Museums you've visited (or want to see)

[JBS]

Would love to visit that museum! 

PD

The Uffizi was quite different from the other museums when I saw it: a long cavalcade of statues and busts in the galleries, no attempt to keep people away even by a few inches from the exhibits: the only painting I remember with any distinctness is Michelangelo's Holy Family (and vague glimmerings of Botticelli). But that was in 1993, 31 years ago.
The most vivid memory I have from Florence is the Medici Chapel, with Michelangelo's tomb sculptures.

[pjme]

I was recently in the Van Abbe museum in Eindhoven and in De Pont / Tilburg.

https://vanabbemuseum.nl/en

Interesting: "With over 25 multi-sensory tools, including texts in Braille, scent interpretations, tactile drawings and soundscapes, Delinking and Relinking represents the first, fully multi-sensory collection display in the Netherlands. Besides enriching the museum experience for everyone, the exhibition is accessible to a wide audience, including visually or hearing-impaired visitors and wheelchair users."

https://depont.nl/en/now-on-view

Laure Prouvost :" " Prouvost confronts the visitor with the consequences of global warming and the migration of people and birds – while at the same time, inviting us to float freely above the clouds and shatter the boundaries that limit us.  "

I enjoyed being immersed in Prouvost world. Even if it isn't a pleasant one. Quircky humor softens the hard edges. It will not change or save the world however...

[mahler10th]

I just went through this interesting thread because something I've decided to do is visit as many Museums as I can in the UK dedicated to Composers and other musical notaries.  Do Social Media for each wee trip.  Something like that.  So I wasn't going to comment...but I just had to...it is just jaw-dropping some of the Museums people in GMG go to.  I so admire that particular spirit of celebration that makes one visit any Museum...some of the places and venues and exhibitions themselves (all above, all the way back)...what a journey and what amazing things to be seen!  Just had to comment at such wonder. 

[Cato]

I just went through this interesting thread because something I've decided to do is visit as many Museums as I can in the UK dedicated to Composers and other musical notaries.  Do Social Media for each wee trip.  Something like that.  So I wasn't going to comment...but I just had to...it is just jaw-dropping some of the Museums people in GMG go to.  I so admire that particular spirit of celebration that makes one visit any Museum...some of the places and venues and exhibitions themselves (all above, all the way back)...what a journey and what amazing things to be seen!  Just had to comment at such wonder. 

An excellent quest!

Here is a curiosity which we could not fit into our schedule some years ago, when we were in London:


https://handelhendrix.org/

(The Georg Friedrich) Handel and (Jimi) Hendrix House. This includes the stunning Georgian rooms of Handel's house, the Hendrix flat, exhibitions and the immersive Messiah experience in Handel's Drawing Room.

Apparently Hendrix lived "next door" to where Georg Friedrich had lived, "separated only by a wall and two hundred years."   

[pjme]

The relief 'The Dance' by the Jewish-French visual artist Ossip Zadkine (1888-1967) will be on display again in 2025 - after decades of oblivion - at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels. The low relief, 12 meters long and 3.5 meters high, was hidden for decades in the storage space of the Zara store in Brussels' Nieuwstraat, the former Cinéma Métropole.
Zadkine made the relief ( ca 1930-1932) at the request of Cinéma Métropole architect Adrien Blomme for the opening of the luxurious art deco cinema in Brussels.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

The relief 'The Dance' by the Jewish-French visual artist Ossip Zadkine (1888-1967) will be on display again in 2025 - after decades of oblivion - at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels. The low relief, 12 meters long and 3.5 meters high, was hidden for decades in the storage space of the Zara store in Brussels' Nieuwstraat, the former Cinéma Métropole.
Zadkine made the relief ( ca 1930-1932) at the request of Cinéma Métropole architect Adrien Blomme for the opening of the luxurious art deco cinema in Brussels.

A new-to-me artist.  Do you know of a complete picture of the work?  I'm having trouble finding one.

PD

[pjme]

dear Pd, we'll have to wait untill 2025  - as you can see this frieze is now "hidden" in the storage rooms of a shop. No better photos are currently available.

