"The Accession Table"

If you've read some of my posts, or if you know me, you know that books and reading are my second love next to art and history and I love when they come together.  I recently finished reading Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and museums and museum collections made an appearance!  Unfortunately, it was completely made-up, not just as in this was a work of fiction, but the description was so absurd as to take on a level of comedy.

The intersection appeared when the main narrator of the book, Clay Jannon, uses "The Accession Table" at a local museum of yarn and crafting to help solve a mystery hundred of years in the making.  "The Accession Table" is described as a universal collections database that connects all museums everywhere, enabling the staff of each to see the holdings of every other museum in existence.....

BWAHAHAHAHAHA, that's just hilarious since some museums don't even know what they have in their own storage rooms let alone what one across the country might have.  I have to imagine that Sloan was attempting to describe something so unbelievable that it would be impossible to take it seriously but regardless, I know someone out there will take it as truth.  This reminds me of this post on one of my favorite Tumblrs, "When You Work At A Museum." 

Later in Mr. Penumbra's, Clay takes a trip to a high-level artifact collection storage facility where the shelves whiz around and move on their own, just so everyone knows, this is also false and does not happen.  The book itself was an enjoyable, light read and this shouldn't discourage anyone from reading it, just pointing out a little fact from fiction.

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So here's the part of the post where I explain why I haven't been posting in a while!  I'm about to have a baby and as many people who have done this know, it's busy right before and after this event so I probably won't be able to post as much as before but I will try to post as museum as possible about art, museums, travel, food, books, crafts, and will add KIDS into the mix and we'll see how it all turns out. Thanks!

Polka-dotted Pumpkin Painter

With Fall upon us and Halloween closing in I got incredibly excited about this exhibition of the work of Yayoi Kusama up now in London.

Kusama is known for her polka dotted environments like this one:

"View of the "I pray with all of my love for tulips." installation at the Yayoi Kusama Special Exhibition at the Osaka National Museum of International Art" by Samuel Mark Thompson - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org

And I'm very happy to say that I got to see not one but TWO of her rooms when we were in Pittsburgh at the Mattress Factory.  I wrote more about that in this post.  But I love that Kusama has also brought her signature to this symbol of Fall, this season I love so much, but also she uses the pumpkin as a form of self portraiture. 

Is there more contemporary art that evokes Fall?

My new friend...Chigusa

I saw this exhibition at the Freer/Sackler a while ago but somehow missed posting about it until now.  Unfortunately it's closed but I was still so taken with the concept of it, that I felt like I needed to make a note.

The show was titled: Chigusa and the Art of Tea. 

I didn't read the description of this exhibition before I went but thought I was going to see tea vessels and implements used in tea ceremonies.  I don't know much about these items so I was expecting to see tea cups, maybe a pot or two, a tea strainer?  I wasn't sure but when I got there I found out that the entire exhibition was centered around one object, a tea storage jar that was named...Chigusa. 

The jar had a name and it was precious to its owners because of its beauty of form and glazing.  I walked right by this jar on my way in after having read this introduction because at first glance, it's a brown jar.  When I turned around and looked at Chigusa, I felt like I was in that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy realizes that the holy grail isn't the jeweled cup.  Ahhhh, it's THAT tea storage jar. 

The rest of the exhibit consisted of the items that were used with Chigusa, it discussed Chigusa's owners and stories of its time with each, and a recreation of the tea room showing where Chigusa would go inside that tea room.  I was blown away that the entire exhibition was devoted to this one object and couldn't actually think of another one like it.  Maybe I'm forgetting something very obvious and if I am, let me know, but I walked away feeling like I had just learned about a person's history instead of that of an object.

Baby Boom

My friend-set has been experiencing a baby-boom right now.  I think there are over 15 little ones being born in just about a 12 month period.  This is reminding me of a baby shower game I made for a friend in grad school.  I thought it might be fun to bring it back.  Below find a number of details from well-known paintings.  Can you identify what the full painting is from just the baby?  How many will you get?  Answers at the end.

1.

2.

3.

 

 

4.

 

5.

