Cities of 2019

I'm a bit late to recording the places that AA & I visited, for work or vacation, in 2019. We have some more travel coming up, so it made me realize I had yet to take stock and express how fortunate we are to be able to travel and take in these new experiences (e.g. here is the 2018 list). I've always said that the more you travel, the smaller the world becomes, in ways that are rather humbling. We as a people have a tendency by our nature to see ourselves myopically as being at the "center" of our world, and when you see how many other people out there are existing simultaneously and contiguously, many of whom coincidentally also see themselves in their own "center-world," you realize how short-sighted such a view can be. For some people travel is disheartening or uncomfortable, as you're forced out of a comfort zone, but once you learn to embrace that sense of new-ness, exploring and embracing new cultures and seeing the wonders of new places out there, it's that experience that becomes the most comfortable.

This past year we made a return visit to Iceland because we loved it so much the first time. We saw so many beautiful natural wonders along the southern coast (picture at right of me with a glacier in the distance), but we still never saw the Northern Lights, so at least one more winter visit is in order! Having an opportunity to visit Vienna in November also was very nice (picture above of us on the grounds of the Schoenbrunn Palace). Vienna is a sophisticated city with some great museums and the coffee house culture is more relaxing than I anticipated. It was a long-awaited opportunity for me to see 4 major works of art I had waited a long time to see: Pieter Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow; Benvenuto Cellini's salt cellar; Antonio Canova's monument to the Archduchess Maria Christina; and Gustav Klimt's The Kiss. None of them disappointed.

Within the USA, I was able to get to know Chicago a lot better after we made two visits there together, and I made first-time work-related trips to Minneapolis and Santa Fe. The first city surprised me for its lush greenery (it was June and they had had substantial rain beforehand), and the second surprised me for its dry-desert serenity. I have to confess I'm more of an ocean person than a mountain/desert person, so returning to Ogunquit again gave us a few days of R&R without worrying about site-seeing.

Here's the list of cities I visited in 2019, and ever onward for those of 2020...

Chicago, Illinois (2 visits)
Leeds, England
London, England (2 visits)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
New Haven, Connecticut
New Orleans, Louisiana
Northamptonshire, England
Ogunquit, Maine
Paris, France
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Reykjavik/Hella, Iceland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
St. Petersburg/Palm Harbor/Tarpon Springs, Florida (2 visits)
Vienna, Austria

Projects of 2019

Here's my annual list of professional "projects" that I was involved in and overseeing during 2019. (You can read previous lists here and here.) As I've mentioned in the past, it's good to take stock of these accomplishments because it helps remind me how busy things have been, particularly as I have a tendency to always move on to the next project and forget what I've already done. The photo you see here is of me giving the introductory remarks at an event I coordinated in April, an "Evening at Avery: British Portraiture", to coincide with the exhibition I co-curated (more on that below; no idea whose head that is in the photo!). The event had a surprisingly good turn-out, and our two speakers were Mateusz Mayer, PhD student in art history, who co-curated the exhibition with me, and Dr. Meredith Gamer, assistant professor of art history at Columbia who gave a riveting talk about alternative concepts of 18th-century British portraiture for those who are often forgotten by history and society.

Here is the 2019 list...

• I published two book reviews, which I mentioned about in my Books of 2019 post as well. The first was a short review on Beyond the Face: New Perspectives on Portraiture, about which I posted even more. The second was a review essay in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide on Anthea Callen's new book Looking at Men: Art, Anatomy and the Modern Male Body.
• I curated at work a summer exhibition entitled Animalia: The Essence of Animals in Art, with artwork from the permanent collection dating from 3rd-century Mexican dog sculptures to contemporary Inuit sculptures. During the winter/spring, I co-curated the exhibition Hoppner, Beechey, Fisher, Lavery: Researching Columbia's Portraits with M. Mayer, and we published online a catalogue of the exhibition with essays by both of us, which you can download and read here. My staff and colleagues at work deserve lots of credit for all their help in making these exhibitions possible.
• I acted as curatorial project manager with Dr. Frederique Baumgartner on the "MA in Art History Presents" exhibition at Columbia entitled Clodion (1738-1814) and "Clodion Mania" in Nineteenth-Century France, which has a fantastic online exhibition component you can see here.
• Tomas Macsotay and I co-chaired a panel session entitled "Transnationalism and Sculpture in the Long Nineteenth Century (ca. 1785-1915)" at the annual conference of the College Art Association in February in NYC.
• I served on the selection committee & jury for the 16th annual graduate student symposium co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art and the Dahesh Museum of Art in March in NYC.
• I was the guest speaker at a Columbia Alumni Association of New Mexico event, where I spoke about the collections and our educational programs to alumni. This took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico in September.
• Columbia's Department of Art History and Archaeology had received a small grant to coordinate an international project called Parallel Heritages, with some of their students and students at The Sorbonne, Univ. Paris I, for an international research project on archaeological objects in both collections. I gave presentations at both components, in NYC in March, and in Paris at The Sorbonne in November.
• I also gave a paper entitled "British Portraits at Columbia University: Opportunities for Object-Centered Learning" at the annual Understanding British Portraits seminar, held at the National Portrait Gallery in London in November.
• I participated in the annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries in June in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Totally not work-related, but worth documenting... in February AA & I took a fantastic wine-tasting class that was incredibly informative (we are doing a repeat, focused version on Italian wines later this month), as well as a fun cocktail making class in December. We also went to go see the opera The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera and Moulin Rouge on Broadway.

All in all, another incredibly productive and fulfilling year!

Projects of 2018

Here is my last "highlights" list from 2018...a little late, perhaps, but not by much... (Here is the 2017 list.) I've discovered it's beneficial for me to record these events because it helps me take stock of the activities I've been involved with and what I've accomplished. I have a tendency to forget things and move on, and reflecting on these things annually makes me realize that I am doing quite a lot professionally and that I need to stop being so self-critical about what it is that I am not doing.

The picture you see here commemorates one of the more memorable events. In early October, I joined my fellow Solomaniac friend & colleague Carolyn Conroy and numerous descendants of the Solomon/Salaman family for the rededication of the Salaman family graves and a visit to the recently rededicated grave of Simeon Solomon, all at Willesden Jewish Cemetery in London. It was a special and humbling moment to be there.

In addition to all our travels (professional and vacation), here is the 2018 list of projects...

