Thursday, January 22, 2015

Brooklyn Museum and Botanic Gardens

Sofia had a day off school so we went to The Brooklyn Museum. Her school participates in something called the Cool Culture Card, so we get in everywhere free now. Score. Saved us about $40 today. 

It was the most prolonged art day I've had with the girls yet. Usually they can only take about an hour or two at a museum, but today we went for 5 hours, with a stop for a little magical break in the Botanical garden in the middle.

This version of Kali, by Brooklyn artist Chindra Ganesha, kept the girls attention for a timeless minute.

On the way into Judy Chicago's dinner party was this beautiful sign. Especially apt for a man named Adam who is married to a woman named Genevieve. (A new Gen of Adam and Eve.)


One of the vagina plates in Judy Chicago's dinner party setting. Intertwining swans as a vagina? Me like:



Check the layout of the girls in the Kehinde Wiley room. (There's a fresco on the ceiling too.)


Sofia in front of Sanford Biggers' incredible "Blossom". Billy Holiday's "Strange Fruit" playing in the background:





After 2 hours in the Museum (including a pre-packed lunch in the cafe) I had to go feed the meter. After we fed the meter the sun came out and we decided to take a detour to the park. There was a Botanic Garden there I didn't even know about. So we headed toward it. Once we got there we were greeted by this amazing little visitor center.

Right inside the gardens there is a Japanese Pond Garden.

Lucia looking over the frozen pond, through the concrete cut-out pear.

By the magic red pagoda. The girls decided this garden was Mama Gia's Garden, from the Jack and The Beanstalk spin-off story I've been telling them. The red pagoda will enter the story soon, I'm sure.

Sofia picked this bouquet for Mama San. A little Japanese White Pine with Maple leaf.

Lucia representing Cousin Rich while waiting for her sister in the bathroom.

Lucia's hair and wild grass in the mid-January mid-afternoon New York sun

Then after our sojourn in the park we went back to the museum. The high-heel shoe show they have there actually made me cry. I couldn't believe it. This was the second time in my life I've cried over fashion. (More if you include emotional episodes of Project Runway.) I felt a bit ridiculous. Then I heard a woman saying to another nearby, "These shoes are bringing a tear to my eye." And I also thought; these tears are real. There is real heart-value to things of beauty. There is "TRUTH." This was a kind of re-revelation for me, something I have to keep rediscovering, because I'm so accustomed to thinking of fashion as trivial.  Here are shoes as fiery wings:


These are perfect.

There was a room on the way out where you could leave a description on a pink sticky-note and leave it on the wall next to Polaroids of people's shoes. I asked Sofia for a description of this shoe and her response is as good as any ad campaign ever. Better really. I'm amazed.

Sofia noticed that this fish was an upside down boat. (To a fish it would be an upside down fish.) And check out the face on the fin.

I had the girls look for the man in here and they finally found him. Like a tattoo come to life.

This piece, made out of corn kernels, is called Avarice. We spent some time playing I Spy with it. "I spy tiny bottles." "I spy slices of turkey." "I spy a cowboy hat."

The girls pointing to the great eye of the Brooklyn Museum.


We watched this little musical vignette from Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette," set to the tune of "I Want Candy" a few times. They won't learn about Marie Antoinette getting her head cut off by the hungry revolutionaries for another decade probably. For now, it is all just enchanting. As the song played I chanted behind them to the underlying rhythm in the song, "Shave and a haircut, five cents. Shave and haircut, five cents. Shave and a haircut, five cents."

One of the best days of my life.

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