 

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1. Duccio di Buoninsegna, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (Maesta alterpiece), 1308-1311, tempera on wood. Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena (Gardner's 550)

2. Hugo van der Goes, Portinari Altarpiece, ca. 1476, tempera and oil on wood, 8'3-1/2" x 10' (center panel). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (Gardner's 573)

3. Parmigianino, Madonna with the Long Neck, ca. 1535, oil on wood, approx. 7' 1" x 4' 4". Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (Gardner's 675)

4. Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party, 1893-4, oil on canvas, 35-7/16" x 46-3/16". National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.  (Gardner's 914)

5. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas, 11' 5-1/2" x 25' 5-3/4". Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.  (Gardner's 1064)

Art. Books. List.

Just a quick post since I saw this article online from ARTnews about Art History books that are going to change my mind.  I'm not sure of what but honestly, you had me at those three words in the subject line.  Three of my favorite things!

While I'm never a fan of "The [place number here] MOST [adjective] Artist/Exhibition/Anything" types of books, they only list one and I'm pretty excited about the one on Edmund de Waal, a great author and ceramicist, as well as Lucy Lippard's Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.  That's covering a lot of ground (pun intended) but it's an interesting topic and I'd like to see how Lippard pulls it together.

It's hard not to be intrigued by a book titled The Duchamp Dictionary and the one about the Florentine Codex promises illustrations of headdress fabrication, myths, and midwifery in 16th-century Mesoameria!

Summer's a great time for reading, so get to it!

The TGV is for Futurists

I know, I know, enough with France already, but we really did see a lot in a few short days and there is much to discuss.  On our way back from Normandy we got to ride the TGV, the high-speed train that set the record for the fastest wheeled train.  We weren't on that line but we were still rocketing by and it traveled so smoothly you could barely feel it until you hit a turn.  As I stared out the window at the blur that was the scenery, I began thinking about how the train must have changed the entire viewpoint of society at the time.  Trains could go pretty fast even in the late 19th and early 20th century and the vantage point of zipping along at such a high speed must have added this new way of seeing to the world.  It reminded me of a part in Clara and Mr. Tiffany where the main character describes how having a bicycle had changed her view of the world since you move so much quicker than walking.

This then got me thinking of the Futurists from the early 20th century in Italy.  They're entire movement in art was based on a speeding up of the world and seeing the city fly by from a car or train and how that ease of movement can bring excitement and how there is beauty in that.  From Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism":  "4. We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriches by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.  A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath -- a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace."*  In just this quote you can see that Marinetti is calling for something entirely new and modernized and completely leaving art history behind.  He later called for museums to be burned down, along with libraries and academies. The Futurists also celebrated war as a way of cleaning out the old and ushering in the new, the only way to fully modernize.

Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist, from Wikimedia.Commons

I love some of the Futurist's work, such as the Umberto Boccioni's Dynamism of a Cyclist or Giacomo Balla's Dyanism of a Dog on a Leash.  They really show movement in a new way and were trying to capture this world speeding by them.

Maybe it's just because I know World War I broke out just a few years after these works were created, effectively ending the movement but there is also something very unnerving about the writings and works of the Futurists to me; a feeling of not being able to stop, get off, or control the virility that is pulsating through a city and a world.

*Filippo Tommaso Marinetti "The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism" in Harrison, Charles and Paul Wood, Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, 146-149.  

Gardner's: Futurism (1020-1022).

Winnie Cooper would approve*

While we were in France I forced another museum upon my husband and friends and was lucky to come upon free museum day at the Cluny Museum, filled with Medieval art from wood carved statues, to painted church furniture, to a room filled with stained glass.  It was crowded but filled with little "finds" that people weren't looking at closely including this tapestry that hung on the wall of the very first room.  People were so intent on getting in to the next rooms they were walking past it.  I stopped at first because I thought I had spotted a female money lender, which I thought would be notable.  But then I noticed that she was
she was labeled.  I could quite make it out but when I looked at the label to the side, she is identified as "Arithmetic"  This is a depiction of the personification of the liberal art of "Arithmetic".  This artist wasn't the earliest feminist, women being used in other places to personify the Liberal Arts, see Sandro Botticelli's depiction of all of them here, as well as Graces or other concepts.  But just remember MATH IS A WOMAN!

* This refers to the actress Danica McKellar, who played Winnie Cooper in The Wonder Years, and how she went on to major in math in college then wrote a number of books about how great math is and has become an advocate for promoting women in math and science and education in general.  