• Published two articles on the sculptor John Gibson: the first, co-authored with M.G. Sullivan, was on Gibson's portraiture practice, and was published in Tate Papers this past June 2018; the second was on Gibson's portrait statue of the Countess Beauchamp, and was published in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide in October 2018. I am very pleased with both of these and they will help advance awareness about his work to those interested in sculpture studies.
• bklynbiblio celebrated its 10th birthday!
• I curated an exhibition entitled Wisdom of the East: Buddhist Art from the J. G. Phelps Stokes Collection which was on view during the summer months at Columbia University.
• I acted as curatorial project manager with Dr. Frederique Baumgartner on two "MA in Art History Presents" exhibitions at Columbia: Art in Life: Engravings by Robert Nanteuil (c. 1623-1678) from the Frederick Paul Keppel Collection (Spring 2018) and Looking East: James Justinian Morier and Nineteenth-Century Persia (Fall 2018), supplementing the latter show with a curated installation of Iranian ceramics from the 10th-19th centuries.
• Co-chaired a panel session with Petra Chu entitled "Born-digital and Other E-journals in Art History: Crossing Boundaries among Art Historians, Editors, and Librarians" at the Art Libraries Society of North America conference in February in NYC.
• Served on the selection committee & jury for the Graduate Student Symposium co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art and the Dahesh Museum of Art in March in NYC.
• Co-chaired an all-day panel session with Tomas Macsotay entitled "The National in Discourses of Sculpture in the Long Modern Period (c. 1750-1950)" at the Association for Art History conference in April in London.
• Gave a 30-minute talk on Gibson's Tinted Venus at the Met Breuer in NYC in April for a curatorial study day in conjunction with the exhibition Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body.
• Attended the conference The Afterlife of Sculptures: Posthumous Casts in Scholarship, the Market, and the Law at the Dedalus Foundation in NYC in May.
• Attended the conference Multiple Modernities in American Art at Sotheby's in NYC in May.
• Co-presented a paper with Melanie Wacker entitled "From Curatorial Files to Linked Open Data: Cataloging the Art Collection at Columbia University" at the 8th International Conference of Art Libraries at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in October.
• Organized a half-day symposium entitled Global Art History and Nineteenth-Century Art at Columbia in November.
• Gave an hour-long presentation on the Columbia art collection and object-centered learning at Fairfield University Art Museum in Connecticut in November.
• Took a bread baking class with AA in January that was incredible fun, and took a stone carving sculpture class in September that I'm actually still doing (more on that in another blog post!).
• Not that it's professional but worth documenting...went to see the following theatrical performances: John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons (February); Desperate Measures (June); Ballet Folklorico de Mexico (November); and La Traviata at The Met (December).

Cities of 2018

The past few years (e.g. here and here), I've been recording a list of all the cities outside NJ/NY that either I visited for work-related purposes, or that AA and I went to for a vacation. There is little doubt that the two most remarkable places we visited in 2018 were the furthest north and the furthest south I've ever been before: Iceland and Costa Rica. Both of these trips were remarkable for being very nature-oriented. 

Reykjavik is fine city, but it was our Golden Circle tour that brought us to Thingvellir National Park, where we saw the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates crashed against one another--a humbling experience--as well as the site where their Parliament met for over 1,000 years until they built an actual building in Reykjavik in 1930. The waterfalls and geysers were spectacular as well. Iceland is like being on another planet; it's completely desolate but remarkable for its unusual geological formations and hot springs. We missed the Northern Lights and the spa experience, so another visit is in order! Save money if you're thinking about going, though, because it's not cheap!

On the complete opposite spectrum, Costa Rica's southwestern Pacific coast was unlike anything I ever experienced, with spectacular views and wildlife that made me smile non-stop. Monkeys howl in the trees around you and greet you on your patio (and, yes, try to steal your food!), and there are giant iguanas, tropical birds, and actual crabs that walk right past you too. We went zip-lining while we were there, among other adventures--something I never thought I would do (picture at right, climbing stairs to the next zip!)--and I loved it. It was an incredible outdoorsy trip with a wonderfully relaxing hotel at the top of a mountain.

We also had wonderful opportunities to visit with family, and another great adventure happened in our own backyard when, in one day with AA's family, we toured NYC by boat (Circle Line), land (walking the streets), and air--a helicopter tour (photo at the top!). The helicopter tour was exhilarating...if also admittedly a tad frightening...but that's what these adventures are all about...pushing yourself just a little further to experience all that life has to offer. We always take stock and remember how fortunate we are to be able to travel, and we are forever grateful for these experiences of the world. Here are the Cities of 2018...

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Athens/Atlanta, Georgia

Fairfield, Connecticut

The Hague/Delft, The Netherlands

Kansas City, Missouri (leaving for here tonight!)

Leamington Spa, England

Liverpool, England

London, England (2 visits)

Manuel Antonio/Quepos, Costa Rica

Montreal, Canada

New Haven, Connecticut

Ogunquit, Maine

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Quebec City, Canada

Reykjavik, Iceland

St. Petersburg/Palm Harbor/Tarpon Springs, Florida (3 visits)

Morier and Persia Exhibition

It may seem strange to be blogging about an exhibition that has now closed, but it only occurred to me last night that I never wrote about the exhibition Looking East: James Justinian Morier & Nineteenth-Century Persia that we recently had on view in our display cases in Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. (Chalk it up to having been too busy for months to actually write about it!) The exhibition was part of the MA in Art History Presents series, the second in a new series in which the MA students curate an exhibition utilizing art from Columbia's permanent collection, under the guidance of Dr. Frederique Baumgartner (director of the MA program, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University) and me (curator of Art Properties, Avery Library, Columbia University). You may recall that earlier this year we opened the first of these shows about the 17th-century printmaker Robert Nanteuil.

This exhibition centered around the portrait you see here of the writer and diplomat James Justinian Morier (ca. 1780-1849), attributed to the painter George Henry Harlow (1787-1819) and painted in 1818. At first glance the portrait is a theatrical depiction of Morier dressed in Orientalist clothing, but in fact there is some historical accuracy to his clothing as representing what men wore in the early years of the Qajar dynasty (1794-1925) in Iran. Morier was part of the British diplomatic service that sought to establish a peace treaty between Persia and Britain during the years of the Napoleonic wars. Morier wrote and illustrated two travelogues about his time in Persia (published in 1812 and 1818), and then went on to have an illustrious career as a Romantic novelist with his most famous book being The Adventures of Hajji Baba, of Ispahan (1824). The exhibition sought to contextualize the historical period in which the painting and his illustrated texts (including the image of the "Persian Breakfast" you see at top), while considering ideas of colonialism and Orientalism in the writings of Edward Said and Linda Nochlin. I curated with one of the students a supplementary section as well, focusing on a selection of Iranian ceramics from the collection.

It was quite a successful exhibition, and we produced an excellent online companion exhibition, including a series of essays by the students introduced by Baumgartner and me. This project was inspired by research I had done previously on this painting, having given two conference papers about it in Pittsburgh in October 2015 and in Raleigh in January 2017. It's a great tale of how a painting first draws you in because of its appearance, but the more you look into it and consider all the imagery, as well as the background of the sitter and his world, it shows how art can convey new ideas and still have an incredible lifeline 200+ years after the events in which it was first painted.

