A Tuesday Catch Up

This week's artist is Claude Monet, an artist I consider to be an amazing Impressionist. Born in 1840, I am rather fond of him because he was the first real artist that I remember studying in school. I'll always appreciate my junior high French class for introducing me to many artists like Degas, Renoir, Manet and Cassatt. Perhaps known best for painting water lilies, he also painted people, haystacks and the Rouen Cathedral. I remember hearing about how he would move from one canvas to the next as the light on the Cathedral would change and would return to the beginning of the series the next time the lighting was right. There were more than 30 of them. I find that absolutely amazing to have that many of one subject in a series. He died in 1926. I saw some of his work in a special exhibit of Impressionist artists at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when I was in the 10th grade. It remains one of my favorite exhibits to this day.

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I spent Thursday through Sunday in Cooperstown, New York for the Cooperstown Graduate Program's Interview Weekend. I would love to go there for Museum Studies. It is the only place I applied to. I'm crossing my fingers and wish all of those who also went the best of luck. Decisions are already in the mail and I'm anxiously awaiting to get a letter. In addition to meeting a lot of great museum oriented people, I got to go behind the scenes at the Fenimore Art Museum and the Baseball Hall of Fame and visited the Iriquois Storage Facility which also houses collections from the Farmers' Museum. I also rode the carousel at the Farmers' Museum. There really are no words to describe the weekend and everything that I got to do. So cool!!!

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I promise I will post about the now passed "pork" measures that John McCain unhappily tweeted about that first got me into twitter. I feel that it is important to still know what these things are, I know that I was introduced to a number of good cultural institutions in this way.

Also coming soon, the third post about my thesis and the ceramics that I analyzed for it.

My Favorite Living Museum

My favorite Living Museum is Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, MA. Meant to capture life during the 50 year period of 1790-1840, it consists of 59 buildings including homes, a traditional New England church, places of work and industry and farms with real animals. Whereas some other outdoor living museums close during the Winter, at Sturbridge, there is something to do year round.

I enjoy it for numerous reasons one of which is the personnel's ability to perform characters but step outside of the role and truly explain what one is doing with a more modern understanding ... moving beyond a scripted dialog, so to speak. This also provides a revisitability because you could walk around on numerous occasions and hear different things said each time, even from the same people.

Once upon a time I may have not chosen it because of its having moved its houses to that spot to create an artificial village that never existed. I appreciate that now, however, because although these houses have in part lost their authenticity having been moved from their original contexts, they have been saved from a much worse fate. This, I think is a very good thing.

I last went two years ago in the Fall. It was a beautiful day and Sturbridge was a great way to spend that day.

Pictures to come.

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There are a limited number of other Living Museums that could have earned the title of my current favorite Living Museum. This is due primarily to the fact that I have been less often to this type than any other and the one I have been to the most is Sturbridge Village. It apparently was also the favorite of the teachers in my elementary school and of my Girl Scout troop leaders.

Other contenders:

- Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA.
- The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, NY. I haven't managed to go here during the museum season, missing it by only a few days the last time I went to Cooperstown. I did, however, participate in a hearth cooking demonstration here in one of the houses, which ranks among the top museum experiences that I have had. Hearth cooking is amazing and tons of fun.

I also intend on traveling to Williamsburg to visit Colonial Williamsburg. I don't know when that will happen exactly, but it is high up there on my list of places to visit.