Zadkine is widely famous , especially for his 1951 sculpture "Verwoeste stad " - Destroyed city - in Rotterdam. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossip_Zadkine



According to Ossip Zadkine, the destroyed city was created when he entered Rotterdam, battered by war, by train in 1946. In his own words it is: 'A cry of horror against the inhuman cruelty of this executioner's act' [1].

The statue depicts a distressed figure, head and arms raised to heaven. Zadkine has the arms, legs and hands point in different directions, making the image appear particularly dynamic. The figure is leaning against a tree stump; The six-metre-high colossus thus has extra support to maintain its physical balance. Particularly striking is the hole in the middle of the hull: Rotterdam recognizes its city center, which was destroyed on May 14, 1940. The sculpture brings together important features of Zadkine's sculpture: the human figure, a cubist visual language and the intense expression of emotion.

The destroyed city has become the symbol for the bombed city center of Rotterdam and also one of the best-known war monuments in Western Europe. Every year the destruction of Rotterdam is commemorated here, as well as dramatic events elsewhere in the world.

[pjme]

New material on Zadkine's frieze resurfaced:



Zadkine at work in 1932

The situation now



"The relief will be dismantled into the same fifteen blocks that arrived here in 1932. That will be a difficult operation, because the work weighs almost two tons. Art historians from the KIK established during their study that it is in good condition.
It is made of plaster and painted over with bronze-colored paint. Origin's heritage architects will transport it to the Jewish Museum and restore it on site."

That operation will cost approximately 200,000 euros. The fundraiser Prométhéa is looking for private money for this - the Jewish Museum hopes to be able to call on some of its donors.
 "The relief is separate from our renovation," says director Barbara Cuglietta. "The new museum will be ready in 2028. The relief will already be installed this year so that it can be seen in 2025 during the art deco year. It will be located behind our current courtyard, where we now do our temporary exhibitions. There is a long wall of about 15 meters. The relief is almost made for this."

[ritter]

On my recent trip to NYC, I had the chance to visit two museums.

Returning to the MoMA was a must. Our hotel was half a block away from the museum, we got there at 10:30 (the time it opens) on a Tuesday, and it was already packed!

Seeing, among many marvels, Picasso's Les demoiselles d'Avignon and Three Musicians, Matisse's The Piano Lesson, Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie, the  Braque and Léger paintings, etc. was fantastic. What a collection!

Of particular interest was seeing Pavel Tchelitchew's Hide and Seek. Not that this is the kind of art I find most enjoyable, but this huge painting had an iconic status for some years (even if the artist has now lapsed into semi-obscurity), and seeing it "in the flesh" was certainly an experience.



New to me was Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie, housed in a patrician town house on 5th and 86th street. A friend invited us to breakfast at the Café Sabarsky in the same building, and procured highly sought-after tickets to an exhibition of wonderful Klimt landscapes that was in its last days.

But the highlight was seeing Klimt's famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (aka The Woman in Gold). The impact that work makes when seen in the original (not least because of the texture the gold paint has) far surpasses the effect when seen in reproduction.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

On my recent trip to NYC, I had the chance to visit two museums.

Returning to the MoMA was a must. Our hotel was half a block away from the museum, we got there at 10:30 (the time it opens) on a Tuesday, and it was already packed!

Seeing, among many marvels, Picasso's Les demoiselles d'Avignon and Three Musicians, Matisse's The Piano Lesson, Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie, the  Braque and Léger paintings, etc. was fantastic. What a collection!

Of particular interest was seeing Pavel Tchelitchew's Hide and Seek. Not that this is the kind of art I find most enjoyable, but this huge painting had an iconic status for some years (even if the artist has now lapsed into semi-obscurity), and seeing it "in the flesh" was certainly an experience.



New to me was Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie, housed in a patrician town house on 5th and 86th street. A friend invited us to breakfast at the Café Sabarsky in the same building, and procured highly sought-after tickets to an exhibition of wonderful Klimt landscapes that was in its last days.

But the highlight was seeing Klimt's famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (aka The Woman in Gold). The impact that work makes when seen in the original (not least because of the texture the gold paint has) far surpasses the effect when seen in reproduction.

Oh, good for you Ritter!  I'm happy for you.   

Fascinated by Klimt's work in particular and have wondered how he created those iridescent/metallic effects.

PD