The Art of Being Still

This past week I was at church and the priest implored us to take time to practice the "Art of Being Still," not rushing from place to person to call to deadline and enjoy each moment.  As much as I enjoyed his description of being able to absorb a painting of a synagogue in the National Gallery and revel in the beauty of the strokes and the scene depicted it was his feeling of fullness afterward with which I truly identified.  In the same way that a glorious landscape or invigorating conversation re-energizes me, viewing art, especially that which I don't see everyday, feeds my mind and causes it to race with new ideas. 

My vacations always become some of the most productive times for thinking for me and I come back with renewed energy for writing and research likely because I can finally revel in my interests without worrying about answering that email or scheduling that meeting or meeting the deadline that will keep the whole project from being completely ruined!  I don't know if any of you get into this mindset as well during our day-to-day lives but the drive to cross things off of a to-do list or finish projects in record time can cause me to lose sight of the horizon of reality and begin to communicate in "worker lingo" explaining to friend that I can't make it to a dinner because I have "a 4:15 but if we moved it to a restaurant on the blue-orange I could make a 6:00 since I won't have to change, let me check Open Table on my phone...."  It's getting away, unplugging, leaving the work phone at home, and not checking email that lets me slough off this other skin that creeps on each day as I hop on the metro and download my emails, this space between that we fill with text messages and One Note and twitter is what I rediscover when I'm forced to sit in a country where the foreign tongue around me recedes to the background allowing my own thoughts to finally be heard.  And I find I like it.  I like hearing my own voice for once and that is one thing I treasure most about travel, hearing myself again. 

This stillness through art reminded me of a great piece written by Blake Gopnik about Andy Warhol's "Empire."  According to Gopnik, this eight-hour film of the Empire State Building at night brings the viewers' attention to what would be trivial occurrences: a flash-bulb going off, the slow passing of time on a clock, and minute details of the building's architecture but it's still gripping, triggering thoughts and ideas in the writer's mind and by the end he had jotted down 5000 words.  It somehow fits together in my head that despite how you are "still" from art, prayer, meditation, or something else, it's a great way to reconnect with what's within you.  I leave you with a picture of one of my favorite places, one where all else but its beauty go out the stained-glass windows when I visit, and invite you to be still a bit in St. Chapelle.

 

Back from Paris!

So when I told myself I would give myself a little break from the blog while we got ready for our trip, I didn't anticipate the three week break I ended up getting but I'm back!  Back from Paris!  Back to blogging!

Paris was lovely and of course we had to visit a museum of two while we were there, but this post is not about the Louvre or the Musee d'Orsay, this is about a museum of carnival games and rides.  The Musee des Arts Forains resides in three warehouses and I wasn't quite certain what to expect when we entered but we quickly found this wasn't going to be a normal museum trip.

When we came upon a game based on the Palio de Siena, we actually got to play it!  This resembled the modern day carnival games where you squirt water into a clowns mouth to fill a balloon and pop yours first.  This one has your horse competing in the Palio and if you can roll your ball into the holes, then your horse takes the flag to the Campo and wins!  All I know about this race I learned in a fictional romance novel, Juliet, it's not bad but not great either but it was fun to have the story as background to this fun game.

After I won my heat, we waltzing to a pipe organ in another room, then we rode a late-19th century carousel and marveled that we were even allowed to do this.  But, this entire hour and a half long tour was all leading up to the final ride.  If you saw Midnight in Paris, you've seen this bicycle-carousel hybrid in action.  It is run by human power and the faster you pedal, the faster you all go.  You can actually reach speeds of 60 km/hr, we marveled again at being able to do any of these things, I feel like they would be deemed to dangerous for the rides themselves or their riders anywhere else.  It was pretty precarious from the moment I got on, gaining a huge bruise in the process, but pedal I did anyway!  It was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating to go so fast, I was certain I would fall off if I stopped pedaling.  I think they put this at the end for a reason, we were all so happy but relieved to be off the ride that we rushed back out into the sunny courtyard between the buildings afterward chattering happily but inwardly congratulating ourselves on surviving. 

Needlepoint Portraits

I ran up to the Washington National Cathedral to see the work of an artist I know and came across these great needlepoint kneelers featuring the names of "noted Americans" (and Winston Churchill).  They must be well known since they're in the brochure and labeled as a stop on the self-guided tour.

