Tag Archives: paintings

Pacific Standard Memories

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San Diego Museum of Art and Mingei International Museum
Balboa Park
January-February 2018
LACMA
Hancock Park
March 18, 2018

Over the winter we attended several exhibitions, now gone by, in the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA series. Life got away from us, so we did not write them up here at the time. We did enjoy getting in touch with Latin American art spanning many centuries and revisiting some museums we had not been to in a while.

The first Pacific Standard Time series celebrated mid-twentieth century Southern California arts; it ran from October 2011 to April 2012. We took Meredith’s mother Margaret to six or more exhibitions in that first series. It was fun discovering small venues and offbeat subjects. Margaret was very taken by a vintage Studebaker Avanti on display at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and joked about driving off in it while the guard was looking the other way. The thought of Margaret leaping out of her wheelchair and hotwiring a collector car still brings a smile. That first series of Pacific Standard Time visits took place before we started our blog.

The newer LA/LA series explored artistic connections between Latin America and Southern California (mainly Los Angeles) and ran from September 2017 to early 2018. Both PST series were organized by the Getty Museum, which brought together dozens of So Cal museums, each with their own special focus exhibit.

Earlier this year, we saw: (1) Modern Masters from Latin America: The Pérez Simón Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art; (2) Art of the Americas: Mesoamerican, Pre-Columbian Art from Mingei’s Permanent Collection at the Mingei Museum; and (3) Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici at LACMA.

In January, we saw the Pérez Simón Collection show at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. It brought together art (mostly paintings) from eight different Latin American countries, spanning a little over a century, from the late 1800’s to now. We particularly liked the landscape scenes and portrayals of people in their daily lives. The abstract pieces interested us less. After we finished seeing the Perez Simon collection, we stopped in to see a visiting Monet painting, which was on loan from the Denver art museum and has since been returned.

The next month we headed to the Mingei Museum, also in Balboa Park. We had not been there in years, and it was fun to get reacquainted. The term “mingei” means “everyone’s art,” and this museum features objects from around the world made for everyday use. Although some are very beautiful, none were made purely to be decorative. Their Pacific Standard Time exhibition displayed an extensive collection of objects, particularly ceramics, from a variety of pre-Columbian cultures in Mexico, Central America, and South America. We particularly liked seeing the Mayan textile fragments – so fragile they were shown under dim lighting.

While in the Mingei we also strolled through a display of Native American weaving from the American Southwest. There were some strikingly handsome pieces on display, and the curator’s explanatory signs were very thorough. Two thumbs up on the Mingei visit; we will definitely come back.

Early this year we purchased a Balboa Park Explorer one year family pass, and we used the pass for both the SDMA and Mingei visit.

In March, we met up with Meredith’s sister Kathleen to see Painted in Mexico, 1700-1790: Pinxit Mexici at LACMA. This was an exhibition of Mexican painting during the 18th century. Over 120 works were on display, many of which had never been shown publicly before, and some were specially restored for this exhibition. Religious paintings predominated, but there were secular themed paintings as well. The works displayed were high quality, sophisticated pieces; this New World art can definitely take its place alongside the best of the Old World. We saw the exhibition on its final weekend in Los Angeles; it went on the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it will be on display through July 22.

We looked through several other LACMA areas. Outside we were amused by a sculpture that looks like a balloon animal. A little hard to take seriously, but hey, we took a picture, didn’t we?

Earth Day in the Park

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Museum of Man
Timken Museum
Balboa Park, San Diego
April 22, 2018

We used our Explorer passes and visited Balboa Park. As part of the Explorer program we receive a monthly email bulletin telling us what is new in the park. We had picked out three things to see, but in the end saw just two of them.

We parked in Hillcrest and walked across the Laurel Street bridge, stopping in at the Museum of Man. We went there to see its new Post Secret exhibit. Post Secret is an ongoing project, created by artist Frank Warren. On his website new cards are posted weekly.

The museum website describes the exhibit, which displays a selection of cards submitted over the years:

Would you share your secrets with a stranger? Secrets are the currency of intimacy. They reflect our darkest thoughts, brightest hopes, and every emotion in between. They’re deeply personal, but extremely relatable. They allow us to feel alone, together. For over a decade, millions of people from all over the world have been anonymously sharing their secrets with Frank Warren, founder of the community art project, PostSecret. Each postcard submission is a unique work of art handmade by people who needed to share and release their secret into the world.

