Museums and galleries of the artworld

 

Random facts: 82 and 5th Avenue.  The Met doesn't have any Frida Kahlo paintings, but 5 Vermeers out of 34. It has 2 Agnes Martins and a photograph of her by Diane Arbus.  It is the largest museum in the USA, 5th in the world.  This one is in room 956: One of the people in the book club reports this podcast is good: Nate DiMeo - The Memory Palace, Met Residency. I didn't go one last time to the Ruben before it closed. What an utter disappointment that is to me that I didn't do that. I'm hoping to put that insight into going to museums now that I'm more activated.  I went 7/21/25, and room 111 with Hatshepsut was yet again denied to me. I talked to a nice guard who gave me a company answer as to possible reasons why.  I went straight for Iran and it didn't disappoint: Rumi illuminated book Read the plaque below: Feel like that was from Rostram epic, the poem  Shahnameh . I like the guy with many faces. I went through the near east, european painting, M...

Sometimes I get whiplash, going from Michelangelo to Alabama rugs. He brings those rugs to life, he's a good story teller. The museum is a hodgepodge of specifics and eras and geographical locations. In the city that is filled with people all over the world, there are artifacts from all over the world. If you like to travel but don't have the money, New York City is a good place to live. People from all over the world come to NYC and the museum is a small world of artifacts.  His definition of art is something more beautiful than it had a right to be. It's philosophically imprecise enough to work.  I didn't mind the personal digressions or the ins and outs of being a guard, he seems like a friendly guy, I think I would like him.  The big payoff at the end is he tells us his favorite which is Crucifixion by Fra Angelico ca. 1420–23 ( Met ). My uncle used to like an after dinner liquor named that. He's dead now, and we'd become estranged after he left my aunt, but...

  This simple search can't be all of them, I'm going to find more. There's a list on Letterboxd that has 112 films. Prince of Egypt, and Ten Commandments are the top two rated films on the list, but I've never heard of Pharaoh (1966) or Ra: The Path of the Sun God (1990). There seem to be a million Antony and Cleopatra movies, and Cleopatra movies.   I watched The Prince of Egypt. It's about Moses, so now I have two powerful narratives from the Abrahamic tradition about Egypt. 

"Mr. Abdullah stands about five foot five and carries himself like a prince. Practically every word he speaks is incisive and funny, though he rarely cracks more than a slight smile. Once, I was chatting with him when a visitor interrupted to ask about the source of Abdullah's evident accent. The chief deadpanned: "Washington Heights." The fuller answer, I find out, is Washington Heights by way of Iraq, with stopovers in several great world cities (Milan, London, Istanbul...). Now, of course, he lives in New York, where he moonlights as an adjunct professor of Islamic art history. I am interested to learn that he doesn't actually like New York very much-"all asphalt, all aggression," he tells me, "no warmth, no air, no sense of history; anything that is old and meaningful is torn down." When I object by pointing out that constant rebuilding and reinvention sort of is New York's history, Abdullah doesn't disagree. "Quite right,...

First off pronunciation:  /hat SHep soot/. Daughter, sister, wife, she became regent for the infant male heir, and then claimed she was a pharaoh, and she had statues with masculine traits of a beard, and erased the breasts. She rules for 21 years, 6 as regent and 15 as pharaoh. Her stepson tried to erase her after she died, at the end of his reign.  1500-1458 BCE, roughly, lived 37-47 years.  When I sit in meditation, I get all kinds of funny questions, like how old would Hatshepsut be if she was alive today? The oldest answer is 3,487. She was basically a thousand years older than the Buddha, who left us 2500 years ago.  I learned  Sobekneferu ruled 3 centuries before Hatshepsut. The statue was stolen during WW2 and is presumably is some rich dudes home. Even so, the Met might have a Sobekneferu . They don't say it's her, just a royal woman. But it could be... Semiramis was 824 BC–811 BCE in roughly Iraq in Assyria. Boudica was 60 ACE in England....

I began my review of All The Beauty In The World by Bringley on Motley Kamuka , my grab-all blog. I contract and expand based on whim. The hard thing about finishing this book is that I look at a painting, and a few more, and then spin off into other things. To appreciate a painting, you have to follow free associations.  He writes a lot about the loss of his brother, he's processing the world through his little brother lense, even as his brother is gone. I don't feel like it's off topic because the appreciator is part of the appreciation. Everyone has loss. Is he proposing that great painting are a consolation?  His mother was fascinated by paintings, she studied art history, and they went to a museum when they were taking a break from grieving with the family. They end up staring at pictures for a while, to take them in. The mother ends up with this one: Bringley ends up quitting his job at the New Yorker to be a museum guard.  He write about the Egyptian wing. Got a f...

Studying  John Singer Sargent  (1856-1925) 1874-77 Drawing was a cornerstone of academic instruction at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After enrolling in autumn 1877, Sargent would have had the opportunity to practice drawing for two hours each afternoon under the tutelage of instructor Adolphe Yvon. In this sensuous drawing, Sargent studied the model under strong light, controlling his use of charcoal to create the darkest contrast against the delicate rendering of anatomy. Sargent's skills were immediately recognized by his teachers and classmates. One student, American artist Julian Alden Weir, wrote his mother back home that his new friend "is one of the most talented fellows I have ever come across; his drawings are like the old masters."

I spent a lot of time collecting knowledge about female painters . Lisa Yuskavage Tamara de Lempicka At some point I gave up, so many, but I still discovery amazing painters.  Jana Brike is the latest I've discovered for myself. 

24 best painters according to Google.  You know I was thinking about starting an art blog for a while now, but I've always just put it into my all purpose blog . I'm reading All The Beauty In The World by Patrick Bringley, and I'm planning a trip to the Met with my daughter in 6 days. The Frick is open now and I'm going Wednesday too.  I had a normal childhood in Wisconsin. My stepfather paints, and I took a drawing class in college, got an A. My eldest son was really into drawing and for a time there both sons were into drawing. Now I have a 9 year old daughter who sometimes likes to draw, has an aesthetic eye. I have a blog for her art. I had a blog for photos from my stepfather. I put my sons art on Facebook: William , Andres , Ruby . I don't think those links work unless you're signed into FB.  There's a part of me that's always valued text over the visual, but I'm entering my second childhood and discovering my taste for art.  I've been t...