A sucker for all things needlepoint and cross stitched, I ran around looking at all of the artists depicted, I was happy to report that artists are well represented in this collection.  Not many women artists though.  But I love what was chosen to represent each, check them out.  I also apologize for the terrible quality of the pictures but it was pretty dark and I didn't have a flash.  

It looks like palettes and brushes are pretty popular symbols for artists, since it looks like all of them have them.  John Singer Sargent's also has an easel, that makes sense, but what about the griffin and the fleur d'lis? 

John Singleton Copley was known for his portraits so it's no surprise that one is depicted in the lower right hand corner but the crown is a conundrum to me.












Here I found three artists together!  Well two artists and an architect.  Both painters, Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale, bear brushes and palettes and Stuart, famous for his portraits of George Washington, has one of those on an easel but the rest of the symbols are a mystery.

Any thoughts?

Art Everywhere US

I was thinking of cute ways of starting this post.  Something like "Look!  Now YOU can be the curator!"  But it just wasn't coming.  This is fun, it doesn't need such introductions.  Art Everywhere US is a program that will place 50 works of American art on billboards, bus shelters, and basically places where everyone will see them.  It's a way to get art seen without having to draw someone into a museum.  It's art coming to the people.  What's more is people get to vote on what they'd like to see.  Well, if you have an internet connection, you get to vote on what you'd like to see.  But it's no more than an internet quiz, and people love those!  How many of us have gone down the rabbit hole of Buzzfeed quizzes right?  You just pick the works you like, 10 per day, yes per day, you can vote every day if you'd like.

There is some possible value to this though.  The selections were chosen by curators in top American art museums so there is a variety of styles, eras, and media from which to choose, and not all of them depict George Washington and rolling fields of corn.  If you really get into it and vote multiple days you're going to start wondering who these other artists are, why are their works considered "great American art" and maybe you'll do a Google search. 

I have hope that people will learn about a new artist, appreciate a style in a new way, or discover just how much there is to being American and how awesome that is for our art.

#TBT: Greek Caravaggio

Walking along a small street in Iraklion, Crete, I spotted this image through the window of a traditional Greek Icon painter. 


It's immediately recognizable as a copy of Caravaggio's Deposition of Christ: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Entombment_of_Christ_by_Caravaggio

I thought it was interesting seeing the work through the lens of an icon painter.  Caravaggio was known for his incredibly use of light to dramatize the scene but this version emphasizes the folds in the fabric and the muscles of Christ's body, much like the Byzantine icons after which it is patterned.

#TBT: Yellowstone Park

Does this vista look familiar?  Well, if it looks like it should be painted, it has, it's actually taken from "Artist Point" in Yellowstone National Park.  
 

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, oil on canvas painting by Thomas Moran, 1904, Honolulu Museum of Art, commons.wikimedia.org

One artist who was greatly moved by the landscape of Yellowstone was Thomas Moran, see his image from the same vantage point above.  If you look through just the works in the collection of the American Art Museum, you'll see how many were done of that majestic park.  

When I was there in 2009, I specifically sought out this vista because I had seen it in a painting. 
It's truly a site worth seeing, the art and the park. 

Longing for Spring

With this winter dragging along and yet another snow storm forecast to come through tomorrow I've set about longing for Spring.  To try to get me in the mood I've been reading Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland.  Louis Comfort Tiffany believed that nature was the best model and his windows reflect this reverence.

Landscape with a Greek Temple, stained glass window designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, c. 1900, Cleveland Museum of Art.  commons.wikimedia.org

 See more works by Tiffany at the Metropolitan Museum website here.

Gardner's Tiffany (939).

Mondrian Under the Highway

Have you ever driven by the "Mondrian Tunnel" in Capitol Hill?  When I first started coming to the area on a regular basis I had no idea what it was.  I knew the work had to reference Piet Mondrian, but why?  Turns out the answer is "Because I was interested in Mondrian."

If you haven't seen it, it's a highway underpass at 6th and Eye Streets, SE that is covered with huge, geometric compositions in red, yellow, blue, black, and white.  There is no way they are like anything else but Mondrian. 

