Well, a Wednesday morning, actually
Earlier this week , I took the little boys to the Birmingham Museum of Art. I’d been once before, to check out the special Leonardo exhibit that was housed there this past fall (a dozen and a half or so drawings only, but very interesting and well-presented. They handed you magnifying glasses at the door, which turned out to be necessary for seeing the detail of the faded, finely done drawings).
I decided it would be a good place to hang out. I need to hang out in such a place. It’s free (with the obligatory clear donation box at the front, but still no admission demands), parking is free, and it’s an interesting and not tiny museum. It is a slight adjustment for me to realize that I live in a place that does, indeed, have a good museum 10 minutes from my house, where I can just go for an hour, look at some pictures, think about things, and then move on, without it being a huge production or laden with the burden of “I must see everything of import today because I don’t know when I’ll be back and I must get my money’s worth.”
No WiFi though. Hmm. Can I deal with that?
We began in the replica of the Creek village (why it’s in the art museum, I’m not quite sure, but it was a good way to reassure the boys that this was not going to be the worst two hours of their lives) – interactive, with beads to string and (as you saw below) deer toes and turtle shells to shake.

We hit the contemporary section first, after walking by a caucasian woman who was profusely apologizing to a group of Asians about something being closed that day – I never could figure out what it was that was closed, though.  We were taken with a small Bill Viola installation – Dissolution

Which I have to say, we were all pretty fascinated by.  The boys sat on the bench in front of it for the full 6 minutes or so. The figures above present themselves to you initially in clarity and then gradually dissolve, although it is not clear whether it is you or them who are dissolving.  I know there are those who think Viola is pretentious,and perhaps he is,  but what I decided is that it is difficult not to seem pretentious when living human beings are your material – a painting that captures an individual in a pose has a different impact than would be presented if that individual were being filmed in the same pose. I found this small work fascinating and thoughtful and very human, and was sort of ticked off when I got home, did my inevitable Googling on what I had just seen and discovered that there was a big Viola exhibition in Rome when I was there, one that ends Monday. Bah.

We took a turn through the medieval and renaissance collection which is four rooms, painted in a deep rich burgundy. Which amused me because I recalled that when I started looking at houses in Birmingham 8 months ago, I was struck by the number of dining rooms painted in that exact same shade.  An Alabama status thing?

We concentrated on symbols when in those rooms – the symbols for the evangelists, Peter’s key, Bartholomew’s knife (because he was, the story has it, skinned alive – why in Michaelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel and his statue in St. John Lateran he is holding his collapsed heap of skin). Joseph actually was very interested in it all, but I confess I was half-distracted through much of it because I was not quite sure if Michael had gotten the “Don’t touch the stuff in the art museum” memo.

Fantastic St. George and the Dragon, too. Wish I could find a photo of it online, but I can’t.

Don’t Touch!

We took a turn through the African and Native American rooms, they spent some time in the “landscape corner” in which they drew their own landscapes – if you call “snowmen” and “fire trucks” landscapes.  While they did that, I was venturing as far as I could, while still keeping an eye on them, into the American section, with which I was immediately intrigued.

One of the prizes of the collection is Bierstadt’s “Looking Down Yosemite Valley” – a huge canvas that toured the country in the years after its creation. I was interested in, but not absorbed by R. H. Ives Gammell’s Strangers and Sojourners –

Gammell seems like an interesting fellow, as most artists tend to be, but his work is mannered and chilly. He did a famous series on the Hound of Heaven which as toured around, even in recent years.

I came back home and did some research into William Edmondson – a self-trained Nashville sculptor, the son of former slaves, who became the first African-American accorded a one-man show at MOMA, in 1939 – all Birmingham has is a duck, but it is strong and assured enough to inspire you to want to know more about the hands that created it. I’d love to see more of his work.

There’s a bit of Birmingham/Alabama-related work, included a marvelous portrait of George Washington Carver, and what was probably my favorite piece on that particular wall, a large portrait of three older women, identified as the Allen sisters – Beffie, Mary and Ruth, probably painted in the 20’s.  They ran a school called either the Misses Allen School or the Margaret Allen School or both. The portrait is perhaps 2/3 life-sized, of the three women, all in their 50’s-60’s or perhaps older, seated, dressed in their everyday, slightly rumpled teaching clothes, looking, it seemed to me, a bit impatiently at the artist, waiting for him to be done with it, so they can go back to the young ladies in their charge.

Makes you want to write a book or something.

It also reminded me of the sculpture at Headwaters Park in Fort Wayne of the Hamilton Sisters (and cousin)  – a sculpture stuck too far off the beaten path, in my opinion, but at least it was there – of Edith (The Greek Way, et al), Alice (the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University) and their cousin Agnes (a settlement activist and founder of the FW YWCA).

Strong, centered, accomplished women, daring you to think otherwise.

There was more – the special exhibit of photographs by Marion Post Wolcott , which I had seen last time, was fantastic – especially, I confess, the Florida shots, which contrasted the tourist life with that of the rural poor.

Not a  huge deal. But enough food for thought for a day or two. As if we aren’t already overstuffed in that particular department.