to walk or take the park shuttle.

PMCA’s Last Hurrah

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Pasadena Museum of California Art
Pasadena

We learned from an article in the Los Angeles Times that the Pasadena Museum of California Art will be closing.

As the name suggests, this museum features California art. Specifically, its mission is “to present the breadth of California art and design through exhibitions that explore the cultural dynamics and influences that are unique to California.” It is unusual in not having any collection of its own. Rather, it showcases special exhibitions, three at a time. The museum lacks an endowment and has largely been supported by a pair of donors, the founders Bob and Arlene Oltman. It fills its niche well, but its unusual structure has proven to be unsustainable. In June, the board voted to close on October 7 when the current exhibitions finish.

The current exhibitions include: works by painter and graphic designer Grafton Tyler Brown, the first known African American artist to work in California; another featuring feminist artist Judy Chicago; and the third displaying sculptures by contemporary Los Angeles artist Brody Albert.

We visited the museum once, on a get-away weekend in Pasadena a few months before we started this blog. We did not take photos there, but our “PMCA” stickers can be see in this selfie taken outside the Gamble House.

While there we saw an exhibition featuring paintings by Alfredo Ramos Martínez produced in the 1930’s and 40’s, another displaying several dozen silk screened political posters from the 1970’s on, and the third compromised of studies done by Flora Kao of cabins in the Mojave Desert.

We enjoyed our visit and are sad to see PMCA close.

Pacific Standard Memories

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San Diego Museum of Art and Mingei International Museum
Balboa Park
January-February 2018
LACMA
Hancock Park
March 18, 2018

Over the winter we attended several exhibitions, now gone by, in the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA series. Life got away from us, so we did not write them up here at the time. We did enjoy getting in touch with Latin American art spanning many centuries and revisiting some museums we had not been to in a while.

The first Pacific Standard Time series celebrated mid-twentieth century Southern California arts; it ran from October 2011 to April 2012. We took Meredith’s mother Margaret to six or more exhibitions in that first series. It was fun discovering small venues and offbeat subjects. Margaret was very taken by a vintage Studebaker Avanti on display at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and joked about driving off in it while the guard was looking the other way. The thought of Margaret leaping out of her wheelchair and hotwiring a collector car still brings a smile. That first series of Pacific Standard Time visits took place before we started our blog.

The newer LA/LA series explored artistic connections between Latin America and Southern California (mainly Los Angeles) and ran from September 2017 to early 2018. Both PST series were organized by the Getty Museum, which brought together dozens of So Cal museums, each with their own special focus exhibit.

Earlier this year, we saw: (1) Modern Masters from Latin America: The Pérez Simón Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art; (2) Art of the Americas: Mesoamerican, Pre-Columbian Art from Mingei’s Permanent Collection at the Mingei Museum; and (3) Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici at LACMA.

In January, we saw the Pérez Simón Collection show at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. It brought together art (mostly paintings) from eight different Latin American countries, spanning a little over a century, from the late 1800’s to now. We particularly liked the landscape scenes and portrayals of people in their daily lives. The abstract pieces interested us less. After we finished seeing the Perez Simon collection, we stopped in to see a visiting Monet painting, which was on loan from the Denver art museum and has since been returned.

The next month we headed to the Mingei Museum, also in Balboa Park. We had not been there in years, and it was fun to get reacquainted. The term “mingei” means “everyone’s art,” and this museum features objects from around the world made for everyday use. Although some are very beautiful, none were made purely to be decorative. Their Pacific Standard Time exhibition displayed an extensive collection of objects, particularly ceramics, from a variety of pre-Columbian cultures in Mexico, Central America, and South America. We particularly liked seeing the Mayan textile fragments – so fragile they were shown under dim lighting.

While in the Mingei we also strolled through a display of Native American weaving from the American Southwest. There were some strikingly handsome pieces on display, and the curator’s explanatory signs were very thorough. Two thumbs up on the Mingei visit; we will definitely come back.

Early this year we purchased a Balboa Park Explorer one year family pass, and we used the pass for both the SDMA and Mingei visit.

In March, we met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen to see Painted in Mexico, 1700-1790: Pinxit Mexici at LACMA. This was an exhibition of Mexican painting during the 18th century. Over 120 works were on display, many of which had never been shown publicly before, and some were specially restored for this exhibition. Religious paintings predominated, but there were secular themed paintings as well. The works displayed were high quality, sophisticated pieces; this New World art can definitely take its place alongside the best of the Old World. We saw the exhibition on its final weekend in Los Angeles; it went on the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it will be on display through July 22.

We looked through several other LACMA areas. Outside we were amused by a sculpture that looks like a balloon animal. A little hard to take seriously, but hey, we took a picture, didn’t we?