Hotel Archaeology

Quebec City has one of the most picturesque historic centers that I have ever visited in North America. There is something incredibly charming about all the flagstone facades, the cobblestone streets, the dated historic buildings, the division of upper and lower cities each with their own interesting sights, and the inherently French provincial vibe that the old town exudes. AA, his cousin GDA, and I just returned from a brief visit there (after a couple of days in Montreal). The temperature was unseasonably, frigidly cold, and there was about a foot of snow on the ground with flurries continuing our entire visit. You can see below the picture of AA and me outside the Chateau Frontenac (now a Fairmount Hotel) and witness our winter-like experience! But the overall icy-cold experience helped open up the holiday season for me, so it was all worth it.

Even more intriguing was the hotel where we stayed this time: Auberge Saint-Antoine. This was an incredibly relaxing, luxurious hotel/spa experience; when you leave for the evening for dinner, you come back to your room and discover turn-down service, herbal tea, subdued lighting, and a CD with Diana Krall singing soft jazz. What fascinated me about the hotel most, however, was how they incorporated archaeological artifacts as part of the decor and history of the site. The hotel was originally a fort and merchant house in the 17th century, and over time the grounds and buildings changed. When the hotel underwent renovations about 15 years ago, they excavated hundreds of cultural artifacts, like fragments of ceramic dishes, glassware, knives and forks, leather shoes, cannonballs, pipes, ... the list goes on and on. All of the artifacts have been beautifully displayed in vitrines embedded in the walls (as you in the above image). Even the rooms are themed and named around a particular ceramic fragment. Most of the artifacts date from the late 18th/early 19th centuries, but it is fascinating to discover some objects dating back to the late 1600s.

The personal service, the comfortable room, the delicious food and cocktails, and the archaeology-as-decor all make for a wonderful experience in one of the most picturesque cities I know. I look forward to another visit in the near future!

Art Libraries at the Rijksmuseum

I was quite honored to be among the guest speakers for the recent 8th International Conference of Art Libraries, held at the Rijksemuseum in Amsterdam (facade of the building seen here). The conference itself had some very interesting papers and it helped inspire a few ideas in my head, which is always a good thing. I was surprised that so many people from the U.S. were presenting, but most of the audience members came from throughout Europe. Two speakers even presented about art libraries in Japan, which quickly reminded me that we need to stop thinking so Euro-centrically about all these things. 

My co-presenter (Melanie Wacker, also at Columbia; photo at left of us taken by Ann Lindell) and I gave a talk entitled "From Curatorial Files to Linked Open Data: Cataloging the Art Collection at Columbia University," discussing background on the art collection my department oversees and how our management of metadata and cataloging moved from traditional paper files to a metadata schema that we were then able to convert to MARC so as to be published in the Columbia Libraries online catalog, to convert for use in the soon-to-be-launched Digital Art Properties collection, and then used as the basis for a linked open data project that was a grant to test art for use in BIBFRAME, the future XML-based form of cataloging established by the Library of Congress that eventually will replace MARC. I realize much of what I just wrote there may seem like gibberish to anyone but IT specialists and librarians, but the point is that up until recently no one could search anything in the Columbia art collection, whereas now the art collection is now not just discoverable but available in digital format (highlights anyway) and is being used to establish new models of excellence for ways of cataloging art by libraries in the future. It's been a team effort that we are all proud of.

It was quite humbling to be presenting at the Rijksmuseum, one of the grandest collections of art in the world. This was my second visit there, the first time two years ago when AA and I traveled to Amsterdam. On this trip we also made a visit to The Hague where we visited the Maurithuis and I truly fell in love with Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, one of those examples of art where you have to see it in person to truly admire its majesty in terms of lighting, brushstroke, and overall composition. She is more modern in her appearance than I ever realized. We also visited Delft, Vermeer's home, which was an absolutely charming city. I also had an opportunity to visit the Hermitage Amsterdam and see the Neoclassicism exhibition with works from St. Petersburg; the Canova sculptures were just exquisite. I'm in London right now writing this, with a few other things to do here before heading home in a couple of days.

Time and Experience

Whenever my dear friend JAM emails me wondering how I am, because she hasn't seen any updated posts on bklynbiblio, I know it's been a while since I've blogged and I've overdue a post or two! A few new posts will be coming over the next week or so, but for now I thought I would make a return by commenting on the passage of time (hence the pocket watch), but also the importance of life experiences. This past Christmas Eve, I included in a post that in general my blogging had dropped overall largely because of a general lack of time due to the numerous projects I have going on both related to work and of my own professional interest. But I also noted that I had recognized a shift in my own life over the past few years, where the recording of events is no longer as important to me as actually "living in the moment" has become instead. I'm certainly not the first person, nor will I be the last, to ever come to this rather individualized existential realization. However, I recently came across someone from the past actually acknowledging this very idea in their own writing. I came across the following in a travel journal I was reviewing related to a current project.

Greatly to my regret, I find it impossible for me to continue my journal in the foregoing way. My desire had always been that my journal should record not only facts, but also, to a certain extent, impressions and descriptions. As writing matter it would in that way afford me much more temporal enjoyment, and as reading matter would, I believe, be much more interesting in the future. But lack of time forbids such continuance. I have so much to see, and so much to do in order to see it, that it is wholly impracticable at even the present length, to keep the writing up to date. And so for the present at all events, my "journal" must consist of little more than more or less disconnected notes.

Those words were written on November 5, 1892 in Japan by James Graham Phelps Stokes (1872-1960) in his travel journal that he kept while touring Asia. (This journal is part of the Stokes papers in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia.) His brother and he had only just arrived in Japan a few weeks earlier, their first stop on what would be a year-long trip from there to China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. His previous travel entries had been incredibly detailed, but there is a marked difference in tone--more phrases and personal asides then documented historical facts--than the earlier portion.

When I read his words, I couldn't help but smile and find it reassuring that even in 1892--without technology, just a notebook and pen--someone could still feel as overwhelmed attempting to record life in detail, rather than actually living it. It was a subtle reminder for me that, regardless of the passage of time, we humans are not much different from the people of the past.

Happy 2018!

Happy New Year!! Well, yes, we are a bit late for the official, annual HNY message on bklynbiblio (here, here, and here, for instance), but this year we were doing something quite different and extraordinary, and we were traveling on January 1st as a result, so no chance to blog. We went to Ciudad de Mexico! The picture above is AA, his cousin GD, and me...after a few tequilas...ringing in the new year at the balcony bar of our hotel overlooking the Zócalo plaza and the main cathedral. We had a wonderful night, met some new people, ate a delicious multi-course dinner, and danced a bit too.

