Visit a museum once a month

This is the house in which Peter Paul Rubens used to live in. The house originates from the early 17th century and is in really good shape. A lot of the painters work is hanging there and it so beautiful: the detailed painted faces and clothes. It was very fascinating.
Funny: In the first few rooms the radio was switched on and we visited them while listening to Cher. Very inappropriate, but funny.

(Van Speelklok tot Pierement)
A very nice museum with so many beautiful pieces, nice music and a lot to do for children. I went there with my daughter and she enjoyed it, too. (Every night, I ask her what her favorite thing of the day was. Most of the time it was playing or eating something sweet, but today it was the museum!!!)
We also joined a tour around the most interesting pieces and it was really great. The museum praises itself to be the most cheerful museum there is – and I think it really is… ;-)

went to go see the Michener “The Floating World” exhibit, along with “The Language of Prints”. Next month is an exhibit – Reimagining Space – that I’m keen to see. Plus there are a bunch of little galleries that have interesting stuff. Near & Dear and I made a “First Thursday” promise to have a nice lunch and go do something cultural. We’ll see if we can pull this off a couple of times before I call it a done thing.

My associate liked the ginger flavored soda from Africa the best. I preferred some of the refreshing apple flavor soda from Peru. We both liked the carrot flavored soda from Japan. We did not like the African Mint soda or the Italian soda that tasted like Alka Seltzer. There were over 70 sodas from around the world and our stomachs were turning after the first two continents. We learned that the original coke formula was invented in 1886 in Atlanta. Two years later a smart marketing guy tried the soda, bought the company and grew distribution. The information on marketing was worth the trip: creative marketing grew the company more than any other company attribute. That investment includes the impressive new World of Coke Museum that we visited. The 4D show was better than most Disney shows, the history exhibit was slick (and never mentioned the secret ingredient of the original formula), the kids lined up to get their photos with the Coke Polar Bear and every turn was a carefully crafted commercial that also entertained. I was surprised to learn how many products are Coke including Odawalla, Poweraid, Minute Maid, Godiva coffee drinks and even the canned green tea that I find only when I travel in Japan.

I accidentally visited the Stain Glass Museum. I was exploring the pier in Chicago with my son. Passing the McDonald’s, Starbuck’s and Great American Dog, the path opened up into the largest collection of stain glass in the world. What an unlikely and interesting discovery tucked between the parking garage and the fried dough concessions! Some of the windows reminded me of quilts creating mosaic patterns from colored glass. One window had huge chunks of glass jutting out in a third dimension and bending the light carried on the jutting pieces. The Tiffany windows were especially beautiful with swirling colors in panes of glass assembled in landscapes and flowers. I thought Tiffany made geometric lamps, and there were some of those too. There was a large collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designs and an endless collection of church windows. Some of the rooms were dark with the window lit from behind. Several widows were mounted so that the sunlight illuminated them with the Chicago Lake Front beyond.

This museum just keeps getting better! The new climbing structure is so great that my thirteen year old daughter quickly followed my six year old son, forgetting all the previous conversations about being allowed to be part of the adult team. We spent over 6 hours in the museum, including lunch at Au Bon Pain which is a big improvement over the McDonalds. The green roof was especially interesting to me. In 2007, a green roof was installed which looks like a field of trays covering a flat rooftop. Benefits include lower inside temperatures during summer, less rain run off, a small contribution to reducing green house gasses and statistically significant improvement in the mental and physical health of office workers who have a view of the green rooftop instead of the usual flat tar rooftop.

The castle is a blast. Hammond was rich, imaginative and capable. On a steep slope of Gloucester waterfront, he built a castle complete with towers, drawbridge, great hall and secret passages. To the end of the great hall, he attached pieces of a medieval town, including the front of a bakery, a butcher and a church around a covered courtyard with a pool. The house construction includes floors, fireplaces, walls, ceilings, organs, bookcases, medieval stain glass windows and other stuff he and his wife collected with their abundant wealth and mutual love of art and history. The dining room has an authentic French ceiling, German walls and an Italian Floor. One of the bedrooms has a floor that was in the Columbus family and a secret passage in the back of the corner daybed connected to the basement. During their lifetime Hammond and his wife opened the house as a museum and it is full of their amazing stuff gathered to bursting in a disorganized clutter that is fun and inspiring.

When we went to Sainte-Chapelle (built in 1248), we looked up at the hundreds of stained glass windows speckled with faces, animals, buildings and other images. The windows start above the tall painted walls and stretch up fifty feet to the vaulted roof. We gazed at the spectacular display and discussed the patterns, the colors, the arrangement of the panels on one end of the church and the amazing patterns in the round window above the door.

The next day, we were on our way to the Louvre and we stopped in at the small museum near the hotel because we could get in for free with our four day museum pass. What a nice surprise. There were stain glass panels from churches of the same period as Sainte-Chapelle. Look at the detail! There are expressions in the faces and textures in the cloth. In the chapel, we did not see any of this resolution that the artists created hundreds of years ago and placed almost a hundred feet high. This easily overlooked museum captured a piece of a lost church and brought it down so we can see up close the amazing detail that must be in every one of those thousands of panels.

This museum is so big and so much that I could use a whole memory card with photos of violins. It is interesting to me that the violins have not changed much. The bows are different (this bow looks more like a bow & arrow kind of bow). The chin rest is a somewhat new invention and the shoulder rest is very modern (both are missing in this painting).

I’ve been to the Louvre three times. It is hard to figure out how to connect with all the hype and the crowds. My son connected with the historical event paintings. I connected with the music paintings.

It is unbelievable that I am able to visit such an amazing museum. Non flash photos are allowed, so I took shots of things that caught my attention. Perhaps I’ll find more words when I’ve had time to process the data.