Day 7: Brooklyn Bound

Today I spent my time at the Brooklyn Museum. I had hoped to live in Park Slope this summer, thereby being quite close to this amazing institution, but no such luck. So I made the trek out, figuring that since it was supposed to "rain hard" (which it did), I'd be better off to spend as much time inside as possible. Lucky for me, that's easy at the Brooklyn Museum. Even the Subway stop is steps away from the front doors. Excellent!


I started with the special exhibit, Murakami, which is up until July 13. The title is the name of this artist, known for bringing the flat, bright style of manga and anime to fine art. He has collaborated with companies like Louis Vuittan to create corporate logos, but then he has reincorporated those into his artwork. So one of the major issues in his work deals with copyright and intellectual property. The exhibit included multiple galleries with paintings, sculptures, wallpapers and floorcoverings, video, and commercially produced goods. Random note: I thought the prices of gift shop goods related to this exhibit were exhorbitant!


(Sculpture is in the foyer featuring several of Murakami's characters. The balloon, also in the foyer, is Mr. DOB, Murakami's alter ego.)

There were special labels for children, distinguishable only by their content as far as I could tell, interspersed throughout. I saw it in some of the other galleries of the Brooklyn Museum as well. I like it when museums do this. I think it's much more inviting and engaging for children, and it helps adults who may be unsure how to interpret the museum for young visitors. (I did, however, see some excellent examples of this, too, throughout the day. Hurrah for adults who take the time to talk things through with children!)

I don't know a lot about manga and anime, and they're genres that I just haven't been able to drum up much interest in. I needed K, T, and H, or S, with me for this exhibit, I think. I did enjoy the thought-stretching process of reminding myself that:
1)Just because this work looks cartoony doesn't mean it's innocent. (The same is true of cartoons, actually.) In fact, much of this was sexually explicit. 2)There's no reason guardian spirits can't or shouldn't look like cartoons. Even cute, cuddly cartoons.

It was just difficult for me to disassociate the bright, seemingly cheerful palettes and sharp, unrealistic lines that I associate with children's animation from kids' themes. But it's good to expose ourselves to new things and challenge our assumptions, and I spent an hour and a half or so doing just that. I tried to listen to the PocketMuseum audio gallery guide on my cell phone, but it was almost impossible. First, the artist himself was doing the talking, and he was not recorded well and difficult to understand. Second, the galleries were among the loudest I've ever been in, and even while wedging a spare finger far down the ear canal, I couldn't block out enough sound to follow. So I gave up, although I'm generally a fan of using the cell phone to dial for more information. As long as it's a weekend and doesn't count against my minutes.

I moved next to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which currently houses Ghada Amer: Love Has No End through October 19. This featured embroidered paintings and other works, some of which I'm certain I've seen before but can't remember when or where, that address the role of women as well as current violence and stereotypes about Islam. I found the descriptive labels very helpful in pointing out details that I would otherwise have missed.

Then I spent a good deal of time examining Judy Chicago's installation The Dinner Party. This is the famous work that has a triangle banquet table set with thirteen place settings on each side, each one created and embroidered for a specific woman who has shaped history. The floor consists of white tile with 999 other women's names inscribed in gold. (Like the wolves in the Guggenheim, I didn't count these names.) There are also banners as you enter with lines of the artist's poetry, and a series of informative panels in an adjoining space telling about the women, which currently blends into the small exhibit Votes for Women . All in all, Chicago's installation and accompanying materials were very beautiful and informative. I walked around the tables twice, and I know I could still be finding many more details to study. I did find some errors in the biographical panels, and quite a bit of obviously biased writing, but it was beautiful and provocative nonetheless. What's the point of being an artist if you can't proclaim your bias?

Another part of the museum I particularly enjoyed were the period rooms. Taken from actual houses, these rooms have been installed in the museum to demonstrate a variety of decorating and architectural aesthetics. I would have enjoyed learning even more about the rooms, but it was a pleasant walk through in any case. I even spotted a reproduction chintz used in Wylie House window treatments upstairs, and sure enough, it was an early 1830s Winterthur reproduction. One of the things I particularly appreciated about their approach to these rooms was the transparency of the process. One of the labels for the Weil-Worgelt Study said, "In making such decisions [about which interpretive period to restore the rooms to], curators shape how viewers perceive history and in some ways rewrite the past." A similar reference was made in regards to the Jan Martense Schenck House. I think it's very important that museums acknowledge what they're doing implicitly as well as explicitly, and I was glad for this wording in the exhibit text.

These types of "role of museums" references were in labels in the Egyptian collection as well. In particular, an entire label was devoted to the concept of provenance and described how museums acquire artifacts. The Brooklyn Museums Egyptian collection is supposed to be the third best in the world, and it was quite impressive. There was also more multi-media in this area, such as the computer that allowed examination of the postures of several statues in the collection to see what they might symbolize. The labels were explicitly intended to be educational, addressing such topics as Egypt's relation to the rest of Africa, magic, and the role of women. I love Egyptian art and artifacts, and these were quite impressive. Something about it didn't meet my expectations, though, and I think it's something silly like the fact that this was much more spread out than, for example, the touring King Tut exhibition or the Field Museum's Egyptian exhibit. There's something a bit ridiculous about saying that an exhibit is too spread out and too bright, but I think that's how I feel about this. Maybe I was just getting tired. No matter, though, because I would still highly recommend this third floor, and I hope to go back there again.

I spent the scant time remaining going quickly through the African art gallery and the Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770-1900 exhibit that will be up through June 15. I probably should have spent more time in this last exhibit, but I did learn fascinating things about making woodblock prints. Again, I wished K, T, and H had been with me for this exhibit. I didn't make it to Japonisme in American Graphic Art, but hopefully I can get to it next time. There does need to be a next time; this museum is big and engaging, not to mention provocative. (Remember the Sensation exhibit? You do, even if you don't think you do.)


Oh, wait. I saw one more thing in the museum: From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith. This was a medium-sized room with modernist jewelry by this Brooklyn-born jewelry maker and others with shared aesthetics. I enjoyed it! It had great music playing, too. See, I told you there was a lot going on at this museum!

Before returning home, I decided I needed to check out one of the local restaurants. I chose La Fonda Antioqueno, a Colombian restaurant, because I figured I could handle the menu language (which turned out to be translated into English anyway) and because I decided I could afford the daily special. ($10.05 with tax.) Saturday's special is steak in mushroom and onion sauce with sides of salad, rice, and fried green plantains. The meal came on two plates, one for the steak, and one for the sides. The rice was a heap of plain white rice, and the salad consisted of lettuce, cubed carrots, peas, onions, tomato, and beet. It was garnished with a wedge of lime, which I squeezed liberally over it. The plantains were fried into a patty.

I loved the steak from the first bite. It was tender and flavorful with tastes I couldn't quite identify, beyond the saltiness. The bland salad and rice were a good balance to the saltiness of the steak, which did seem to increase throughout the meal. (I wish someone had refilled my water!) I thoroughly enjoyed the plantain, which I broke off and ate in bite-sized chunks, not sure what else was expected of me. I would like to try more things at this restaurant, which featured riding gear, Columbia-emblazoned shirts, and a TV mutely playing a Columbian TV station, but I think I'll have to stick to the daily special or appetizers, as it's a bit beyond my price range for most other things.

[Note: Further research leads me to suspect this restaurant is part of a chain. Disappointing! It was still good, though, and a place I'd never been. So I'm still going to count it as a success.]