Americans Valuing Experiences Over Consumption

Madeline having an "experience" with a water cave

This week the New York Times published a great article about how Americans are valuing experience over consumption now that we're in the Great Recession (their term). This makes me happy! Its boosting museum attendance, which of course tickles me, but thats not the only thing. I have wondered my whole life how such a large portion of our society puts such a high priority on material belongings. Its a conundrum for me in a way, since I am a collector and I have built my career around "material" culture (museum collections!), yet I shun consumerism. My collections mostly come to me second hand, through the flea market, the very generous sidewalks of New York and San Francisco, or the thrift store.

New York Images

New York, New York

I was thrilled to visit lovely New York city in November with a side trip to Philadelphia to visit the fabulous Nicole. I mostly wanted to visit with friends I hadn't seen in too long, but I also wanted to see the United Nations headquarters and my favorite museum, the Neue Galerie.

Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907, oil, silver & gold on canvas, courtesy of Neue Galerie

The Neue Galerie had the beautiful painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer I on display, whose fascinating story of repatriation you can read about here.

The UN Building was a dream come true for a girl obsessed with anything international. The strong 1960s futuristic design of the building was also a thrill. Here are some photos I took at the UN:

Armchair Travel

Maya stela at the de Young museum
photo by Madeline Horn

Check out these dizzying virtual tours of Mexican Cultural sites I especially love the tours of the Mayan ruins. When you virtually 'visit' Palenque through Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia's site, you can enter tombs and see burials that were closed to the public when I visited the site in person.

Airstream Dreams

A blog post on The Wallflower (through the SF Chronicle) on customized Airstream trailers caught my fancy today http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/wallflower/detail?entry_id=49515

I've always had a special place in my heart for homes on wheels. As a child, my family would pack up the VW van for extended trips all over California, and sometimes all the way to Canada and Mexico. My grandparents also had a portable home, the Toyota Chinook, that looked like a shoebox on a small Toyota pickup. It worked great though, and included a sink, a stove, a toilet, and two beds! The ad above pits the two family camper vehicles against each other. Personally, I loved them both equally.

SFMOMA has a decked out trailer in the collection that I've coveted for years. http://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/9696#

It's on display now; go see it before it goes back in storage!

musee du quai Branly

http://modules.quaibranly.fr/metis/metis_en.html

This site connected with an exhibit (planete metisse) at the Paris museum, musee du quai Branly explores colonization and contact between the culture of the colonized and the colonizer. The exhibit displays objects from the begining of colonization to the present day. This is a subject I think of often, especially with regards to Latin American countries where indigenous people created a hybrid religion, that is still practiced to this day, by masking their own deities in the catholic saints of Spain. This phenomenon took on a whole new level in the Caribbean where Spanish culture met with indigenous culture met with African culture that came with the slaves imported by the Spanish. Masking the deities in Catholic disguise allowed oppressed peoples to continue practicing their religions under the watchful eye of the colonizers.

LACMA

The Pompeii exhibit displays magnificent pieces from the wealthy resort cities on the Bay of Naples, which were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Objects include sculpture, frescoes, and decorative arts. Naturally, photos were not permitted inside the exhibit, so I cannot show my favorite aspect of the exhibit; the hair. The sculptures all featured luscious curly heads of hair, kind of outrageous looking by today's standards, yet so very pretty!

Here is a slideshow from LACMA's website featuring photos of the exhibition galleries: http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/pompeii2/Pompeii%20and%20the%20Roman%20Villa.html


An entire dining room of frescoes from the site of Moregine, to the south of Pompeii, is on display in the exhibit. Entering the room, I felt as if I was stepping back in time. The frescoes feature Apollo, patron of the arts, surrounded by the muses on either side.

Lamp post installation outside at LACMA. Amazing!

http://www.lacma.org/

La Brea Tarpits

Tar Puddle. Tar puddles pop up in various parts of the tar pit park. Visitors can poke a stick in the tar to feel the texture. Be careful though...my sister got tar on her leg from leaning onto the grass by the puddle and the tar wouldn't come off for 2 days!
Visitors even make tar graffitti with sticks dipped in the tar.
This sad mammoth (?) floated back and forth. He must be mounted on a barge. Fat gas bubbles come to the surface of this oily lagoon every few seconds. Slick!

Los Angeles!

Los Angeles! I visited for the first time in years, soaking up the ambiance by spending lots of the day in the car. Although...we did walk from the Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA) to The Farmers Market for lunch. The streets just don't feel the same there for walking. I'm accustomed to the wide sidewalks of San Francisco, whereas L.A. streets are wide, while the sidewalks are narrow. The colorful image above is an installation at LACMA.

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/



The Virtual Museum of Iraq just debuted and its fascinating. What a great way to feature museum collections. It mirrors the experience of being a casual visitor in the galleries. Unlike many online museum collections where visitors need to know what they are looking for to access the collections in a meaningful way. The zooming effect towards the objects makes me dizzy, but its worth it for all the fascinating information you get when you click on an object.



The museum has not been open regularly since 2003, when the museum was seriously looted in the midst of the Iraq war. The virtual museum gives international visitors a chance to see these amazing treasures from the cradle of civilization.