February 15th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Family, General, Politics, visual arts, Women
On February 12, 2018, the portraits of the 44th President and First Lady of the United States were unveiled. How do I like them? Let me, as it were, count the ways. The paintings are modern. The artists who made them (Kehinde Wiley, b. 1977, and Amy Sherald, b. 1973)...
January 17th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Matters of the Spirit, visual arts
My brother the Boston Lawyer mentioned a couple months ago that he was reading Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2017). I thought that was an interesting choice for him, a little off-road considering his normal preferences. When My Dear One...
May 10th, 2017 | Architecture and Design, Europe, Family, Friends, General, Memory, Travel, visual arts
Gounod’s Faust was the first opera I ever saw, and I saw it at Palais Charles Garnier in Paris in March 1970. As we ascended the massive stair forty-eight years later, studied Marc Chagall’s rainbow of a ceiling and gazed out over the loggia outside the ornate Grand...
October 12th, 2016 | General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture, Shopping, Travel, United States, visual arts
The Mall of America is… just…horrible. My Dear One suggested we visit. We weren’t in the mood to shop but we were curious about this place that is a destination for visitors from around the world. Parking was well-nigh impossible. There were lots outside and...
October 12th, 2016 | Architecture and Design, Family, General, music, Travel, United States, visual arts
There is sculpture everywhere. Sofas, side tables and chairs in the park, children playing, bears looking confused, a marching band worth of horns, welded dinosaurs, silvery dancers, and even Frank Lloyd Wright looking approvingly at his hotel and bank downtown....
October 12th, 2016 | Architecture and Design, Friends, General, Memory, Travel, United States, visual arts
There were dropped jaws and more polite phrasings like, “What has persuaded you to make this move?” when I told people that I was moving to Iowa, in 1985 for a job as curator of education at the Des Moines Art Center. “Big careers are made in smaller museums,” I often...