We had arrived on the previous Friday (after an exhausting red-eye flight), and after an early check-in and breakfast, headed to the Frida Kahlo House with timed tickets we purchased online (good thing too, as they had run out of tickets for the day as soon as we got there). The house-museum is a bit hagiographic, but considering it is meant to give you the sense of who Kahlo was, it does its job relatively well. You do come away sympathizing with her pain and anguish--seeing the wheelchair she used, the corsets and back-braces she wore, and the bed she lay in staring at the mirror on top while painting self-portraits--but I can't say you come away with a greater appreciation for her as an artist. The picture you see here is a photo I took in the exhibition room where some of her indigenous-style clothing was on display. Across from the vitrines were photographs of Kahlo taken by her father in some of these dresses, including this of the artist at age 25. I was pleasantly surprised by the unplanned mirror-effect of how her clothing appeared around her face. What struck me most about the numerous photographs of Kahlo on display was how much, in recent memory, Salma Hayek has come to dominate our impression of what Kahlo looks like and how she acted. It was refreshing to remove that veneer and actually see the "real Kahlo," albeit through her father's photographic eye.

We went for a stroll afterward in Coyoacán, where on a random street I found this beautiful sanctuary for Our Lady of Guadalupe. Other highlights of the weekend included a fantastic dinner at the San Angel Inn (NOT the one at Epcot Center at Disney World!), and a visit to the university art museum at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), where we saw an interest, compact exhibition about Yves Klein (and some brain-numbing exhibitions by conceptual contemporary artists...the same thing also when we visited Museo Jumex...). GD also took us to the fascinating Museo de El Carmen, a former Carmelite convent where you can see some of their cells, view colonial Catholic paintings and polychrome sculptures of saints, and visit the sepulcher where unknown individuals from the nineteenth century had been buried, but whose mummified bodies are now viewable in class-covered caskets. That particular bit of the weekend may seem an odd way to ring in the new year, but perhaps it was a personal, poetic experience we needed that reminded us about the cycle of life and the ongoing march of time. Or perhaps it was just creepy-fascinating. I'm still trying to decide.

Happy 2018!!

Cities and Projects of 2017

Anyone who has been following bklynbiblio for many years now of course will have noticed the general decrease in the number of posts coming from me. It's not intentional. Time (or lack thereof) has been a key factor, but I will admit that I've discovered a shift in my own attitude about life, which also has affected my blogging. That sounds a bit obnoxiously existential, but what I mean is that I find myself focusing more on living in the moment and enjoying experiences as they are happening, rather than attempting to record things afterward as a memory of an event or experience. I believe I've noted elsewhere, too, that as the world of social media has increased with various platforms, blogging is no longer my only online outlet. Facebook, Instagram, and work-related blog posts, all somehow now come together in conjunction with this blog to provide the snapshot of activities, thoughts, and events. (I still have a Twitter account, but I've largely dropped it; Pres. Tyrant has ruined it for me completely.)

I've also discovered, though, that as I'm getting older I'm having a more difficult time just remembering things the way I used to. I read a book and six months later sometimes I can't even remember the name of the protagonist. That never used to happen before, but I hear it is normal aging. (It better be!) In the spirit of commemorating good fortune over the past year, in that I have been able to see more of the world, this post is a revisit of my travels of 2017 (here is last year's post). I thought I would add this time a section of highlights of professional projects (some related to work) over the course of the year as well. I have a tendency to disregard my past professional activities, because I'm always looking toward the next one (and criticizing myself that I haven't done enough, despite what others say to me). So consider this post also an attempt on my part to slow down and recognize what I have actually done the past year, and why there have been fewer blog posts as a result. And to those of you who have been contacting me the past few months commenting how happy you are to see me blogging again, THANK YOU!

I do want to add that with all the travel either AA & I, or I alone, have done, some of the best memories have been celebrating events with family. For instance, this year AA's parents came out to celebrate Thanksgiving with us, and after that we went to Florida to celebrate Uncle Eddy's 89th birthday and then visit Epcot Center with my godchildren. Good times, indeed, were shared by all.

Here is the 2017 alphabetical list of visited cities outside of NYC...

Cambridge, England
Charlottesville, Virginia
Dieppe, France
Fairfield, Connecticut
Houston, Texas
Leicestershire/Northamptonshire, England
London, England (2 visits)
Mexico City, Mexico (well, technically, we haven't gone yet, but we will before the end of the year!)
Ogunquit, Maine
Paris/Versailles, France
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Portland, Maine
Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Rouen, France
Salem, Massachusetts
St. Petersburg/Palm Harbor/Tarpon Springs, Florida (3 visits)
Toronto, ON, Canada
Washington, D.C.

Professional Highlights of the Year (in no particular order):

• Co-taught with Prof. Robert Harrist an undergraduate, semester-long seminar at Columbia on "Public Outdoor Sculpture at Columbia and Barnard" (including watching a bronze pouring of sculpture at the Modern Art Foundry, which was utterly fascinating and almost transcendental; see the picture at left)
• Took a professional development course on "Basic Drawing Techniques for Art Professionals" at NYU
• Published an essay "Before Rome: John Gibson and the British School of Art" in the book The British School of Sculpture, c.1768-1837, eds. Burnage & Edwards (Routledge, 2017; this project took seven years to see to completion, if you can believe it)
• Published a review on the exhibition Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity, at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (which you can read here)
• Took two research trips to the U.K. and did work at the National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Victoria & Albert Museum and National Arts Library, University of Cambridge, and in a private collection
• Gave a paper at the "New Scholarship in British Art History" conference at the North Carolina Museum of Art
• Gave two separate talks on the sculptors John Gibson and Auguste Rodin at the Florence Academy of Art in Jersey City
• Co-presented with Stephen Brown (The Jewish Museum) about artist Florine Stettheimer and her world for the EdelHaus Salon
• Organized & led a round-table discussion called "The Power of Political Protest Art" for the exhibition ...Or Curse the Darkness at the Atlantic Gallery
• Served on the selection committee & jury for the Graduate Student Symposium co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art and the Dahesh Museum of Art
• Participated in a study day on Pre-Raphaelite art and design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Participated in a workshop on the care and preservation of paintings, sponsored by the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts
• Attended the College Art Association conference in NYC
• Attended a Q&A talk with Jed Perl and the Calder Foundation on the release of the first volume of Perl's biography on sculptor Alexander Calder
• Had outpatient surgery with a relatively lengthy, painful recovery (okay, so this wasn't a professional event, but it did take its toll on me this year), and
• Went to see on Broadway Get on Your Feet!, Sunset Boulevard with Glenn Close, and Hello, Dolly with Bette Midler (again, not professional, but definitely worth recording as important events)

Cities of 2016

Following up on last year's list of cities, here is the 2016 list. When I think back on the cities AA and I visited (or that I traveled to solo mostly for work-related reasons), the highlight of the year was related to the picture you see here. AA took this of me at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, northeast of Mexico City. The temple was constructed over 1500 years ago and although one assumes it is related to the Aztecs, in fact it was constructed nearly a thousand years before the Aztecs rose to power. The views from the top at over 240 feet high were breathtaking. The height wasn't what made the climb so daunting; it was the steps that were treacherous and steep, with all these people clutching onto a rope ahead of you. If one person dropped, you knew in a moment all of you would be tumbling down the pyramid like a set of dominoes. I'm not exactly the most physical-fitness-oriented individual, so having reached the top was quite a challenge and it was a great personal triumph. Our long weekend trip to Mexico City over Memorial Day was really fantastic; I look forward to a return trip and to see other areas of Mexico.

