A Few Exhibits

Marcus came up from Orlando for a visit over Labor Day Weekend! We hit a couple of exhibits and walked around the mall on Friday while Rich was at work.

Our first stop was the Jim Henson's Fantastic World exhibit at the International Gallery. Are you young enough to have watched Sesame Street as a kid? Are you old enough that you had kids who watched Sesame Street? Both? Did I cover most everybody? Remember The Muppet Show? If this exhibit is coming 'round to your corner of the world, it's a must see. Besides the things you'd expect - TV and movie props, muppets and the like - there is also a lot of his original artwork - drawings, cartoons and storyboards. No pictures allowed, so here's a picture of The Jim Henson Memorial located at the University of Maryland courtesy of zhurnaly.

Our next stop was the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery is actually two buildings. There is so much to see that we just picked a couple of the special exhibits to concentrate on. Otherwise, I think you could spend an entire day there. Maybe several. I'll probably go back and see it in stages. The first exhibit we hit was Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul.  The amazing part of this collection is that most of it was thought to have been stolen or destroyed during the many years of conflict that this country has suffered. The items were recovered in 2004 from bank vaults in the presidential palace.

We also saw an exhibit by sculptor Martin Puryear. He is a minimalist who uses wood, stone, wire and tar in his works. I have to say that I love his pieces for the craftsmanship that went into making them as much as for the "art" of them.

The last exhibit was Richard Misrach: On the Beach. These beautiful color photographs were taken from a hotel room looking down on a beach in Hawaii. In many of them you see only one or a handful of people in a great expanse of water. No sand, no sky. Just people swimming or floating in very deep blue (but clear) water. Very tranquil. You can see all of the photographs here by clicking on the little vertical marks at the bottom of the page.


We did pass through a few other galleries before deciding that we had already spent a couple of hours and had barely scratched the surface. So, we headed outside to walk around the mall a bit. It was raining very lightly at first. As we walked on, the umbrellas came out. These geese didn't seem to mind the rain one bit though.