There are large volumes within the museum that are unusable for art. It is divided up into areas that are either able to give an isolated view of art or which overpower the artwork and the viewer with dominating architectural volumes. It is a fun building. Libeskind’s Denver patrons have been delivered a unique architectural phenomenon that at times seems like an architect’s self-indulgence.
The interior of the museum reflects its exterior. I am reminded of the crystal caverns of the movie Superman’s North Pole home. So much of this building is about “experiencing” architecture. So there are two programs – showing curated art exhibitions and architecture-as-experience. It is a very unique building.
Vasa is the acronym for the artist’s name. Pleasant sculpture – but this image is meant to demonstrate the quirky interior of the Denver Museum’s walls. Most of the walls are not perpendicular, the whole building and interior is like being inside a giant crystal. Paintings hang with only two points touching walls (either the top or bottom edge or a side) so there are unique hardware tricks used to keep the pictures suspended. The effect is interesting. Paintings have an integrity that is preserved when they are not flat on a wall. But there are many times when, as a viewer, I got a bit vertiginous strolling through a space that is totally at odds with the usual experience of being in an orthogonal building.
Sharon has a meeting in Denver so we will be in town just for two days. Luckily Friday was sunny though cold. After checking in we went to the new Denver Art Museum, across from the new Public Library by Michael Graves which is behind us.
This trip was expressly to see the Henri Rousseau show at the National Gallery (Jungles of Paris). The show was originated and shown at the d’Orsay in Paris and the Tate Britain. The National Gallery showing here is the only US presentation. When it closes in ten days it gets dispersed back to its lenders. There hasn’t been this large a Rousseau show in twenty years and I doubt there will be another such in my lifetime.
Rousseau lived and painted in Paris. He was a naïve (no formal training in painting). His paintings of jungles populated by exotic individuals and animals were figments of his imagination and sourced by reading books, looking at pictures of jungles, and visting the museums of Paris. So some of the most famous jungle paintings of all time were painted by this bookworm living in Paris. There can be no doubt that Rousseau’s jungles are amongst the most recognizable masterpieces of a modern age being birthed in the very earliest years of the 1900’s. I have seen several of his works – but usually there is just one or two per opportunity. This is the mother lode and thus my drive to not miss this exhibition.
While in DC I spent a day with the photographer Terri Weifenbach (referred to by some as the Emily Bronte of American photography). I gave her her first show years ago. She now has something like 8 books published. We surveyed the contemporary galleries of DC.
I also got a chance to see Charles who was in town to trade tiger beetles with the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. He gave them ~700 beetles in return for about 30 of theirs he needed to help round out his extensive collection.
I saw lots of art and had a wonderful trip.
Went to Washington DC from Wednesday the 4th of October until Saturday the 7th with the purpose of seeing the Henri Rousseau "Jungles of Paris" show.
My hotel was a high end place on Capitol Hill with this view from the corridor leading from my 16th floor room. Visiting with my friends Carol and Stuart on Firday evening we were admiring this view when the door to the presumed "guest room" next to this window and at the corner of the building opened as its occupant emerged to get ice. I quickly looked into the room when my first glance showed there to be about 60 small color monitors racked out (each with digital recorders) near the door. Deeper in the darkened room were 6 to 8 computers glowing and a couple people at work. I made a smart ass comment about "What else would one expect in Washington." The three of us went to dinner and when I got back to my room a couple hours later - it had been entered, a couple lights turned on, the window closed, and the pages of the magazine I had been reading were changed to a section that I had not been reading. Mind you in the preceding two nights there was never such an action nor any evidence that the hotel does turn-down service. I was a bit freaked out. I think this (from the street - darked out) corner room was either being used to survey the roof tops and skyline around the Capitol or to eavesdrop on the rooms in the Hyatt that is kittycorner across the street. That is a feature of DC I do not like - the fascism (some might call it the freedom protection) of our government.
We walked off the course at 1 pm, boarded a SD bound flight at 3 pm and were eating dinner at home at 7pm ('cause we had to wait until after cocktail hour at 6 pm). What a really great trip.
'Twas happy-as-a-clam to be playing golf with Sharon and a goodly number of Kleinfelder Board members. That company is a most gracious host. I played my best ever - 95 on a course of this magnitude had me feeling quite exhilarated.
Monday we were up before the crack of dawn for a 8 am tee time at Arrowhead Golf Course (southwest of Denver by 45 minutes). What a course!!! It is the most visually interesting course I have ever played - and that includes anything in Hawaii. It is even more phenomenal in visual scope than Tokatee in Oregon. The course is long and quite difficult with lots of elevation change and sloping ice-fast greens. And the thick, coarse rough is something to stay out of.
The redevelopment of 16th Street is phenomenal. In the civic center it is a pedestrian mall. As one walks west there are new, elegant pedestrian suspension bridges that cross the railway, the Platte River, and finally the I-25. With grass parks, bikeways along the Platte River, opportunities to kayak the river and the long corridor that joins vast condo/apartment redevelopment with the downtown – this city is exploding just as San Diego. I continue to be amazed with the pace of redevelopment in every corner of the world visited in the last couple years. It is as if the whole world is on a concrete binge. Whole new ways of living and forming cities seems in progress.
