Your favorite museums

If you're in Boston you must see the Museum of Fine Arts. Also, the Gardner Museum.

I was in New York last week, and spent an entire day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

http://www.metmuseum.org/home.asp

It is one of my favorite places in the world. To see it properly, would take weeks.

The Marmottan museum in Paris is wonderful - it is in a house in a wealthy suburb near the Bois de Boulogne and is full of work by the Impressionists and has some wonderful huge Monet's of waterlilies/Giverny in the basement on the same scale as those at the Orangerie - magical.

link to their website

The Art Institute in Chicago is amazing. They have such a wonderful Impressionism and Cubism collection. It is amazing to stand so close to the Serrat painting and really appreciate pointillism. If you have the chance you must give your self at least half a day to see this wonderful museum.

It might be nice to accumulate museum links for the portal here, on museums we like. Actually I once did that, back when we had Helpful Links, with Walter's help, but either my memory is of more than there was or some have been lost.

I have a few favorites that I will be back with links for...

I love the Galleria doria Pamphilj in Rome, it is such an over the top luxe place: it is not just the work I like, with Velasquez' Innocent X (a Pamphilj pope) in its own wee green/blue room, but the floors, the ceilings, and so on.

I liked the Phillips' Museum in Washington a great deal when I saw it in the late eighties.

I liked the old Santa Barbara Museum, also seen in the eighties... it has been renovated and I think I like the original better, but haven't seen it lately.

I think I might love the Isabella Gardener museum in Boston, but I haven been there...

The Pinacoteca (museo) in Siena makes me cry, but now more from the frustration of being herded through in groups when I had been there before with as much time as I wanted. I actually did start to cry the last time I was there, when we were being herded and I spoke to the guard fumblingly in eng/italian mentioning I hadn't seen these paintings in ten years with a tear running down my face and she let me go back by myself, watching, of course. Damn all those people who vandalize paintings, to cause this kind of fright. (Ok, sorry, I know some are mentally troubled, or by now some may have culturally aggressive motives, but I mourn the loss of freely looking.)

There are two museums in Lucca, as I remember, but I don't recall the names. I was the only visitor in each of them, one April day not so long ago. I was taken around personally in both of them, lest I scar some painting, in one by a sophisticated woman in a rose colored suit, and she took all the time I might want. Frankly, I was sort of bored in some rooms, but I started it and she got into, picking a favorite and trying to explain why we liked it... me in horrible italian and she in halting english. This led to a painting with - trying to remember - a bunch of women in it, and my trying to explain my keenness for the 'ribbon' of hands touching across the, say, six foot wide painting. Oh, well, I think she understood that I liked it.

Back with links later.

I agree with you Shosh. The Art Institute is awsome. I was born and raised about 45 minutes out of Chicago and made quite a few trips to the Institute.

Milwaukee's new art Museum is pretty impressive also. It was designed by Santiago Calatrava and is a piece of art by itself.

Ahhh, I'll look that up. Calatrava has done a gorgeous bridge in northern California, in Redding.

the website is http://mam.org/index.htm

It resembles an eagle and the "wings" actually open and close.

Ones that jump out in my memory (they tend to be big, obvious ones)...

My two absolute favorites: the Picasso museum in Barcelona and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. The former has a lot of dirty sketches on the fourth floor -- very amusing. It's nice to be able to spend a few hours just absorbing one person's work. When that person is Picasso or Van Gogh, at any rate.

The Dali museum in Figueres is also a trip -- not so much a collection as an experience, and I don't think you have to like his work to enjoy it.

Otherwise, I only vividly remember the big 'uns -- NY's MOMA, the Prado, the Louvre (sp?)... and the Art Institute of Chicago, of course.

There are already a couple of museum links in the Portal, and additionally some mega-links, which should cover nearly all museums online, I suppose :wink:

I lived in Madrid for a few months and studied at the Prado while I was there. The Prado actually has the largest private collection of Rubens (one of my fave artists) which was like a special treat for me. The Picasso Museum in Barcelona is pretty spectacular too (I agree with you Patiodog) and of course the Louve is well, THE LOUVRE! Just as wondeful as you would expect. I had just studied Velasquez's "Las Meninas" at the Prado and being that Velasquez influenced Picasso a great deal, it was the really cool to see Picasso's much later version of "Las Meninas" at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. Anyone else see this Meninas comparison that I'm talking about?

