Saturday November 26, 2022; 9:36 PM EST
- An hour in the museum before driving out of town today, a few highlights. The room with the mummies, and accompanying statues and explanatory signs, more elaborate, richer, fuller than when I was a kid visiting the same museum. Back then it was mainly that exotic mummy with the cloth wrapping loosened and almost transparent on one foot. You could imagine you saw the exotic thing through the cloth, but not so much more. Now it's a more substantial introduction to a distant people. There's a low-relief panel depicting the slaughter of a cow, three feet tied, one attendant about to commence the butchering. Often in museums I don't get the sense that artists are interested in our relationships to plants and animals, our need for food, and the quality of those relationships. But I guess Egyptians were interested.#
- An exhibit addressing the years after World War I in Germany. The sense that a culture can be depressed and grieving, compensating with entertainments, for some years. The idea that after a great wound a culture might need generations to hope for healing. Not that Germany managed it, of course. Near the end of that exhibit, a young soldier in 1940, looking naive, having no clue of what people like him were about to be asked to do, and witness, and approve of. Or be silent about. A self-portrait by a fine photographer, head tilted, thoughtful eyes, a feeling of both beauty and transience, and awareness too.#
- Colors, as if artists asked themselves, What can we make with these fabulous colors? And also, Where can we find the colors that are adequate to what we see in the world? Small prints in black, where even that one color can be presented against the background of the paper with great clarity and even lightness. #
- A feeling of a group of people whose talents are not just in making images, but also in witnessing and fixing in image the range of human experience. Things that need witnessing, need reflection. The thought that on a good day an art museum need not feel like a possession of only a portion of the society, but might invite and reflect the experiences of a wide group of visitors. Should certainly aspire to that.#