The first and only article to come up is a rather extensive Washington City Paper report from 2002 discussing how people were proposing to paint over the Mondrian murals with another, "something that would fit the space and make more sense to the community at large" said one proposal.  That obviously did not happen, since they're still there but the article talked about how the original idea in the 80's was conceived of by Warren M. Robbins, whose collection formed the core of the National Museum for African Art and who lived in the neighborhood.  He was the one who wrote Harry Holtzman, custodian of the Mondrian Estate, asked permission, hired G. Byron Peck to design the murals, and oversaw their installation.  It's amazing what one person can accomplish, although, compared to the NMAA and his 5,000 piece collection of African Art, I guess it's not as big of a deal.  But still, the Mondrian murals are a decades long mark on Robbins' neighborhood and one that I personally enjoy.

There is what seems to be a treasure trove of information in the Smithsonian Archives about the mural, it's inception, subsequent restoration, and even a picture of Kenneth Noland with it?  For a research lover like me, this is a challenge, I'll have to get there soon.  Since Mondrian’s birthday is March 7, I say it's my present to him!

Gardner's: Mondrian (1048-50)

Sacra Conversazione

My husband recently went down to Williamsburg, VA for a meeting and I decided to tag along and see some friends.  Always game to check out new museums, and with my friends galantly agreeing to go, we headed to William & Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art.  They had a small exhibition of works by Carvaggio, a notable Baroque painter, and to accompany it they had placed on exhibit a number of works from roughly the same time period from their collection and private collections.  As we walked around I came upon a small painting by Bonifazio de’ Pitati depicting the Virgin Mary holding an infant Jesus while an equally young Tobias (or Tobiah) stands in the arms of Archangel Raphael.  The label indicates that they are talking, possibly about the fish clutched in Tobias’ hand that will play a part in the restoration of his father’s eye sight.  The label then describes this as a sacra conversazione piece, literally “sacred conversation”.

Hold the phone, the sacra conversazione pieces I remember were large altarpieces with figures of saints lined up along the edge of the picture plane ready to intercede between God in Heaven and the devout petitioner assumed to be in prayer in front of them.  The work by Giovanni Bellini depicted here is what I had always pictured these works resembling.  I made a note to look into it.  After some preliminary reading I didn’t have a definitive answer, so I emailed an expert, one of my professors from my graduate program, and got a prompt response: “Sacra conversazione is a quite general term--generally refers to a group of saints who appear to be engaged in "holy conversation," usually, but not always, accompanying a central Virgin and Child. This originated in Fra Angelico compositions."

Ahh!  I stand corrected!  This work can be a sacra conversazione!  The term refers less to the size and arrangement of the figures in it and more to the saintly status of the participants in the conversation.

Don’t worry, I didn’t let this discourage me from questioning.  Over the weekend, I scooted over to the National Gallery of Art to see Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections on it’s final day and while there I read a label describing the selected scenes from the Passion of the Christ depicted on an icon next to it.  The final scene is described as “Christ carrying the cross” but when I looked at the icon, what I perceived was a haloed Christ walking in front of a man carrying a cross.  My initial impression seemed to be strengthened by the relative large size of the man I thought was Jesus.  In the Stations of the Cross, this scene is known as “Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry his cross.” 

Gardner's: Caravaggio (732-35)

Image: Giovanni Bellini, Madonna with the Child, Saints, and Angels, 1487.  Accademia de Venice.  Wikimedia Commons.

Out of Town: San Juan

I know, I know!  I'm behind by two weeks.  I have been terrible but my New Year's resolution is NOT forgotten.  I will make it up to you I promise, but since we came back from San Juan, Puerto Rico last night, I don't have anything ready. 

What I do have is this:

I found this beauty just a block from our hotel, overlooking the neighborhood of La Perla.  I found it fitting that the day I come back with this gem was the same day I spotted two posts on street art.  This one on Huffington Post about using street art as cultural exchange and this one from the New York Times about a street artist who is collaborating with the New York City Ballet. 

I'll have some great posts coming up, but had to share this with you!

The Ephesus Post

One of the highlights of our trip was our visit to Epes (Ephesus).  Not only important from the art historical point of view, but also from the point of view of someone who loves history, archeology, and even travel, Ephesus is important.  All of the guide books told us that after Pompeii, Ephesus is the best preserved ancient Roman city.  So if you want to get a glimpse of how the Romans lived, Turkey or Italy are where you need to go.

When we got back I got made fun of for the hundreds of photos I took of the walls and floors of the terraced houses of Ephesus.  Going back, I admit there are a lot of photographs, but the ones I have are actually an amazing record of Roman wall paintings over time.