Brahms and Cowboys

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California Center for the Arts
Escondido
January 29, 2017

Meredith was out of town on the last weekend in January, so Bob decided to check out the California Center for the Arts in Escondido. His attention had been drawn to it by advertising for a performance of Brahms’ German Requiem. Escondido Choral Arts organized the presentation, which featured an introduction to the work and recorded testimonials by members of the choral groups involved as to their often quite moving relationships to the Requiem, as well as what Bob thought was a fine performance.

Since the music did not begin until three in the afternoon, he took advantage of the trip to Escondido to visit another part of the Center, the Museum. The facility is spacious—two large, airy halls that are paralleled by hallways which can also be used for display. The hallways have large windows all along that look out on the adjacent Grape Day Park. The current exhibition is Cowboys and Vaqueros: Legends of the American West. It runs January 14 through February 26, 2017. In the smaller of the two halls were a mix of paintings, photographs, and artifacts that celebrate different peoples who made their mark on the history of the Old West: Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and European Americans. Bob was taken by a photograph of an African-American family outside their sod hut and another of the Robinson Hotel. That hotel was started by an African-American family in Julian, California, in the nearby mountains. When they sold it after a number of decades, it became the Julian Hotel, which still stands today. He also liked the side saddle that belonged to a young lady who was in the first graduating class from Escondido High School—her family lived in the San Pasqual Valley, too far to commute, so she stayed in town during the week and rode her horse home on the weekends!

In the larger hall there was a focus on paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Many of the sculptures were by Mehl Lawson, the curator of the show. His works in the show were in bronze, reminiscent of Frederic Remington, but with a very different surface texture or patina. The works throughout the show were very largely contemporary—from the 1990s into the current decade. Bob very much liked one large scale Impressionist painting, Eastern Sierra Landscape by Alson Skinner Clark and owned by the University Club of Pasadena. Executed in 1919, the picture shows a covered wagon dwarfed by the majestic mountains in the distance and lost in the desert of the foreground.

In the hallways adjacent to the exhibition halls, there was a display of student work from local schools related to the show. Mostly these were drawings or paintings, but one project had been to design cattle brands—one young lady welded her own and with it there was a description of the process she went through to make it.

A smaller room located at the end of the large hall farthest from the entrance was being used to show the work of a local documentarian. Corazon Vaquero (Heart of the Cowboy) is a gripping piece. Usually when one passes by a video that is playing in a museum setting, if it runs more than ten minutes one loses interest and moves on. This film is a very terrific look at the daily life of people who live in the dry, mountainous lands in central Baja California. Bob watched about half an hour and then had to move on to get to the concert. Researching the film later, he found that it was made by Cody McClintock, who grew up in northern San Diego County, and is narrated by his father Garry, a master saddle maker who lived in Descanso and passed away in the fall of 2015.

There is plenty of free parking adjacent to the Center. Handicap access seemed fine in the museum and the concert hall. There is a small gift shop in the museum, which is open Thursday-Saturday from 10:00 to 5:00 and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00. The current exhibition runs through Sunday, 26 February. The next exhibition, coming in April and May, is called The Second Time Around: The Hubcap as Art. The young woman at the museum entrance told Bob that so far there are no other exhibits planned for the year due to funding constraints.

Timken New Year’s Eve

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Timken Museum of Art
Balboa Park
December 31, 2016

We love the Timken Museum of Art; as we have said before, it is perhaps our favorite museum. It is a small museum located in the heart of Balboa Park, next to the (larger and unaffiliated) San Diego Museum of Art and the arboretum. Admission is free, although donations are encouraged.

We went there on New Year’s Eve to catch the last day of the exhibition Jewels of the Season, displaying many wonderful hand made ornaments created by local artists Florence Hord and Elizabeth Schlappi. Bob had gone to see it a week earlier with our middle daughter and son-in-law; this was Meredith’s first visit. Annually since 1988, the Timken has set up a Christmas Tree and displayed on it a selection of ornaments from the collection, which totals over 2000 pieces. Starting last year, the exhibition was expanded and is now an extended installation with more ornaments hung overhead and displayed in cases, in addition to those shown on the tree.

We browsed through the permanent collection as well. The museum is small, but for its size offers an excellent assortment of European and American paintings. It boasts the only Rembrandt painting in San Diego, Saint Bartholomew.

December 31 marked the last day of the Jewels exhibition; be sure to see it next holiday season! The Timken has another special exhibition coming up: Witness to War: Callot, Goya, Bellows, which will run from January 27 – May 28, 2017. We are also looking forward to the fall, when the Timken, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will bring a small group of Monet paintings to San Diego. Details of that exhibition have not yet been released.