The other vacation highlight of the year was our trip to Amsterdam and Copenhagen over Thanksgiving. These were two cities I had never been to before. I loved Amsterdam; the picture here is a selfie of us with one of the canals behind us. I have been jokingly referring to Amsterdam as Brooklyn with canals and 17th-century "brownstones." It's a very laid-back city, easy to get around, and everyone speaks English. The scent of marijuana floats through the air in different sections of the city, coming from the numerous coffee houses, so you can't help but be relaxed. It will be great to go back one Spring in the near future to see the tulips and windmills in other areas of the Netherlands. Copenhagen, in contrast, was quite posh (and expensive!), with one Neoclassical palazzo after another lining the streets. The New Harbor area is absolutely charming, and there is a great new food market and rising arts scene too. There was construction taking place everywhere in the city while we were there, which was frustrating, but on the positive side of things the Christmas markets were open and I drank a lot of gløgg, which was delectable in the chilly weather.

Here's the list of the cities outside the NYC area I was fortunate to visit in 2016...

Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Charlotte, North Carolina
Copenhagen, Denmark
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
Liverpool, England
London, England (2 visits)
Mexico City, Mexico
New Haven, Connecticut
Ogunquit, Maine
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Portland, Maine (2 visits)
Provincetown, Massachusetts

St. Petersburg/Palm Harbor, Florida (3 times to see family & friends!)
West Palm Beach, Florida

First Snowfall: 2016-2017 Fall/Winter

Last night I was supposed to be flying to London. My flight wound up being delayed for three hours, and then when we were on the plane itself, we got word that the flight itself had been canceled. Needless to say, everyone was furious and exasperated. Living not far from the airport, AA picked me up, so I was able to spend the night home again, but many other people had to stay at hotels and take another flight home. All that said, had things gone according to plan, I would have missed our very brief first snowfall of the 2016-2017 fall/winter season. This happened today just after noon. I happened to notice out our windows the white powdery stuff coming down. By the time we tried to take photos out our windows, it was already dissipating. It was over in about 10 minutes, and it's now blue skies and puffy clouds.

Since I could not record my actual photo or video of the snowfall as I have in the past (note that last winter's first snowfall didn't even happen until January!), I thought I would share the lovely photograph of a snowflake above. Hyperallergic's Allison Meier wrote an article, published on Dec. 1st, about the first snowflake photographs taken by Wilson Bentley, a farmer from Jericho, VT. He began this in 1885 and recorded over his lifetime more than 5000 different snowflake photographs. The implication behind this is that he managed to "prove" the hypothesis that no two snowflakes are the same. Aside from the science, the images really quite lovely. You can read the article here, which includes a number of these images, with links to other sites where his archive has been digitized.

MWA XLIV: Roelofs's Windmill

Better late than never, as they say! I realize I've been offline with the blog the past few months, but it's largely because I have been so busy and working on a few writing projects in my non-job time. As I mentioned in a previous post, AA & I took a week-long vacation over Thanksgiving to go to Amsterdam and Copenhagen: two cities I had never visited before. It was quite a nice trip. The weather was cool and it rained a lot in Amsterdam, but I truly enjoyed the canals and the charming architecture in Amsterdam, and the majesty of the Nordic palazzo and upscale fishing village feel one finds in Copenhagen. We hit just about every major museum, not surprisingly. It was at the Rijksmuseum where I discovered this gem of a painting from the 19th century: Willem Roelofs, Meadow Landscape with Cattle, ca. 1880. We did not venture to the picturesque regions of The Netherlands where one can see old, working windmills such as the one in this painting, so this will have to suffice for me for the time being...until I get back and see them live.

Roelofs was a member of The Hague School, a group of artists who were inspired by the French Barbizon school of painters, such as Rousseau, Millet, and Corot. These artists began painting the naturalistic landscape of the French countryside as early as the 1830s but came into their own by mid-century, thereafter helping to alter the respectability of landscape painting from something dismissed as a lesser art in prior generations. This idea of depicting the naturalistic landscape as it actually appears, rather than as an idealized scene for a narrative event, arguably goes back to British artists such as Constable and Turner, but in The Netherlands the most obvious source of inspiration goes back even further to the 17th century with the naturalistic Dutch landscapes by artists such as Ruisdael. You can read more about The Hague School here.

While there is an incredible charm to this painting because of the windmill and the beautiful, soft lighting and fluffy clouds, what is striking is how the windmill dominates the space in this vertical painting. Normally one expects to see landscapes as horizontal compositions, panoramic views that show sweeping swathes of nature. Here, however, by reverting to a vertical format, Roelofs transforms the windmill into a portrait, or at least a narrative composition. The pyramidal structure of the windmill and its arms dominate the center point and then moving out diagonally toward the lower left and right lines, creating a pseudo-head-and-shoulders figure. Although the title references the cattle, both they and the man are diminished by the monumentality of the windmill itself, a man-made machine that for the 19th-century viewer demonstrated the development of technology, i.e. man's dominance over nature. Even the arms of the windmill seem to be moving the air and clouds themselves with a superior strength--which is exactly what they are meant to. This interpretation may seem rather droll because the painting is quite beautiful. But this is where Roelofs succeeds. He portrays the power of the windmill as an object of beauty, conveying both its picturesque qualities and the harmonizing of man with nature.