These submissions range from the trivial to the profound, sometimes funny and other times very sad. Some writers struggle with suicidal thoughts, and Warren worked for a time as a volunteer on a crisis hotline. The exhibit and his website both give links to suicide prevention resources.

It was Earth Day, so the park was hosting the annual fair. We saw many booths set up along the way we walked, from the Museum of Man to the Plaza de Panama. (And we understand there were other booths, scattered throughout the park.) There were many food tents set up on the plaza.

We tried to get in to the Museum of Art to see a new exhibition, but that museum was closed. We thought that was a little curious, thinking that Earth Day would been a good outreach opportunity for the museum. Stymied in that attempt and needing to kill some time before the Timken Museum opened at noon, we bought some pierogis and beignets from the food tents and sat by the koi pond to eat an early lunch.

The Timken Museum – possibly our favorite museum in the entire Southland – was hosting an exhibit entitled The Romantic Impulse in the American Landscape Tradition in its special exhibit space. (This exhibition runs through June 3, 2018.) There were about a dozen works, mostly oil paintings. They included Thomas Moran’s Opus 24, Rome from the Campagna and Albert Bierstadt’s Weser River, Minden Germany. We particularly like Bierstadt’s use of light in his painting. Nearby we saw William Keith’s painting In the Santa Cruz Mountains, a beautiful depiction of a waterfall. Most of the works displayed were from the 19th century, but there were several more recent works. We enjoyed the background music, a half hour loop “soundscape” of Romantic music, including Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Admission to the Timken is always free, and they have a very good permanent collection. Do be sure to drop a contribution into the box at the entrance, though.

After we were done we dropped by our favorite Hillcrest watering hole, the Brew Project, and enjoyed some tasty beers.

Japanese Friendship Garden

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Japanese Friendship Garden
October 29, 2017
December 29, 2017
Balboa Park, San Diego

The Japanese Friendship Garden is an oasis of beauty. We have often walked by its entrance, near the organ pavilion in the heart of Balboa Park, but had not been inside it for many years. We very much enjoyed our recent visits, the first on a quiet Sunday afternoon in October, the other just this past week.

The garden is located on a 12 acre plot within the park. It is a “friendship” garden because it symbolizes the bond between San Diego and its sister city Yokohama. The garden displays and celebrates Japanese culture, and uses Japanese gardening techniques with plantings suited to the San Diego climate.

In the upper garden we enjoyed the watercolor paintings displayed in the exhibit house, and we sat a while contemplating the dry stone garden. There is a koi pond in the upper garden, and we encountered more koi in the lower garden. They are large and splendidly colored animals!

The path meanders down into the canyon, from the upper to lower garden areas. Along the hillside we saw azaleas in bloom. There is a long water feature in the lower garden, which starts as a dry waterfall, then segues into flowing water, down to a pond around the Inamori Pavilion on the lower level. The garden is managed so that there are always some plants in bloom. We are looking forward to the cherry blossoms in the spring!

Some of the regular paths are a little steep, but there are alternate paths for wheelchair visitors.

Regular admission is $10; there are discounts for students, seniors, and military. Children under 6 are free. San Diego residents can get in free on the third Tuesday of each month.

There is an open air cafe outside the garden serving rice bowls, sushi, edamame, sandwiches, salads, and a variety of teas as well as other beverages. We ate there on our second visit and enjoyed our food. Since it is outside the garden, park visitors can eat there whether or not they are visiting the garden. Two of Bob’s former students saw him there, and they chatted while we waited in line to order.

Our second visit fell on the same day as the Cotton Bowl, and our middle daughter was in town, so we all put on our Buckeye regalia. In addition to the Japanese Friendship Garden, we visited the Timken and looked at the nativity scenes set up near the Organ Pavilion. (After the park visit, we headed to Mission Beach to hang out with other Buckeye fans and watch the game.)

Bowers Museum

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Bowers Museum
December 17, 2018
Santa Ana

We headed north to see the Bowers Museum, which has a large and eclectic art collection. Meredith’s sister Kathleen had suggested visiting it, and after several unsuccessful attempts to find a date in common with her, we decided to see it on our own.

