Category Archives: Museums

Centuries Come, Centuries Go

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Last week I took note of some of the monumental items at the Oriental Institute Museum, but of course the museum is home to a lot more artifacts, and most of them were more modest in size. But no less interesting for it. Such as some dice from Roman Egypt.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERACool. Especially since anyone alive now, two millennia after they were made, could look at them and know exactly what they’re for, even if the games of chance aren’t quite the same. Even cooler is that dice were ancient even then, so much so that their origin is obscure.

Also on display were some knucklebones, an alternative to dice that are probably just as old, if not older (and the ancestor of modern playing jacks?). According the museum, “knucklebones of sheep or oxen were used to determine the number of moves on game boards. The four sides of each bone are distinctive, and each was assigned a specific number. They were normally thrown in pairs, allowing for ten possible combinations.”

The museum also sported plenty of figurines.

Eygptian figurines 1Still charming after all these centuries. Thought to come from a tomb of a courtier named Nykauinpu at Giza, made of limestone and dating from the Old Kingdom, Dynasty 5 of the 25th century BC. So by the time of Julius Caesar, this statue was already older than anything from the time of Julius Caesar is now. Even on a human scale (not to mention geological or cosmological), time’s mind-boggling.

On a sign describing another man-and-woman set of Egyptian figurines, I noted these lines, referring to the way the woman was dressed (emphasis added): “This style of dress was popular for the entire 3,000 years of pharaonic history.” I’ll say one thing about the ancient Egyptians — they found something they liked and stuck with it.

Born in Babylonia, Moved to Chicago

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The Oriental Institute Museum in Hyde Park, Chicago, houses an embarrassment of riches, a surfeit of treasures, and an abundance of artifacts from times lost to time. Not bad for an organization that isn’t even a century old. The institute’s web site puts it succinctly: “The Oriental Institute is a research organization and museum devoted to the study of the ancient Near East. Founded in 1919 by James Henry Breasted, the Institute, a part of the University of Chicago, is an internationally recognized pioneer in the archaeology, philology, and history of early Near Eastern civilizations.”

Besides the obviously high quality of the collection, which I’m only partly able to appreciate – it’s hard for me to sort out of who was who and when was when in the ancient Near East, except for places that were eventually part of the Roman Empire — I like the museum for two other reasons. First, it’s never been crowded in all the times I’ve been there since the 1980s. Second, it doesn’t pander to visitors with a lot of whiz-bang, touch-it-wow gimmicks. It’s got stuff, and signs describing that stuff. An old-fashioned, static approach to museum organization, for sure. If you go to the Oriental Institute Museum, you’ve got to be prepared to look at things and read about them.

But who’s so jaded that he wouldn’t be impressed by this?

Oriental Institute-2Or this?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOr this?

How'd You Get So Funky?The first item is a colossal bull head from the Hundred-Column Hall of Persepolis, dating from the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes I in the fifth century BC (note: the signs in the museum use BC, not BCE). The horns are lost, which makes me suspect they were made of something really valuable, looted long ago.

Next is a human-headed winged bull — a lamassu — which once was at the entrance to the throne room of Assyrian King Sargon II . Weighs 40 tons. I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.

Finally, a 17-foot-plus statue of Tutankhamun. Well, sort of. The institute says: “The statue is inscribed for Horemheb whose name was recut over that of King Aye. The statue is assigned to the reign of Tutankhamun on stylistic grounds, for it resembles other representations of that king.” Sure, but it’ll always be King Tut to me.

Hyde Park ’14

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On the northeast corner of S. Woodlawn Ave. and E. 58th St. in Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago, is the Frederick C. Robie House, on that site for more than 100 years and best known as an exemplar of the Prairie School of Design. Next door to its north, at 5751 S. Woodlawn, is the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, one of my favorite bookstores anywhere, though new to the site. One block west of the intersection is the Oriental Institute Museum, repository of Near Eastern treasures, most of which they’ve dug up themselves. The Rockefeller Memorial Chapel rises to the southwest of the intersection, an ornate, soaring structure. That’s a lot within a short walk.