No, but I know some other paintings have referenced Las Meninas... I think the show at the New York met that Diane (another a2ker) and I met at and saw had a Sargent painting that ref'd it. And I think I have read about a few others. That was an interesting show because it made connections where all these painters clearly referenced each other; there is a thread on it somewhere back in the art forum. It was called Manet and Velasquez, or a similar name.

I sprung for the book from the show and it should have some notes on that in it. But.. it is at work. I'll be back and post what I find after I go to work Tuesday.

Oh, and welcome to a2k, ckthegate, glad to have you join us.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned either the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC or the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. (Or the Tate in London, for that matter.)

Osso, you would absolutely adore the Isabella Stewart Gardener in Boston. It is a perfect replica of an Italian palazzo (and I know of your love affair with Italy) and is crammed with Rennaisance masters -- Boticelli, Rembrandt etc. It is virtually across the street from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts which, paradoxically, makes it both very accessible and easily missed by the tourist at the same time.

Boston's MFA is a treasure trove. Did you know it has the largest collection of Impressionist work outside of France? Unfortunately, much of it is in storage in climate-controlled basement rooms because there just isn't enough space for a good display. Also the Museum loans out a lot of its paintings to other museums that stage shows of particular artists. The MFA is where you'll find Renoir's "Dance at Bougiville" and Gaugin's monumental "Who are We, Where dowe Come From, Where are We Going". There's a building program current;y under way which will significantly increase the size of the facility and hopefully more of this art can be displayed to the public.

I love both NYC's Met and the Art Institute of Chicago. They are both huge, rambling places, crammed full of surprises. But, for me, the art museum in the USA is still the National Gallery. I love the way it is set up chronologically, so that you can wander, in a logical sequence, from the Rennaisance masters to the Classicism of David to the fauves and to the Impressionists and the Expressionists until you arrive, quite logically at Dali and Pollock and Georgia O'Keefe.

Anyone visiting the American Southwest always heads for the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. And everyone misses a little gem called The Cowboy Hall of Fame just outside Oklahoma City. The name of the place is off-putting for some. It isn't just a collection of old saddles and branding irons. It probably has the most complete collections of Remingtons and Russells anywhere, sculpture as well as oils, and a few stray Bearstadts. Fine place.

But I would like to hear some comments from anyone who's been to the Hermitage. Never having visited St. Petersburg, I, unfortunately, haven't had the pleasure.

I'd like to hear too. I did watch the segment of the old tv show, CITIES, with various people connected in some way to the cities narrating... and Leningrad), which it was at the time, was discussed by Peter Ustinov. He did a bit of a look at the Hermitage. Oh, how I loved that series, and I have never seen another word about it. There is a book on it though... which I found at a used book store a few years ago.

I know I would like the Gardner (Gardener?), I did like the National Gallery when I went through, but I only had a day or probably a half day, and shared it with the Hirshhorn (sp?)
I am not correcting my spelling because I have to leave for one of our openings in a half hour, and sit here in my bluejeans.

Back later.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is fantastic.

I know that this sounds really backward and I have had a lot of meaningful experiences in many fantastic museums , but my favourite museum was the Uffuzi ( sp.? ) in Florence . Not only because it has a wonderful collection (which it does) but because a lot of the paintings had the most clear, beautiful cerulean in them, which is never reproduced properly in prints. I work more with acrylics than oil paints or tempera so it's not likely that I can reproduce it ( which is a real shame) but I've don't think that I've ever seen that colour in any other painting (it might have just been the lighting) before or since.

Doesn't the Uffuzi have Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus"?

I was there last summer and a lot of it was under construction so missed much of it.

For me, this was one of the paintings that the Uffizi holds that just does not reproduce well.



It was amazing to see in person.

(Or was it Caravaggio's Judith Slaying Holoferne that I saw? I am so confused now.)

Link to the Uffizi's

Room 10/14 - Botticelli Room

Now, how did I know that you would have a link to the Uffizi, Walter?