There are four distinct eras of Roman wall paintings and they can help date the time period when each room was decorated and re-decorated: Masonry Style came first, where the frescoes were painted to look like marble blocks.  The second style is easy to tell as the walls then begin to resemble windows and doors onto the nature scenes.  The Oriental style is characterized by fantastically thin architectural details, and the final style of Roman wall painting incorporates multiple earlier styles, with small "windows" being placed within ornate impossibly thin columns and pediments.

Now check out some photos from the terrace houses at Ephesus.  Can you tell the difference between some of the wall painting styles?

Could these "marbled" panels point to the first style?

I like this image since it shows one red and yellow fresco covered over with another one in white and green. 

This was the dominant theme and style of the frescoes we saw while there.  But you can see that it wasn't the final layer.  A white and maroon layer was placed on top of the more embellished layer with floral borders and multiple figures placed within the red borders.


Gardner's 256-263.

Art + Food

A while ago, I posted a list of some extraordinary museum cafes and restaurants around the world.  I had only been to one when I posted it but there isn't a list that I don't enjoy working my way through.  Two weekends ago, while in New York visiting friends, we were able to go to the New York Historical Society to see the "Armory Show at 100" exhibition commemorating the centennial of that momentous event.

We were excited to be able to try Caffe Storico as well as being able to see such iconic works.  We had the Spaghetti Carbonara and an order of the Bombolini (a doughnut-like dessert filled with lemon, raspberry, and hazelnut filling) and I'm happy to report that they were both amazing and the coffee was hot and strong, a pretty important item in my life!   

Two of my favorite things: art and food, together, yum!

Gardner's 1026-7: Armory Show

Seeing Scullys everywhere in Uchisar

Uchisar is a wonderful little town in Capaddocia on the verge of becoming a tourist trap, so hurry up and go, you only have a few years before the shops peddling Capaddocia-style "Gnome Homes" take over.  While exploring our little city I started to notice these great painted and weathered doors that contrasted to the stone walls into which they were set.  I was immediately reminded of Sean Scully's (not the Scully from X-Files, sorry) photographs documenting entrances from his native Ireland and other places. 

I was inspired to create my own series of "Scullys" from our trip, I'll only share a few, my husband can attest, there were many, many more.

Although Sean Scully might best be known for his paintings, his photographs are easily connected to them.  The contrast or light and dark and the balance of color are common to both media and the photographs could be inspiration for his paintings, here are a few from the "Wall of Light" series.  Scully then took the paintings full-circle by photographing them and his photographs, reproduced on a monumental scale, become the wall.

 

Our Library Can Look Like This...

I love to read, as many people who know me know, I'm usually in the middle of at least two books at a time.  It's a constant pleasure, so when art and books intersect it's almost as beautiful a pairing as art and food for me!

We visited Topkapi Palace in Istanbul on the suggestion of a friend and we are so thankful to them for it!  Every room inside is decorated with such detail and almost each one was more impressive than the last.  But when we walked into the library I stopped, turned to my husband and flatly said "Okay, fine, our library can look like this."  A few photos to illustrate:

It did make me think about all of the marvelous libraries around the world, some of which are shown here and here.  But also, what else would I want in a library?  So I pinned it of course.  Here is a board of some amazing home libraries and reading nook ideas that I hope to emulate one day...or at least dream about.  At least we know that I love the word "nook."

Yes, Van Gogh painted all of these

...just not the ones by Gauguin.

The title of this post was inspired by a wonderful conversation I happened to overhear at the Phillips Collection over the weekend.  I was squeezing myself into the Van Gogh: Repetitions show since I really did want to see it before it left and turns out, hundreds of my fellow art lovers were too.  Anyway, there was a dad bravely pushing a stroller around with two other boys tagging along.  I could just make out the voice of the younger brother as he asked if all of the paintings were by the same man and when his father replied that yes, they were all his since he liked to paint and did it all the time the kid very aptly asked, "Didn't he have a job?"  Kids do say the darndest things. 

So Van Gogh painted ALL of the works in the show excepts for a few where the Phillips was giving context.  I do enjoy his colors and the way he applies paint and I love how this show really demonstrates how he wasn't just flinging paint onto a canvas like a mad genius and it just turned into Sunflowers, he was working on and re-working ideas that caught his eye until he got them right.