MWA XLII: Tremblay's Raven

AA and I are back from Provincetown; as always, it was a lovely, relaxing week. The two great summer getaway spots for most NYC gays and lesbians are either Fire Island (Cherry Grove/Pines) or Provincetown. I've been to both, and I definitely prefer the latter. Even though Fire Island has the beach literally at your door, its own unique charms, and it takes less travel time (in theory) to get there, I find it too remote and too much of a pretentious scene. I prefer the quietude of the New England coast, but also the option of doing various things if desired, from shopping to tea dance. More importantly, I've always enjoyed Provincetown's local art scene. Admittedly, there are a number of galleries along Commercial Street targeted to the tourist market, with idyllic paintings and photographs of boats, the harbor, and the local streets, all of which of course attracts any visitor's attention, and they do make for lovely souvenirs. But Provincetown has a rich history for more than a century as an artist's colony, and as local artist Thomas Antonelli (who has been there for over 40 years) mentioned to JM and me a few days ago, there used to be a ferry that ran from NYC to Provincetown, which helped to create a logical and strong connection between these two art centers. Whenever I am there, I find myself regularly visiting places like the Rice Polak Gallery, where one can still find neo-realist paintings by Nick Patten, an artist about whom I wrote eight years ago and whose work I still admire for their fascinating viewpoints. Simie Maryles Gallery had an excellent group of realist artists on display, intermingling, for instance, academic studies by Brendan Johnston with luminist landscapes by John Brandon Sills. Blue Gallery showcases pottery by Paul Wisotzky; last year I purchased a bottle-neck vase by him. And the Portland Art Association and Museum organizes interesting exhibitions that focus on artists from the Cape. You can read more about this thriving art scene in Provincetown and its centenary in Brett Sokol's article from August in the New York Times.

This year a work that captured my attention every time I walked down Commercial Street was the image you see above, what I've chosen for the latest Monthly Work of Art: Raven, 2015, by Julie Tremblay. (Coincidentally my friend Shermania blogged last week about this black duck painting by Marsden Hartley that he saw at the MFA Boston and thereafter dubbed "Madam X".) I purchased a photographic print of Raven and will be hanging it in our den not far from the computer where I am writing this post right now. Tremblay runs her own gallery (and full production center, from what it seemed) right at the center of town (I can't even begin to imagine what she must be paying in rent for that space). Much of her work on display is geared toward the tourist market, with lovely scenes of solitary boats in Provincetown Harbor at sunrise and whales emerging from the Atlantic Ocean. I don't meant to suggest anything negative by this remark. The images are charming and perfectly suited for those who want this type of imagery for their homes as souvenirs. Clearly she understands her market, as she makes available reduced-cost prints of some of her works to draw customers in and will even mat and frame them (hence the production center). That said, I'm sure die-hard artists might consider her to be selling out.

Raven, however, goes beyond tourist imagery, and that is what captured my eye. bklynbiblio readers know I love animals and nature, and so of course I am a fan of animal art (e.g. my post on Landseer). Tremblay's website showcases a number of examples of animal pictures that she has captured digitally and on film, and many of these are wonderful depictions of animals in their habitats. But this particular composition profiles this particular black bird as a psychological portrait. This is different from photos of dogs or wildlife animals, presented anthropomorphically posed or in-their-habitat. This image of a bird with its head bowed down, its eyes invisible to the viewer, suggests a form of blindness, not just for the bird unaware of us, but for us as well, our inability to meet its gaze and understand what this creature is. The less one can see, the more one desires to see. Tremblay has a comparably powerful photograph called Sun Screen, 1988, of an elderly woman blocking her eyes from the sun with intertwined fingers, masking her vision and thus our own, making it impossible for us to truly see her, making us realize how much we rely on vision and our need to look into someone's eyes in order to understand who they are. Vision is a form of control and it makes us, as viewers, feel more comfortable with the lives around us. The same holds true for this bird. The less I can see into the eyes of this bird, the more I appreciate everything else I can see, and the more I lament for those who cannot see at all, physically because of blindness, or perhaps worse, psychologically because they wear blinders in support of their own prejudices and agendas.

This photograph also works as an abstract composition, a solid black entity that could just as easily be a human in a black shroud and hood as much as a bird in black feathers. In the center of all that black is a sharp linear V, the bird's beak, accentuated by white hatch-marks that are the scars of its own existence. This is an image of a life well-worn, experienced, exhausted, but not yet a figure of death, despite the association with mourning in the black-so-black you can almost feel the soft downy feathers on your fingertips. Tremblay told me that she doesn't know if the bird was a crow or a raven (I think it's likely a crow), but her titling of it as Raven inevitably conjures up images of Edgar Allan Poe, the Tower of London, and the Gothic imagination. But, contained as it is, with a blurred red-white nature background and a white rectangular photographic edge, the bird's identity and association with darkness is called into question, and one realizes this is more a depiction of solitude, a single moment in this bird's raucous life. It is a black beauty all its own.

London 2016: Day 1

I'm back in the UK for a few days of research and exhibitions, so I'll see if I can maintain a daily blog highlighting what will have transpired. Not surprisingly, we departed late from Newark on Sunday evening, and arrived late into Heathrow. Not impressed by United's entertainment options, nor their food, on this trip. The trend toward using your own hand-held devices seems like a cop-out to me for the airlines to provide services, as prices keep increasing. And dinner was not appetizing at all. In any case, what did startle me was how quiet Heathrow was when we arrived, and how quickly we got through immigration. At first I couldn't imagine what was going on, but then I realized it was a bank holiday, Easter Monday, so oddly fewer people were actually working. In any case, the long day was ahead of me--making sure I stay awake!--and so I took the Heathrow Express and then a taxi to my hotel where, fortunately, my room was ready so I could rest and freshen up.

After doping up on more coffee and a sandwich at Costa (why, of why, has neither Caffe Nero or Costa made it across the pond to the U.S.? Starbucks needs more competition!), I could see that the streets were quieter than usual for the holiday. I made my way via the Northern line on the tube to Charing Cross, then walked to the National Portrait Gallery to see the exhibition "Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky." It was a small exhibition of portraits of Russian writers, musicians/composers, and thespians, all from the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, what was once the private collection of an individual art collector. I was inspired to see this because of having recently finished reading Anna Karenina, so it was useful to see a few paintings I am less familiar with contemporaneous to Tolstoy's novel (1877) and late nineteenth-century art. Not surprisingly one could see the influences of Realism and Impressionism, and a few Cubist-style works from the 1890s that predate Cubism itself by a decade. The painter Ilia Repin stood out as clearly the most talented painter of the group, which may explain why he is the one name that appears in surveys of 19th-century European art. His life-size, whole-length portrait of Baroness Varvara Iksul von Hildenbrandt, which can be seen by clicking on the link above, was the highlight work in the show. Overall the show was interesting, but I was done in 20 minutes.

After stopping for a lovely blackberry-apple tart and English breakfast tea (yes, more caffeine needed) at the National Cafe, I went to see the exhibition "Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art." At an entry price of 15 pounds, I have to confess I was not impressed. Why oh why could they not just have an exhibition about Eugene Delacroix and his contemporaries? Why justify all the accomplishments in Delacroix's use of color and Rubenesque brush stroke by simply showing how more famous names like Renoir (yuck!) and Gauguin (more yuck!) were influenced by him?! Delacroix was an amazing artist and clearly changed the entire realm of 19th-century French art. The image above shows one example of a painting by him in the exhibition: Lion Hunt, 1860-61, from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. This was, in fact, the iconic image used as the headliner for the exhibition and it is arguably the best picture in the exhibition by Delacroix. It is just disappointing that half of the works in the show were by this masterful painter. I certainly would have preferred to see an actual Delacroix exhibition. I spent the rest of the afternoon (after another snack) walking through the National Gallery to see their incredible painting collection, one masterpiece after another.