We spent much of our time in two special exhibitions: first we saw Endurance, the Antarctic Legacy of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley, and next we visited Empress Dowager Cixi, Selections from the Summer Palace. We also toured the oldest parts of the museum and looked at the early California collection.

We were fascinated by the Shackleton exhibition. It is built around the stunning photographs and motion pictures taken by expedition photographer Frank Hurley, of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917). The negatives have been newly digitized and show remarkable detail, and his compositions are striking. The museum has laid out the exhibition in chronological order, with brief explanations of the various hardships and twists and turns of the expedition’s journey, illustrated by Hurley’s photos and films. The museum is also screening an hour long documentary about the Shackleton expedition from the first sailing to Antarctica, through the long confinement in the pack ice, the row to uninhabited Elephant Island, the open water journey to South Georgia island, and the trek across that island to the whaling station, where Shackleton finally returned to the outside world. A replica of the boat in which Shackleton sailed from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, a distance of over 720 nautical miles, is displayed in the courtyard of the museum just outside the restaurant.

The Empress Dowager Cixi (whose name is transliterated Tz’u Hsi in older western texts and pronounced “she she,” we think) was originally an imperial concubine. When her son became emperor as a child, she ruled as regent and continued her regency during the minority of her nephew. In all, she ruled China for nearly five decades, from 1861 to 1908. The special exhibition at the museum has many decorative items from her Summer Palace. The furniture on display includes a beautiful and ornate throne set. There are many beautiful Chinese art works, including some calligraphy and painting done by the empress herself. Beautifully embroidered silk gowns are displayed. Bob’s eye was caught by a large carved tourmaline stone mined in San Diego and exported to China, where it was carved as a decorative object. The Empress was interested in Western technology and art, and her interest is reflected in the collection, with objects such as English table clocks. Meredith enjoyed seeing the 1901 Duryea Surrey automobile which one of the empress’ generals imported from the United States as a gift to her. It had a three cylinder, 10 hp engine and was capable of speeds up to 25 mph.

The Shackleton exhibition runs through January 28, 2018. The Empress Dowager exhibition runs through March 11, 2018.

We had lunch at the museum restaurant, Tangata. Service and food were both excellent. It is somewhat pricey. It can be accessed by the general public as well as museum visitors.

After lunch, we visited the oldest parts of the California collection, the Native American and mission era rooms. The California collection is housed in the oldest part of the museum complex, the original building constructed in the 1930’s. There are some very beautiful woven baskets which Meredith‘s late mother Margaret would have loved. In addition to the artifacts on display, the Segerstrom gallery features a beautiful carved wooden ceiling.

We decided to leave for another day the rest of the museum’s permanent collections, which include such things as California plein air paintings, Mexican ceramics, Pacific Island art and artifacts, Pre-Columbian art, and Chinese and Japanese art.

General admission is $15 for adults on weekends, $13 on weekdays; the Empress Dowager exhibit had an additional entry fee. Students and seniors enjoy discounts, and children under 12 are free with paid adults. The museum is closed on Mondays. Parking costs $6, but is free with restaurant validation. Handicapped access is good. In the modern building, everything is at a level. In the older building, there are some steps down into the Native American room, but it was retrofitted with a wheelchair lift.

Monet in Balboa Park

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Timken Museum
Botanical Building
Balboa Park, San Diego
October 8, 2017

We visited the Timken Museum of Art to see a special exhibition, Monet’s Étretat: Destination & Motif. The central items in the exhibit are two Monet paintings on loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York: Étretat: The Manneporte (Étretat) and The Manneporte near Étretat, painted in 1883 and 1886, respectively. Both feature scenes at Étretat, on the coast of Normandy. There are two other paintings of Étretat on display in that gallery: The Cliffs at Étretat (1890) by William Henry Lipppincott and Sunset, Étretat (1892) by George Inness. The exhibition also includes photos and background materials about Étretat. The exhibition will run through December 31, 2017.

Étretat has a special place in our hearts. In 2000 we took three weeks off work and traveled in Europe with our three daughters, then ages 10-15. We had planned and saved for the trip for many years. As we planned it, we looked through the Michelin guidebook for France. Meredith was taken by a photo of the dramatic limestone cliffs at Étretat, so we added it to our itinerary. The scenery was beautiful and well worth the detour. Seeing the current Timken exhibit, which includes guidebooks from the 19th century and vintage stereoptican photos, we now know we were just part of a long line of tourists stopping there.