It was also fun to see the work in person since we just bought an original work of our own...not by Van Gogh, but an homage in it's own right.  One of my husband's friends is a painter and we thought we would commission a piece while we could still afford him and before he forgot us altogether.  He paints "8-bit" paintings, taking the work of your choice and altering the image so that it looks like you're staring at it on a computer from 1979 and then paints it in watercolor.  Here's ours:

Can you tell what it's based on?  You had a hint already.  We aren't huge Van Gogh fans but we both like his work and I will admit, having a Dr. Who episode based on him did not hurt in the decision-making process.  We are incredibly happy to have our own Adam Lister and are rooting for him.  Maybe we'll loan it to an exhibit at the Phillips Collection someday?

Gardners 916-918 (Van Gogh) 918-921 (Gauguin)

St. Joseph's Capitol Hill

We moved into the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. less than a year ago and this year was our first Christmas in our new place.  I was excited but very nervous as we offered to host this year and it was the first time we had ever not gone to a parent's or older family member's house for Christmas.

An important part of my family's Christmas is attending Mass on Christmas Eve, it's our tradition.  We had my sister-in-law, her husband, his sister and her husband all with us on the 24th (did you follow that?) and I was incredibly touched when all four of these non-church-goers offered to stop eating and hanging out and attend Mass at St. Joseph with us.


To try to make it interesting I tried to rattle off a few factoids about the church but realized I didn't know much about it besides how beautiful it is and that Robert Kennedy attended when he was in office.  So I decided to take the opportunity to learn more.

Nave of Cologne Cathedral

When I did my first search I found that it is a popular church for weddings in Capitol Hill!  This is no surprise, it's gorgeous.  Inside there is a beautiful blue ceiling dotted with stars and the columns are reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral.  Do you know why?  It's based off one: Cologne Cathedral.  Although the scale is smaller and the architect simplified the decoration around the arches and columns, if you look at the straight down the nave at the altar, you can see the inspiration drawn from the building in Cologne that took more than six centuries to complete.  This one took less than five years and it's the second version of the church.

St. Joseph's was organized because of the growing German Catholic population in 1868.  When it was changed from a German congregation into an English one around 1886, the building was also changed to the present one.  Maybe to honor the original worshipers or maybe by chance, the architect was from Cologne and they patterned the design off of that amazing structure.  What I found out next, was more surprising.

The cornerstone laying in 1868 was accompanied by a procession of people including...the president.  Andrew Johnson, NOT a Catholic, I might add, was there?  Why?  Well, as I kept reading apparently he was a Catholic sympathizer and actually made a speech to Congress speaking against anti-Catholic acts.  There's an old legend he converted on his deathbed!  Oh Washington scandal!

I'll have to keep looking for more information on this church, does anyone know anything about it?  I'll keep looking since there must be some more stories from its almost 150 years.

Gardner's 523 (Cologne Cathedral)

Ara Guler at the Sackler

I was VERY excited to see that the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery was having an exhibition of works by Ara Guler, a photographer known for his images of Istanbul.  As you may know, we recently took a trip to Turkey and had a wonderful time, wonderful and I thought this would be a great way of reliving our memories of the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and the Egyptian Bazaar.  Here's our tea while we took a rest from the Grand Bazaar in the tulip tea glasses with the distinctive red and gold saucers.

Guess what, the exhibition is of portraits outside Istanbul, in fact most of them are from the Eastern-most areas of the country, the part we avoided because it borders Syria!  I really should have known, the exhibition is actually titled Ara Guler's Anatolia, but I was so excited by the name I breezed by that detail completely.

Regardless, we did enjoy seeing those parts of Turkey that we didn't get to see and a few reminded us of the rugged hills and unintentional architecture found in Capadoccia so it was worth seeing for us.  I would recommend it regardless, it will be on view until May 4, 2014!  Plan a trip, to the Sackler and to Turkey, both great!

Munch's Christmas Tree

I just had to quickly post that when I was at Union Station yesterday to grab lunch at Chop't with my husband I was able to quickly see the Norwegian Embassy's Christmas Tree!  In addition to Norwegian Flags it's covered with 700 reflective ornaments in the familiar shape of the figure from Edvard Munch's The Scream and it is up to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Munch's birth.  I love that I capped our holiday season with this!

Gardner's page 927.