Cities of 2015

Last year I wrote a blog post highlighting all the travel I did in 2014, but this time I am just doing a recap of the cities I visited over the course of the year. I realize on some level this may seem like I'm bragging about my travels, but this blog has involved me writing about my travels since the very beginning, so consider this an encapsulated list rather than an extended post on places I have been. One reason I decided to do this is because 2015 has turned out to be rather exceptional in terms of travel, with more than half of these cities related to my job and career (conferences, talks, courier trips, etc.). The rest was vacation or family visits. The picture you see here is of AA and me on the wall of San Gimignano with the rolling hills of Tuscany behind us. God, what a beautiful day it was and what a beautiful memory it is. Even though I have visited almost all of these cities before (some many times), three were first-time visits (Monteriggione, Beacon, and Kansas City). When I visit these cities, I always strive to visit museums or galleries to see exhibitions or permanent collections, all as part of expanding my knowledge-base on artists, art works, movements, styles, and the materiality of art. I frequently like to go back to museums I've seen before to see old favorites and what may have changed. Every one of these trips, then, becomes a learning experience. But perhaps the most important reason why I am posting this list is because I realize how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity to visit these places and to engage with cultures, no matter how similar or different they are from my own. For me, life is about experiences and encounters, and travel helps make that happen. Here is the list, in the order in which I visited them.

• Munich, Germany
• St. Petersburg/Palm Harbor, Florida (March visit)
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (April visit)
• Cattolica, Italy
• Venice, Italy
• Rome, Italy
• Florence, Italy
• San Gimignano/Siena/Monteriggione (day trip through Tuscany)
• Milan, Italy
• St. Petersburg/Palm Harbor, Florida (May visit)
• Liverpool, England
• Southport, England
• London, England
• Oxford, England
• Washington, DC
• Provincetown, Massachusetts
• St. Petersburg/Palm Harbor, Florida (August visit)
• San Francisco, California
• Beacon, New York
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Boston, Massachusetts
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (November visit)
• Kansas City, Missouri

San Francisco 2015

I'm writing this blog post from my hotel room in San Francisco. I arrived today and will be here just for a brief couple of days. This is work-related. We have a painting at Columbia that will be on loan to the de Young Museum for its upcoming exhibition Jewel City: Art from San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition. I am here to oversee installation and make sure our painting (a gorgeous 1913 landscape by Arthur Wesley Dow), which traveled cross-country, made the trip in good condition. Our painting was in the Expo in 1915, a century ago (I will likely share that work soon, so stay tuned). The picture you see above is the Palace of Fine Arts, built for the Expo, and the work is by Edwin Deakin, showing rather Impressionistically one of the main buildings and the lagoon. I was able to visit this area, along with doing so many other things, when I was Frisco-bound two years ago on vacation here. Indeed, I must say, thanks to AA we saw so much on that trip that I think I have seen all the primary highlights here, including the de Young and the Asian Art museums, rode the cable car and a trolley, saw the Redwood forest in Muir Woods. drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, even took a ferry to Sausalito, and went to Napa and Sonoma overnight for wine-tasting trips. It was a great visit, thanks almost entirely to AA. So this afternoon as I wandered around a bit, I was quickly reminded of a few things, and how insanely crazy the hills are! It was great to have another peak at the Golden Gate Bridge in fog and see the Bay. Time to think about dinner though...

Birthday No. 45

Following up on last year's memorable birthday, I thought I would share some highlights of birthday no. 45, which took place on Friday evening. My birthday celebration actually began last weekend, when AA & I took an overnight trip to Philadelphia, which was nice and relaxing. We have, of course, been there a few other times before, but this time I booked tickets for our first visit to the Barnes Foundation, the art museum established by private collector Albert Barnes, with its heavy emphasis on late 19th- and early 20th-century French modernist art. The Paul Cézanne still life you see here, from 1892-94, is just one of the many beautiful paintings by this artist in the collection. In contrast, Barnes clearly also liked Renoir and as a result there are way too many really bad Renoirs there too. I was surprised, however, by the number of paintings by Modigliani and Prendergast, that were all quite good. The reason why one goes to the Barnes, however, is to see his extraordinary installations, mandated by his bequest to be remained as such, for future learning experiences. His eye was based on formal elements: line, color, composition, etc. Subject was irrelevant. As a result, Barnes liked to hang things based on balance and harmonic influences, so one sees arrangements that often seem bizarre with mixed small and large paintings hung crowded together, and with metal ornamental objects like door hinges and scissors hung to balance the linear structure of the paintings. There is a method to the madness, and the more one learns about Barnes and his vision of looking at art, one realizes what a fascinating museum it truly is. The foundation itself did a rather controversial thing in moving the museum from his home in Merion, PA to downtown Philadelphia near the Rodin Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), but their new building, which opened in 2012 and was designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, is an example of gorgeous, organic architecture, and the rooms have been retained in their original installations. This is definitely worth a visit if one has never been. We also visited the Rodin Museum, which has the largest collection of works by Auguste Rodin outside of Europe, and we also strolled through a few galleries at the PMA too. We also enjoyed strolling through historical neighborhoods like Society Hill, with its delightfully charming 18th-century colonial homes, and the downtown areas near Rittenhouse Square.

My actual birthday was this past Friday, so I took the day off from work. I was suffering from bad hayfever, but fought through it to get my haircut, then eat a delicious lunch with my artist-friend MT. I received in the mail a gift from the PR-AMs: a beautifully illustrated book by Cynthia Mills entitled Beyond Grief: Sculpture and Wonder in the Gilded Age Cemetery. That evening AA & I first met up with my friend JHC and her adorable son D for a glass of wine and charcuterie. Then we had a stylishly hipster dinner of tapas & dim sum at Ma Peche in midtown. My birthday gift? A new iPhone 6! (Oh, how I love that man of mine!) I'm still just getting the hang of it, so I doubt I will write a technology review as I've done in the past, but the phone is fantastic. On Saturday, our friend AR arrived from Zurich, and last night the boys (AR, DM, JM, DC, AA and moi) got together for drinks at Therapy and then dinner at Maria Pia in Hell's Kitchen (veal saltimbocca...molto buono). All these festivities will continue some more on Tuesday when KB arrives to stay at my apartment, and we have a group post-birthday dinner with a few other friends.

But wait...it gets better. In a few days I leave for Italia. I'm going to see family for a few days, reconnecting with them after my father's passing. Then AA is flying over with the DPG-JBs, and I am meeting them in Rome. After we visit the Eternal City, we head to Florence, and then a final day in Milan before heading home. It's going to be such a great vacation. I can't believe I haven't been to Italy since June 2009 (about which I blogged here). The image you see here was taken by me back then as well, and shows a view of the Ponte Sant'Angelo with sculptures by GianLorenzo Bernini, taken from the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome.