We love Monet — who doesn’t? — so when we heard about this exhibit, we figured it was a must-see for us. The Timken is a small museum, and the exhibition takes up just one small gallery, their special exhibition space. But this is the sort of thing the Timken does well — specific focus, quality not quantity.

As we have said before, the Timken is possibly our favorite museum. It is free, for starters. (Do drop a donation in the collection box, though!) The collection is good, and it is a pocket size art museum which is easy to see in a short time. Handicap access is good. Parking is free in the park, but allow for a bit of a walk, or take the parking tram, especially on a weekend.

On our way to the Timken, we stopped to listen to a bagpipe band near the House of Scotland. We took a walk around the center of Balboa Park afterwards, stopping in the Botanical Building by the lily pond (also free).

The San Diego Museum of Art also has a special Monet exhibition Reflections on Monet on display currently, which runs through January 21, 2018. We have not seen it yet, but hope to do so. It features a special viewing of Monet’s 1904 painting Le Bassin de Nympheas.

Norman Rockwell

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Norman Rockwell Museum
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
September 27, 2017

We were on a vacation trip to western Massachusetts, where Bob grew up, and decided to take a day trip to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. We eschewed the bland scenery offered by the turnpike and instead took country highways to get there. The countryside and small towns are beautiful! We did not manage to hit the fall foliage at peak color, but scattered trees had started to change color, and they made for a pretty landscape.

Once inside the museum, we went down to the lower level to watch a 15 minute video overview of Rockwell’s life and career. We then strolled around the gallery on the lower level and looked at over 300 Saturday Evening Post magazine covers. All feature Rockwell cover art. They are arranged chronologically, spanning over 50 years of his work for that magazine. Many of his best-known pieces appeared on the cover of that magazine, and we enjoyed the lesser-known pieces as well. Many are whimsical, others serious and often inspiring. Elsewhere on the lower level several preliminary sketches and paintings are exhibited. These were studies for later finished works. There is also a classroom type space where children can sit and draw. Materials are provided for them.

On the upper level we strolled through several large gallery rooms. There is the permanent collection of Rockwell’s paintings, of course. One of the paintings we liked most was The Marriage License, painted in 1955. It is set in what was then the actual town clerk’s office in Stockbridge – now a Yankee Candle store — and shows a happy young couple watched by a somewhat wistful town clerk. We learned the backstory at the museum. The man in the painting was the actual town clerk at the time, and his wife had died shortly before Rockwell painted the scene.

In the same gallery hangs a vibrant portrait of the young Abraham Lincoln trying his famous murder case, and a Christmas homecoming painting in which Rockwell, his wife, all three of their sons, and various friends are all pictured. We also enjoyed the famous Thanksgiving: Mother and Son Peeling Potatoes painting done in 1945. The love between them radiates from the painting, as they work together in preparation for the feast.

The museum also has space for special exhibitions. When we visited there was a Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol exhibit, showing similar or same subjects side-by-side, as illustrated by the two different artists. Two different portraits of Jackie Kennedy, for instance, were displayed next to one another, one each by Rockwell and Warhol.

Meredith liked the fanciful and cheerful paintings of Andy Warhol’s nephew, James Warhola. Many scenes from his children’s book Uncle Andy’s: A Faabbbulous Visit with Andy Warhol were displayed, as was some of Warhola’s cover art from science fiction novels. A piece used for the cover of one of the Spider Robinson Callahan’s Cross-time Saloon books was displayed in the center of the room.

Another room was devoted to showing the process of creating finished illustrations. Several different artists’ work was shown there, including Rockwell’s work for the painting Art Critic, done in 1955. Three different preliminary sketches are shown, for the female face in the painting which is being examined by the critic. They are all very different, but all humorous in one way or another. We can also see how the painting in the background beside the critic changed. Initially Rockwell made it a landscape, but later he changed it to a group of men in Renaissance dress, who seem to be looking at the art critic, as he in turn stares intently at the details of the costume the female figure is wearing in the painting on the left.

The museum grounds are scenic and extensive. In addition to the main building, there is also Rockwell’s final studio, which he used for the last two decades of his career. It was relocated from its location elsewhere in Stockbridge to these grounds, at his request at the end of his life. The studio is arranged and outfitted as it would have appeared in the early 1960s. Books owned by Rockwell and various props and knickknacks furnish the room, and an easel is set up.