Last week was spring break for Lilly and Ann. Last year I took them to Texas for the occasion, but for various reasons this year, the idea of going anywhere never really took root. Still, I wanted to go somewhere – even if only a few miles away and for a few hours – and see something new if possible. In the summer of 2003, I wrote, “I walked by the Robie House, a creation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Him again. One of these days, I will take the tour, but not today.”

I didn’t know at the time that renovation of the Robie House had barely started, and hasn’t been completed even now, though mostly it has. The main goal last Friday was to tour the Robie House, which we did. Afterward we walked over to Rockefeller Chapel, and then spent an hour or so in the Oriental Institute Museum.

It was still fairly cold, but at least the sidewalks were clear of ice, and we didn’t have far to walk. Street parking always seems to be available next to the Midway Plaisance, just south of our destinations. In 1893, the Midway was briefly the focus of the world’s attention as part of the world’s fair, but now it’s a little-known urban green space, at least outside Chicago. That’s too bad, because it’s certainly interesting, if you know what was there.

We didn’t go into the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. I was astonished to see its new location, which I hadn’t heard about. Until a year and a half ago, the store was snugly located in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary, at 5757 S. University Ave. Turns out the seminary has moved, too, and now the building is home to the U of C’s Dept. of Economics, so famed in free market song and story.

Wiki, for what it’s worth, says: “The seminary move was controversial: it involved the disinterring of multiple graves.” I didn’t know anyone was buried there. Who was buried there? I’ll have to look into that sometime. Once upon a time, I did enjoy the Thorndike Hilton Memorial Chapel and the collection of rocks embedded in the seminary wall. I assume those are part of the Chicago School of Economics now.

Currently the streetscape between the Robie House and where the Seminary Co-op Bookstore used to be – which is across the street from the Oriental Institute Museum — is under construction.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI was surprised to see the bookstore’s new location, which even seems to include a café, like you might see in a Barnes & Noble. It didn’t seem right. At the basement location, there was no room for anything but books and more books. This video, at least, assures us that the new location still has a “maze aspect” and that Stanley Tigerman did the design (himself or Tigerman McCurry Architects staff?), which I guess counts for something.

But how could the new site have the book-cave charm of the old? Next time I’m in Hyde Park, I’ll take a look, to see if the new can hold a candle to the old.

Old Tractors & Old Abe

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At the College of the Ozarks is the Ralph Foster Museum, and at the Ralph Foster Museum is a modified 1921 Oldsmobile Model 46 Roadster, the truck used in the Beverly Hillbillies. I didn’t get to see that because the museum was closed the day I visited in early November last year.

Instead we went to the Gaetz Tractor Museum. On display are such marvels of the machine age as the two-cylinder, three-ton Advance Rumely, introduced in 1924.

There’s also a Rumely 6A, vintage 1930, as well as four-cylinder, three-ton Case model K, ca. 1927.

Made by the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co., which was eventually M&A’d out of existence as a separate entity. Now that’s a corporate name. Beats much of what we have now, such as the Three Initial Corp. or the Random-Syllable Co.

Note the eagle. That was J.I. Case’s corporate symbol, but it isn’t just any eagle. It’s Old Abe.

Old Abe – a living eagle – was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment from 1861 to ’64. Quite a story. Bonanzaville, an open-air museum in West Fargo, ND, that we visited in ’06, has a striking Case Eagle on display.

View and No View

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The Cliff Dwellers have a swell view of the eastern reaches of Chicago, Millennium Park, Grant Park, and the expanse of Lake Michigan beyond. The northeast vista looked like this on Saturday, October 19, 2013, at about 12:30, before the clouds and wind blew in.