On our walk through the park, we stopped to enjoy the Nativity and related scenes displayed near the organ pavilion. According to the Union Tribune, the original sculptures were done over 70 years ago by noted Los Angeles artist Rudolph Vargas. They have been displayed at the park each Christmas season since 1953. In recent years they had become worn and tattered. Over the past year, local artist Barbara Jacobson donated her time, and together with numerous lay volunteers refurbished the entire set. The figures and backdrops look spiffy now, thanks to their efforts.

Norton Simon Museum

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Norton Simon Museum
Pasadena
December 4, 2016

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We met up with Kathleen, Meredith’s sister, to spend an afternoon at the Norton Simon Museum. This museum has an extensive and good quality collection of European art, and we toured those galleries first. Meredith enjoyed the Degas works particularly, both paintings and sculpture. Bob’s eye was caught by a Georges Lacombe painting, the Chestnut Gatherers. We both liked the Baciccio painting, Saint Joseph and the Infant Christ, so we picked up a packet of Christmas cards with a reproduction of it in the gift shop.

Kathleen will be teaching a comparative religion course next term and found material of interest in both the European and Asian art sections. The Asian art collection is extensive, and consists largely of religious statues.

The museum is a good size — compact enough to see the collection in one visit, but large enough to contain its considerable collection and show it to good advantage. The interior galleries, redesigned by architect Frank Gehry in the 1990’s, are light and airy.

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The sculpture gardens are a treat to explore and something that sets this museum apart. As you approach, the path to the entrance is flanked by Rodin sculptures, including the Burghers of Calais. Inside the museum is another sculpture garden, around a lily pond, with lovely trees and other plantings. The stroll around the pond is as much a part of the museum experience here as strolling through the interior galleries.

Admission is $12 for adults, $9 for seniors. Children and students are free. Wheelchair access is good. Parking is free.

There is a cafe at the museum, outside by the lily pond, but we met up with Kathleen for brunch at a local coffeehouse in Pasadena first, Copa Vida. We all enjoyed our meals.

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The day before we went to the Norton Simon, we drove up to Pasadena to stay the night and went out to a local theater, the Sierra Madre Playhouse, to see “A Little House Christmas.” As the name suggests, the play is based on the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories and features the Ingalls family preparing for and celebrating Christmas. We love the books and thoroughly enjoyed the play, which is based on stories in the books, primarily in Little House on the Prairie. Rights are owned by the Little House Heritage Trust. The actors were very good, and the production was engaging — funny at points, and poignant at other times. We would definitely see this show again and hope to see other theaters produce it.

SD Museum of Art — Brueghel and Putnam

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San Diego Museum of Art
April 19, 2016
Balboa Park

SDMA_exterior

Meredith took advantage of Resident Free Tuesday in Balboa Park to see two special exhibitions at the Museum of Art: Brueghel to Canaletto, European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection, featuring paintings from the Low Countries post 1600, and Ferocious Bronze, the Animal Sculptures of Arthur Putnam, featuring dramatic bronze sculptures done in the early 20th century.

There are about 40 paintings on display in the Brueghel to Canaletto exhibition, beautiful still lifes and landscape paintings from the 17th century. These are on loan from a private collection, and most have not been displayed publicly before. There are some really stunning pieces among them. It is hard to single out any one work, but Meredith enjoyed the humorous touches in Peter Binoit’s paintings, which include small mice unobtrusively eating some of the delicious looking food. This exhibition will run only through August 2, 2016 and is well worth a visit.

Sculptor Arthur Putnam lived from 1873 to 1930 and worked mainly on the West Coast. Publisher E. W. Scripps gave Putnam his first major commission, to sculpt five monumental bronze figures for his ranch near San Diego. Putnam won a gold medal at San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Central to this current exhibition are 28 of Putnam’s animal bronzes, selected from over 100 that the Museum received in 1925 as a gift from the Spreckels family. The exhibition also includes sketches and other material.

The Putnam exhibition will run through October 11, 2016. The Museum of Art is running it as their contribution to Part of the Pride. In honor of the San Diego Zoo’s centennial, five prominent Balboa Park institutions are collaborating to offer animal-themed exhibitions in 2016.

Meredith went on the third Tuesday of the month and so enjoyed free admission; regular admission is $12 for adults, with discounted prices for seniors, military, students, and youths. (She bought a book in the gift shop, so we made a financial contribution to the museum that way.)

Getty Center — Bronzes

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Getty Center
Sepulveda Pass
September 13, 2015

We took Margaret to the Getty Center to see the special exhibition Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World. The exhibition runs through November 1, 2015. The Getty has gathered many bronze sculptures of the Hellenistic period, from 323 to 31 B.C., some on loan from museums in the Mediterranean world. The exhibition presents a wonderful sampling of Hellenistic art of portraiture and the human form. Each piece was accompanied with a good write up explaining where it was found, when and how it was made, and what the salient details are to look for in it. The museum’s website offers an excellent gallery of images of the pieces in the exhibition. We were both very impressed with the seated bronze statue of the tired boxer in the center of the second area of the exhibition space. Margaret liked the two very similar statues of athletes in the middle room. Their large size and fine detail make each statue an outstanding piece in its own right, but they are also interesting because they are clearly made from the same master model.