Docents give regular talks in the galleries, and we listened to two different docents explain details about several of the paintings displayed. There was also a docent stationed in the studio, available to answer questions.

We enjoyed the experience overall and thought it was well worth a trip. Admission is a little pricey, $20 for the full adult admission. There are discounts for seniors, students, and some others. The museum also offers combination packages with other Berkshire area attractions. Parking is free and plentiful. The museum is handicapped accessible. It has an elevator between the main and lower levels, and walkways on the grounds are paved and slope gently.

There is a museum café, but we did not check it out. Instead, we enjoyed a late lunch at Once Upon A Table back in the center of Stockbridge, next to the Red Lion Inn. Service and food were excellent, and we would definitely go back another time if we are in the area.

Note: to be respectful of copyrights, we have not pulled Rockwell painting images into this post. We have linked to some images on the museum site, and invite you to explore the extensive archives on that site, which include source materials such as photos, as well as the finished paintings.

Brahms and Cowboys

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California Center for the Arts
Escondido
January 29, 2017

Meredith was out of town on the last weekend in January, so Bob decided to check out the California Center for the Arts in Escondido. His attention had been drawn to it by advertising for a performance of Brahms’ German Requiem. Escondido Choral Arts organized the presentation, which featured an introduction to the work and recorded testimonials by members of the choral groups involved as to their often quite moving relationships to the Requiem, as well as what Bob thought was a fine performance.

Since the music did not begin until three in the afternoon, he took advantage of the trip to Escondido to visit another part of the Center, the Museum. The facility is spacious—two large, airy halls that are paralleled by hallways which can also be used for display. The hallways have large windows all along that look out on the adjacent Grape Day Park. The current exhibition is Cowboys and Vaqueros: Legends of the American West. It runs January 14 through February 26, 2017. In the smaller of the two halls were a mix of paintings, photographs, and artifacts that celebrate different peoples who made their mark on the history of the Old West: Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and European Americans. Bob was taken by a photograph of an African-American family outside their sod hut and another of the Robinson Hotel. That hotel was started by an African-American family in Julian, California, in the nearby mountains. When they sold it after a number of decades, it became the Julian Hotel, which still stands today. He also liked the side saddle that belonged to a young lady who was in the first graduating class from Escondido High School—her family lived in the San Pasqual Valley, too far to commute, so she stayed in town during the week and rode her horse home on the weekends!

In the larger hall there was a focus on paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Many of the sculptures were by Mehl Lawson, the curator of the show. His works in the show were in bronze, reminiscent of Frederic Remington, but with a very different surface texture or patina. The works throughout the show were very largely contemporary—from the 1990s into the current decade. Bob very much liked one large scale Impressionist painting, Eastern Sierra Landscape by Alson Skinner Clark and owned by the University Club of Pasadena. Executed in 1919, the picture shows a covered wagon dwarfed by the majestic mountains in the distance and lost in the desert of the foreground.

In the hallways adjacent to the exhibition halls, there was a display of student work from local schools related to the show. Mostly these were drawings or paintings, but one project had been to design cattle brands—one young lady welded her own and with it there was a description of the process she went through to make it.

A smaller room located at the end of the large hall farthest from the entrance was being used to show the work of a local documentarian. Corazon Vaquero (Heart of the Cowboy) is a gripping piece. Usually when one passes by a video that is playing in a museum setting, if it runs more than ten minutes one loses interest and moves on. This film is a very terrific look at the daily life of people who live in the dry, mountainous lands in central Baja California. Bob watched about half an hour and then had to move on to get to the concert. Researching the film later, he found that it was made by Cody McClintock, who grew up in northern San Diego County, and is narrated by his father Garry, a master saddle maker who lived in Descanso and passed away in the fall of 2015.

There is plenty of free parking adjacent to the Center. Handicap access seemed fine in the museum and the concert hall. There is a small gift shop in the museum, which is open Thursday-Saturday from 10:00 to 5:00 and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00. The current exhibition runs through Sunday, 26 February. The next exhibition, coming in April and May, is called The Second Time Around: The Hubcap as Art. The young woman at the museum entrance told Bob that so far there are no other exhibits planned for the year due to funding constraints.