The southeast vista was even better, but my photography skills weren’t up to the task. With the eye it was clear enough to see the structures of East Chicago and Gary, Indiana. The view is the from the 22nd floor of 200 S. Michigan Ave., a building across the street from the Art Institute. My photography skills were up to the task of capturing an aspect of that museum that few pay any attention to: its multi-surfaced roof.

Not a bad roof, I guess, but it seems like the Art Institute is missing an opportunity. It ought to commission a few brightly colored murals that, like the Nazca Lines, can best be appreciated from the air. Or large pieces of sculpture likewise fixed to the roof for distant viewing. The museum could then lease small spaces high up on the surrounding buildings and install telescopes for viewing, maybe for a small extra fee. That’s got to be pushing the conventional boundaries between art and life, or exploring the relationship between physical distance and the aesthetic experience, or beating up some kind of pervasive assumption about art, or something.

The Cliff Dwellers is a private club. I wanted a look-see because I’ve seen parts of other Chicago clubs’ spaces – the Rotary Club, the Union League Club, the University Club, the Metropolitan Club – but not the Cliff Dwellers. “The club exists as a cultivator for the arts, welcoming working writers, painters, musicians, and others as well as affluent art lovers who want to act as patrons,” explains Michigan Avenue magazine. “Though the clubhouse itself is modest, with a bar, dining room, and reading nook (in addition to a breathtaking aerial view of the waterfront and sprawling greenery of Grant Park), the society’s roots are far from low profile, with names like Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and Carl Sandburg marking its pedigree.”

I imagine the Cliff Dwellers would be happy to mount a big brass telescope to view Nazca Lines on the top of the Art Institute. That would be cultivating the arts.

Moving on, I soon found myself at the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, a round structure at Wabash and Wacker, very near the Chicago River. It’s a Harry Weese design, completed in 1968.

I used to have an office across the street in 35 E. Wacker. I’ve walked by this church countless times. I’d never been inside.

Most of the roundness of the structure is filled by a 764-seat auditorium with a focus on the “readers’ platform,” which is backed by a 3,316 pipe Aeolian-Skinner organ. Supposedly the inspiration for the auditorium is the layout of a Greek amphitheater, but I couldn’t help being reminded of a meeting room at the UN. It has no windows, the better to keep ambient noise from the city from intruding. That works pretty well – I couldn’t hear anything identifiable as noise from the surrounding streets.

The Nasher Sculpture Center

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I don’t know a lot about sculpture, but I did recognize this face.

Or at least the artist, Joan Miró. His work’s pretty hard to mistake for anyone else’s. After visiting the Samurai Collection in Dallas, I headed back toward downtown proper, and the choice of two museums presented itself: the Dallas Museum of Art or the Nasher Sculpture Center, which are across the street from each other. Yuriko and I went to the DMA back in ’02, before the Nasher was even open, and while it would certainly be worth another look after over 10 years, I picked the Nasher. I make that kind of choice by going to the one I’ve never been to before.

During our 2007 visit to Dallas, we went to NorthPark Center, the mall the late Raymond Nasher developed. It has an unusually large and visible collection of sculpture and other art, so I knew about his affinity for collecting. Nasher’s museum, designed by Renzo Piano, doesn’t disappoint. There are plenty of fine items to take a look at, both inside and out in the sculpture garden, where the Miró stands. (“Caress of a Bird” (“La Caresse d’un oiseau”), 1967.)

The museum says of its collection: “Surveyed as a whole, the Nasher Collection demonstrates considerable balance between early modern works and art of the postwar period, abstraction and figuration, monumental outdoor and more intimately scaled indoor works, and the many different materials used in the production of modern art.  Perhaps its single most distinguishing feature, however, is the depth with which it represents certain key artists, including Matisse (with eleven sculptures), Picasso (seven), Smith (eight), Raymond Duchamp-Villon (seven), Moore (eight), Miró (four), and Giacometti (thirteen).”

Here’s one of the Moores. Can’t mistake his blobs for anyone else, either.