As festive as all of this is, I think the most important part of aging and celebrating each passing year is the reflection on our lives, all of our accomplishments, and all the lessons we continue to learn each day. In thanking everyone on Facebook for their wonderful birthday wishes, I wrote the following message, and I hope it has some poignancy for anyone who reads it here as well: "Thanks, everyone, for the wonderful birthday wishes!! Having now reached the 45th anniversary of my birth, I'm starting to accept all those things, good + bad, that accompany the beginning of my 'middle-aged' years (note that I said beginning!!). Gray hair + a few extra pounds aren't that traumatic, I really don't sweat the small stuff like I used to, I've learned through difficult losses, but also with great love, that life IS about the ups + downs and learning how to ride those waves without falling, and--the one lesson I try to remind myself each day--there is truly nothing more important in our lives than the moments we are living right now. I look forward to more of life's lessons as I continue maturing gracefully."

Travels of 2014: From Maine to Munich

I enjoy traveling. Well...to be more accurate...I enjoy all the experiences I can gather when I visit a new city or country...but getting there isn't necessarily something enjoyable. Nevertheless, it is a necessity and worth enduring for the end result. I am about to do this yet again as I return to Munich on another work-related trip. Not all travel is a vacation, as the trip to Munich was work (although, as I will comment on below, I did have the opportunity for some site-seeing). And then there are the personal family-related trips, such as the 7 I made to Florida in 2014 that were all largely associated with my father's care. As bklynbiblio readers know, he passed away in July, and although I miss him terribly, I am fortunate that I was able to be with him for his passing. We had his services in August, and it was truly a celebration of his life. On my March visit, I was very glad that AA joined me to meet the family and my father, and a year ago on my January visit I also made a short jaunt to Jacksonville to see my dear friend SVH and meet my canine nephew Winnie, a rambunctious young greyhound. October saw me back again for the SECAC conference in Sarasota, and I took a day to see the family again, and I made another quick trip back for Christmas as well. As emotionally challenging as these visits were to endure while my father was getting worse and worse, it always has been a comfort to know I have family and friends there to help create balance and give me the opportunity to also enjoy some parts of those trips.

In May I made a 60-hour trip to Seattle for the AAMG conference, about which I blogged here. My memory of Seattle from 1997 was better than I experienced this time, but that was because my colleague DCM and I weren't in the downtown area but in the university district, which was removed from the things we would have wanted to see, like Pike Place Market. Over Memorial Day weekend, AA and I joined the FF-POs for a few days in Montreal and Quebec City, which I absolutely loved. I blogged about that trip here. I still have fond memories of Quebec City and look forward to visiting again in the near future.

Over the long 4th of July weekend, AA and I went to Chicago, one of the American cities long on my list of places to visit. I loved it! And I cannot stress to readers how difficult that is for this NYer to admit to! The one thing I did hate was the pizza. Fortunately everything else outweighed that. The city is clean. The architecture is magnificent. Lake Michigan is simply amazing. (We spent 4th of July on JK's boat on the Lake and watched the fireworks from there--just awesome!) Millennium Park is tons of fun; the image you see here shows Anish Kapour's interactive sculpture with the skyline behind it. And then there was the Art Institute of Chicago, where I finally was able to see the work you see at the top of this post: Georges Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884-86. I think my photograph of viewers staring at the painting demonstrates well how observers inevitably become part of the melange of social classes intermingling in the park in true pointilist fashion, as Seurat likely intended. On our last day in Chicago AA and I climbed the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) and I confronted my fear of heights by climbing out onto the glass ledge. I can't say I am no longer afraid of heights...truthfully it terrified me even more...but it was important that I did it. (AA of course strolled out there like it was nothing. He is fearless. So annoying!) We also took a day trip to Milwaukee, which I wasn't so crazy about, although the Calatrava-designed wing on the art museum is spectacular, particularly overlooking Lake Michigan.

After my father's funeral, I needed to get away for a few days and have a truly relaxing trip with very little to do, so AA and I flew to Boston then drove to Maine. I had not been in Maine since about 1998 or so, and I had only visited Ogunquit at that time. We went there our first night and it was everything beautiful I remembered. Walking along the rock paths overlooking the Atlantic was just breathtaking. I love the fresh smell of sea air, the cool breeze blowing off the water, and the sound of nature's ferocity as waves crash against the rocks like the crack of a slap but with a magnificent electric sting. With each passing day we moved up the coast further and visited Portland, Cape Elizabeth with its famous lighthouse (seen here), Camden (so adorable...best clam chowder ever!), Belfast, and Lincolnville...an adorable little spot with nothing to do...exactly what I needed. I hated having to leave, because we only made it 1/3 of the way up the coast, but I do look forward to visiting again. I really loved that relaxing summer weekend in Maine.

As for Munich, I was fortunate amidst all my days of work to have some free time to hit so many of the museums. The Lenbachhaus, where the exhibition was held, is close to the Glyptothek and the Alte and Neue Pinakotheks, so I was able to see all the masterworks of ancient, Renaissance, and modern art that I was eager to see. One of the photos you see here is a zoomed-in shot of the glockenspiel, the mechanical life-sized music performers that play a few times a day in the main square, Marienplatz. Munich surprised me frequently. The old streets wind like concentric circles in a way that as soon as you assume you are walking east, suddenly you are walking southwest. I got lost so many times it was ridiculous. However, it gave me more of an opportunity to see much of the city as a result. I was also surprised at how German and Italian it was. There is Germanic architecture, but there is a surprising amount of Italianate architecture as well, and indeed I found myself able to communicate using Italian more than English with various people. The Oktoberfest was starting while I was there, so I had a chance to visit the grounds. It is basically a giant beer festival, but family friendly (and gay friendly--another surprise!). lederhosen and "beer wench" Bavarian costumes were everywhere. The pastries and pretzels were divine...(why don't we use pretzels as bread? it's ingenious!)...I devoured about 3 of these plum tarts that you see in the picture below. I definitely enjoyed Munich much more than my trip to Frankfurt last year. Rumor has it there is about a foot of snow on the ground in Munich at present, and potentially more coming this weekend....it better not ruin more chances to see the city over the weekend before work starts!

What's on the travel agenda for 2015? I have a work trip to Fort Worth coming up. I may do a pop-over to London to see a few exhibitions I'm very interested in. But the big trip I'm very much looking forward to is Italia in April. I have not been since 2009, so I am going first to visit family, and then AA is flying over with the DPG-JBs and we are going to visit Rome, Florence, and Milan. I'm even scheduled to give a talk at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome while I'm there. More details coming soon....