Timken New Year’s Eve

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Timken Museum of Art
Balboa Park
December 31, 2016

We love the Timken Museum of Art; as we have said before, it is perhaps our favorite museum. It is a small museum located in the heart of Balboa Park, next to the (larger and unaffiliated) San Diego Museum of Art and the arboretum. Admission is free, although donations are encouraged.

We went there on New Year’s Eve to catch the last day of the exhibition Jewels of the Season, displaying many wonderful hand made ornaments created by local artists Florence Hord and Elizabeth Schlappi. Bob had gone to see it a week earlier with our middle daughter and son-in-law; this was Meredith’s first visit. Annually since 1988, the Timken has set up a Christmas Tree and displayed on it a selection of ornaments from the collection, which totals over 2000 pieces. Starting last year, the exhibition was expanded and is now an extended installation with more ornaments hung overhead and displayed in cases, in addition to those shown on the tree.

We browsed through the permanent collection as well. The museum is small, but for its size offers an excellent assortment of European and American paintings. It boasts the only Rembrandt painting in San Diego, Saint Bartholomew.

December 31 marked the last day of the Jewels exhibition; be sure to see it next holiday season! The Timken has another special exhibition coming up: Witness to War: Callot, Goya, Bellows, which will run from January 27 – May 28, 2017. We are also looking forward to the fall, when the Timken, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will bring a small group of Monet paintings to San Diego. Details of that exhibition have not yet been released.

On our walk through the park, we stopped to enjoy the Nativity and related scenes displayed near the organ pavilion. According to the Union Tribune, the original sculptures were done over 70 years ago by noted Los Angeles artist Rudolph Vargas. They have been displayed at the park each Christmas season since 1953. In recent years they had become worn and tattered. Over the past year, local artist Barbara Jacobson donated her time, and together with numerous lay volunteers refurbished the entire set. The figures and backdrops look spiffy now, thanks to their efforts.

Norton Simon Museum

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Norton Simon Museum
Pasadena
December 4, 2016

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We met up with Kathleen, Meredith’s sister, to spend an afternoon at the Norton Simon Museum. This museum has an extensive and good quality collection of European art, and we toured those galleries first. Meredith enjoyed the Degas works particularly, both paintings and sculpture. Bob’s eye was caught by a Georges Lacombe painting, the Chestnut Gatherers. We both liked the Baciccio painting, Saint Joseph and the Infant Christ, so we picked up a packet of Christmas cards with a reproduction of it in the gift shop.

Kathleen will be teaching a comparative religion course next term and found material of interest in both the European and Asian art sections. The Asian art collection is extensive, and consists largely of religious statues.

The museum is a good size — compact enough to see the collection in one visit, but large enough to contain its considerable collection and show it to good advantage. The interior galleries, redesigned by architect Frank Gehry in the 1990’s, are light and airy.

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The sculpture gardens are a treat to explore and something that sets this museum apart. As you approach, the path to the entrance is flanked by Rodin sculptures, including the Burghers of Calais. Inside the museum is another sculpture garden, around a lily pond, with lovely trees and other plantings. The stroll around the pond is as much a part of the museum experience here as strolling through the interior galleries.

Admission is $12 for adults, $9 for seniors. Children and students are free. Wheelchair access is good. Parking is free.

There is a cafe at the museum, outside by the lily pond, but we met up with Kathleen for brunch at a local coffeehouse in Pasadena first, Copa Vida. We all enjoyed our meals.

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The day before we went to the Norton Simon, we drove up to Pasadena to stay the night and went out to a local theater, the Sierra Madre Playhouse, to see “A Little House Christmas.” As the name suggests, the play is based on the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories and features the Ingalls family preparing for and celebrating Christmas. We love the books and thoroughly enjoyed the play, which is based on stories in the books, primarily in Little House on the Prairie. Rights are owned by the Little House Heritage Trust. The actors were very good, and the production was engaging — funny at points, and poignant at other times. We would definitely see this show again and hope to see other theaters produce it.

Getty — Cave Temples

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Getty Center
Sepulveda Pass
May 15, 2016

We took Margaret to the Getty Center, primarily to see the new exhibition, the Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road. History is one of her main interests, and she had very much enjoyed the Silk Road exhibit at the Natural History Museum when we saw it several years ago, in our pre-blog period, so this exhibit was a “must see.”