The Nasher’s definitely worth wandering through, inside and out. One irritation, though. Only some of the outside sculptures had signs. Maybe the information can be accessed in the self-guided audio tour, but even so every work ought to be accompanied by a written description, or at least a small sign with title, artist and year. Take this unlabeled example:

I thought, that looks familiar. Seen something like it – where? Then I remembered some of the works at the FDR memorial in DC. Sure enough, same artist, George Segal. Fittingly enough, the Nasher one is called “Rush Hour” (1983).

Or maybe “Sad People Walking Through the Cold” would be more fitting. Seems to have been a motif of Segal’s.

The Samurai Collection

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The Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum: The Samurai Collection takes up the second floor of the St. Ann Building in Dallas’ Uptown district, which is a walkable distance from downtown, even in the late-summer heat. The museum is another new attraction for the city, open only since March.

To reach it, you enter a first-floor restaurant, pass its reception desk, and then go up some stairs. It’s a small museum with a single focus: samurai armor, weapons, masks, and related items. The museum asserts that its “collection of samurai objects is one of the largest of its type in the world and is displayed in the only museum outside Japan whose focus is samurai armor.”

Go up to the cool, quiet reaches of the museum, and pretty soon you’re face-to-face with the likes of him:

It’s a somen (full-face mask), made of iron, leather, horsehair, lacquer and silk lacing, dating from mid-Edo – the 18th century. During earlier periods, when a samurai might actually have to do battle, somen weren’t that popular, since a mask like that can obscure your vision. In the more peaceful Edo era, that wasn’t such a concern, and the masks had a revival among samurai (at least those who could afford them).

Another cool item at the Samurai Collection is this helmet.

It’s an akodanari kabuto, a melon-shaped helmet of iron and lacquer and dating from the Muromachi period, or the late 15th to early 16th centuries, when it was entirely likely that a samurai would be fighting someone. The museum says that “the construction of this kabuto, with twelve plates covered in protruding rivet comprising the helmet bowl, is unique. There is no other known example.”

These are fine artifacts, but they aren’t as grand as some full armor that the Barbier-Mueller has. In this case, one for a man, another for a boy.

The larger suit, the museum notes, “was assembled during the Edo period and incorporates several older components. The helmet displays stylized horns known as kuwagata and a frontal ornament in the shape of a paulownia leaf, the crest of several important families…” As for the smaller suit, it’s late Edo. “Boys of samurai class families began training to become warriors at a very young age… at around age 12, samurai boys participated in a ceremony known as genpuku, wherein they received their first armor and sword.”

All in all, a high-quality collection, and not such a large display that you can’t leisurely take in most of it in one visit. It’s as if a single room of some vast, first-water museum – the British Museum, the Met, the Art Institute – had detached itself and landed in Dallas. So why Dallas? The museum’s name says it all: Dallas real estate mogul Gabriel Barbier-Mueller and his wife Ann, long-time collectors of this kind of art and artifact, wanted it to be there.

Here’s a 2006 D article about Barbier-Mueller, scion of the Swiss family of that name who decided to live in Dallas, in as much as anyone with four houses lives in a particular place. It begins with the amusing line: “Gabriel Barbier-Mueller owns a lot of stuff.” Well, so do I. It’s just that a lot of his stuff is more expensive.

The Mighty F-1 Laid Low

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I hadn’t heard until today about the expedition that found some Saturn V first stage engines – the mighty F-1 — on the bottom of the Atlantic. The Bezos Expedition site is careful to note that “many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult. We might see more during restoration,” so they could be from any of the missions that used the engines, though I believe they were looking for Apollo 11 relics.

There might be less headline glory in finding something from (say) Apollo 16, but I think it would be just as cool. The expedition site goes on to say that whatever their origin, “the objects themselves are gorgeous.” Bet they are. They’ve gone to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center for stabilization, so maybe they’ll stay there for display. That place would be worth going to that corner of Kansas to see, F-1s or not.