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After the bronzes we took a short walk through the exhibit about Renaissance artist Andrea Del Sarto and his workshop. We caught that exhibit on its final day. It was interesting because it included both drawings and paintings, giving an idea how the masterworks were put together.

At the end of our stay we took a stroll through the 19th century European painting area of the permanent collection, including the Impressionist paintings. Bob likes the Sisley landscape depicting the road from Versailles to St. Germain; Meredith never tires of Monet’s painting of snow dusted wheat stacks in the morning sun.

We ate in the museum café, a food court style cafeteria that is less expensive than the museum restaurant upstairs. Margaret had a salad, and we each had Mexican dishes. The food was good. There was not much of a crowd. Perhaps the Sunday attendance is lighter than Saturday.

Admission to the Getty Center is free. The only cost to get in is $15 per car to park. If one arrives by public transport, then there is no cost.

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We had a bit of an adventure leaving. The trams between the parking garage and museum had broken down. We had the choice of taking a shuttle bus or walking down the hill. We chose to walk. That is not an option we have ever seen offered before so wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. It took us a little more than 15 minutes, and the walk gave us a chance to enjoy the views out over the pass.

Getty Villa

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Getty Villa
Malibu
August 9, 2014

Getty Malibu 3

We went to the Getty Malibu campus this time, primarily to see a special exhibit of Byzantine art, “Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections.” We had seen that exhibition described in the LA Times some months before and noticed that it would close on August 25 so wanted to be sure to see it before that date.

The Malibu campus is similar to the Sepulveda Pass Getty Center in offering free admission but charging for parking. Parking at the Malibu campus costs $15. There is one additional requirement here: visitors to the Malibu site have to make advance reservations and print admission tickets, even though there is no charge for those tickets. Unless the driver can show admission tickets, cars are not allowed to drive up the hill to the parking garage. Admission is time regulated, to control the number of visitors and more importantly the number of vehicles. Other procedures may apply for those arriving by public transportation, but that is not a viable option for us bringing Margaret. For parking and public transport options see the museum website: Getty parking and access.

Traffic was heavy on Pacific Coast Highway this time, and I am sure that is a chronic problem. The museum can only be accessed from PCH heading north if one is arriving by car; left turns from PCH south bound are not allowed, nor can one access the museum from other neighborhood streets.

The building and grounds are a treat in and of themselves. The Getty Villa is based on a villa at Herculaneum which was buried when the Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. and has only partially been excavated. One can stroll the arcades to the south of the main museum building and enjoy the plantings in the garden. On prior visits we have always enjoyed the fountains and a large reflecting pool, but we found all of those features drained and dry on this visit, due to the severe drought.

There is one little known feature of the gardens. If one stands on the star in the pavement in the middle of the semi circular benches in the central garden area and speaks toward the benches, one can hear an echo back. We could not make this work for Margaret, but Bob was able to make it work as we have done in the past. We are guessing that it is a trick of height; one must stand rather than be sitting in the wheelchair. Bob then demonstrated this to a visiting Italian couple, and they were thrilled.

Getty Malibu 1

We had lunch at the museum café. The food was quite tasty. The prices were a little on the expensive side and the selections were limited. Margaret wanted a quesadilla – remembering the Sagebrush Cantina lunch from our last visit, maybe? – but she made due with a cheese and fruit plate that we both thought was quite generous. In addition to the café, there is a coffee cart available which sells some sandwiches, and there is a picnic area to the north of the museum building for those who wish to bring in food.

The Byzantine exhibit spanned over a millennium, from the time of Constantine in the Fourth Century A.D. to the fall of the empire to the Turks in 1453. It was dominated by religious art, including, among other things, some large and spectacular icons. Some everyday items were also included, such as serving bowls, combs, and oil lamps, to name a few.

After we saw the Byzantine exhibit we went to another gallery on the second floor which had a special exhibition of ancient glass, “Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity.” This exhibit opened in 2010 and is ongoing. There were pieces made with a variety of techniques, including some pieces made as long ago as 2500 BC.

We also strolled through some of the museum’s permanent collection. Margaret was tired, so we did not stay long, but we did go in to see the bronze sculpture known as the Victorious Youth, which has always been a favorite of ours, and we saw the Lansdowne Heracles statue, also a favorite.

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Wheelchair access is easy throughout the museum. Wherever there are stairs, there is always an alternative of ramp, elevator, or wheelchair lift.

Note: some of the photos used above are from last year’s visit; the photo of Bob and Margaret by the bronze statute of Tiberius was from this most recent visit.