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We first heard about this exhibition through the Getty 360 email newsletter which the Getty sends us each month, and we then saw an Associated Press article about it in the San Diego Union Tribune: Getty Center Recreates Elaborate Chinese Caves. It runs through September 4, 2016.

The caves of Mogao near Dunhuang were carved out in stages over nearly a millennium from the 4th to the 14th centuries, by Buddhist monks and others. The cave temple complex served those traveling on the Silk Road. The area is situated in northwestern China, on the eastern edge of the Gobi Desert, north of Tibet and south of Mongolia. Roughly half of the approximately 1000 caves have some decoration, and many of those feature elaborate and beautiful religious sculptures and paintings. Many caves fell into disuse during the Ming Dynasty of the 14th to 17th centuries, and the complex seems to have been used only as a local religious center after that. Sand drifted over the site and obscured many of the grottoes and the wooden facades of the cave entrances decayed. Early in the 20th century, Wang Yuanlu, a Daoist monk, discovered tens of thousands of ancient documents and other artifacts that had been sealed in one of the caves. In 1943 the Dunhuang Academy was established to explore and conserve Mogao. Since the 1970s the caves have become a tourist attraction, and the number of visitors has made conservation a critical need. For the last decade, the Getty Conservation Institute has worked with the local institute to stabilize, preserve, and restore some of the cave paintings.

The Getty exhibition has three parts. In the Research Institute building, which we visited first, are displayed actual historical artifacts such as sculptures, parchments, paintings, and drawings. Margaret particularly enjoyed a large embroidered silk tapestry showing a life-sized Buddha, called the Miraculous Image of Liangzhou. It was made around 700 A.D. (It enjoyed a shout out in the AP article linked above.)

Right next to that exhibition there is a small movie theater showing The Cave 45 Virtual Immersive Experience, a short film in 3-D of one of the restored caves, explaining the details of the statuary and the paintings in that particular cave.

The third part of the exhibition is a tent that has been set up especially for this purpose on the entrance plaza at the Getty Center, right near where the trams drop arriving visitors. Within that tent are replicas of three of the cave temples, with docents available to answer questions.

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Due to capacity limits, there is timed entry to the replica cave tent. We had the bad luck to time our visit to coincide with a very large group from Riverside which had blocked out some time in the early afternoon. When we first tried to get timed tickets, right after lunch, we were told there would not be any given out for an hour and a half, so we went off to look at the new Rembrandt (see below). When we came back, the earliest timed tickets we could get would have had us waiting at the Getty for nearly an hour and a half, and Margaret was already fatigued at that point. We asked at the information booth if any accommodation could be made for her, given her disabilities, and a supervisor helped us to the front of the line both for the replica cave and the movie, with just a short wait for each. He was gracious and helpful; we were relieved and grateful. If we had been there on our own the wait would not have mattered, and we could have toured other galleries in the meantime, but Margaret has very limited stamina these days.

Although the Chinese cave art was the main focus of our visit, we did make time to see another new exhibit, The Promise of Youth: Rembrandt’s Senses Rediscovered. The Getty owns several Rembrandt paintings and has a couple others on long term loan, but the one which is currently the center of attention is on short term loan only until August 28, 2016. It is called The Unconscious Patient (Allegory of the Sense of Smell) and is one of a series that Rembrandt painted as a young artist illustrating the five senses. See more about the series, and photos of the paintings, on the Getty’s website: here. This painting, illustrating the sense of smell, is displayed between paintings illustrating touch and hearing. The backstory is one of those stranger than fiction stories; the painting was recently rediscovered, and its owners did not know it was by Rembrandt. We read the story of its discovery in an article in the Los Angeles Times. Adjacent to the three “senses” paintings are the museum’s other Rembrandt works.

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Admission to the Getty is free, but those arriving by private car pay $15 to park. Parking is at the foot of the hill, and visitors ride trams up to the entry plaza. There were ample handicap spaces in the garage, and accessibility is generally good throughout the center. Finding the elevators is sometimes a little challenging, but all levels of the exhibit buildings can be reached either by elevator or (within the Research Institute exhibit space) by ramp. As we noted, the staff was very helpful with accommodating Margaret, so we give them high marks for disability services.

The café is arranged as a food court with half a dozen stations offering a wide selection of food. The food is good, and the prices are reasonable for a museum cafe. There is also a sit down restaurant.