Seems that Amazon boss Jeff Bezos paid for the expedition, or at least much of it. Good for him. It’s the kind of thing that billionaires should spend some of their money on. That and the 10,000-Year Clock.

Tuesday Orts

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I hadn’t heard that Jonathan Winters had died until this evening. I hadn’t known he was still alive, but then again his most recent roles seemed to involve voicing Grandpa Smurf, something I would never have known without reading his obit. When I was young, though, he seemed to pop up on TV a lot without warning.

But that’s understandable. A gig is a gig. As funnymen of my parents’ generation go, he aged a lot better than most.

The MIT Center for Real Estate is a big deal in real estate education. It educates real estate pros and generates some interesting real estate data. Also, MIT is also not known to be short on its endowment. So how is it that the latest thing on center’s web site, under the “News and Events” section, is dated November 30, 2011? How it is that the newsletters produced by the center stop around the same time? Did the person who was maintaining it leave, and the organization couldn’t be bothered with it afterwards? I can see that for a small organization on a shoestring — in which case the site shouldn’t promise “news” — but MIT?

More than 30 years ago, I spent a few days camped out in a dorm room at MIT. I noticed a few things while there, such as that everyone on the hall went to the common room to watch an afternoon showing of Star Trek, and everyone knew the lines. (The original series; because this was 1982, the only series. Patrick Stewart was still just a Shakespearean actor who’d played Sejanus for the BBC.)

I discovered that there’s a major collection of samurai armor and art in Dallas, of all places. At the newly opened Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum: The Samurai Collection. I mentioned that to Ed, who’s familiar with the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Switzerland, and he said, ” If it came out of the Barbier, odds are, it’s better than anything you saw in Japan.”

Another thing to see. But at least it’s easier to go to Dallas than, say, Geneva.

Branson Leftovers

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Back again on Sunday, as the long Thanksgiving weekend peters out. We will be home for the occasion, since just the thought of going anywhere is tiring.

Branson is full of shows, but Joseph beat everything else I saw for sheer spectacle. Joseph is a South & Sight Theatres production, whose specialty is elaborate stagings of Bible stories, but “elaborate” hardly does it justice. The theater’s enormous, seating about 2,000, with a large stage that accommodates massive sets, large troupes of actors (including live animals, such as goats and camels), and impressive lighting and effects. The sets alone for Joseph—fittingly evoking ancient Egypt much of the time—would be worth seeing all by themselves, but fortunately not all of the effort went into sets and effects. The script tells the story of Joseph well, both in song and dialogue.

Christopher James, emcee on the Branson Belle showboat, told the trip’s best joke. I forget the exact wording, but it was a line about knowing better than to shine a bright light on stage, since too many of the audience would respond by getting up and heading toward it.

Indeed, at some of the shows I was a youngster compared to most of the audience. Such shows were heavily spiked with ’40s and especially ’50s nostalgia. But the showmen of Branson are preparing for the future. At one point, we had to wait for a few minutes outside a theater as the audience emerged from a John Denver tribute show. That is, a show spiked with ’70s nostalgia. The audience looked much younger than at most of the other shows—roughly my age.

No presidents were from Branson or are buried nearby, unless you count Harry Truman up in Independence, Mo. But I did see one presidential item: a bronze of the elder George Bush, as a young naval aviator, at the Veterans Memorial Museum.

We also visited the College of the Ozarks, which is a few miles from Branson. It’s a private Christian school whose students pay no tuition, but rather work for the school 15 hours a week. The fruits of all that work are many: among other things, we saw the greenhouses that grow orchids, a crafts building, the small hotel that the school runs, and the school’s restaurant, where we had Sunday brunch, done as a large buffet. The food was really good. Much of it is raised by students on the college’s farm.

Speaking of food, I had breakfast at a number of other places during my visit, and none of them—not even at the College of the Ozarks—offered grits. I was puzzled. I thought Branson would be south of the Grits Line, but maybe I’m wrong about that. Biscuits and gravy were widely served, but not grits. Odd.