The Phoenix Art Museum, like so many other museums, has enlarged a lot. There is plenty of showy stuff around, such as giant spaces with huge sculptures and paintings in minimalist style, calculated to elicit an "Oh Wow! that must have cost a lot of money" response. And there was also the Hollywood Costume exhibit, which was nonsense and an embarrassment, cheap, lousy, full of electronic tricks that did not thrill.
But for all that this is a serious museum, and I was only able to give close attention to two exhibits due to time and energy limitations.
Many years ago, I saw the Thorne miniature rooms at the Chicago Art Insitute but was not aware that the Phoenix Museum has 20 of these marvels of miniaturization. The pictures I was able to take were not very good, but this shows how a room looks in its frame. These treasures are hard to photograph.
This website shows some pretty good views of some of the rooms. I just loved these works and examined each one with great care. They really need to be seen in person to enjoy the perfect details, the vivid colors and the careful way they have been illuminated.
The other exhibit I enjoyed was one of Latin American Art: Peruvian and Mexican. I would have sailed right by these paintings if I had not been to Peru and seen cheap imitations of Peruvian colonial art and wondered what they were about. These are very peculiar stylistic hybrids.
This is a closup of a painting from the Cuzco School of the Madonna in a sentimental style with characteristic ornamentation of flowers and jewels.
And this anonymous 18th Century painting from Peru is "St. Bernard Receiving the Blood of Christ and the Milk of the Virgin."
I really want to come back and see more of the many treasures this museum has to offer. So yes, no doubt this is not my last visit to Phoenix!
Phoenix is the kind of place that demands a kind of suspension of disbelief, but I'm from California and can get used to it! There is a lot of amazing stuff here. The bad gets more publicity than the good, especially the very bad political climate, but there is much to admire here. Not unlike California!
So today we are checking out of our hotel and driving up to Sedona.
It started out with the morning light illuminating my orchids:
Cousin and I drove out to Waikaloa Village to do a vote count for their association. It was beautiful driving over the Saddle Road in the early morning light, but I didn't take any pictures because there was no way to capture the way it looked. There has been enough rain to turn the hills green. And the very few structures along the way stood out in high relief, including the Mauna Loa Weather Observatory and the Mauna Kea array of telescopes, because the air was pristine, although it worsened as we approached Waikaloa. It was like OZ or something. One of these days I'll try to make a special effort to get some photos of this place, but it really defeats photography, I think.
Strangely, we saw a huge number of feral goats, hundreds maybe, herding together in a field. I thought there was an effort underway to eliminate them, since they are not native to the Islands. We could learn to enjoy eating goat, because actually it tastes OK if properly prepared.
Here we are, being good sports about a really poorly set up election with people in the Association in conflict and making kind of a mess of things. We refrained from snapping at each other, but it was a strain. This is how we make our money for the organization, and we model good election practices, but sometimes it all tries our patience.
And I do not understand golf. Or the shtick around places like this. I have relatives who love golf and the whole clubhouse thing. I have asked them what the attraction is, and they can't explain it to me.
I rode home with some other people, and we entertained each other with stories about our travels. All of us are pretty well traveled. What they said really made me want to visit Australia, especially.
I'm still working on a couple of reads, but my next read will be A Life in Motion, a memoir by Florence Howe.
Florence Howe is a figure in so-called second-wave feminism, best known for founding The Feminist Press. Not as well known as standard bearers like Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan, she has been at least as important, mainly, though not exclusively, through re-publishing forgotten woman writers and publishing new literature by women.
Nancy Porter, my favorite professor at Portland State University, came with her to Hilo for a brief visit, sometime in the early 2000s, I think it was. Florence was around my present age at that time, 75 I think, and the very picture of a haut New Yorker, sporting stylish hair with a white signature streak like Susan Sontag's. And her clothes in lovely fabrics and colors, not seemingly any different from what I might wear but qualitatively on another planet, showed her ability for self-presentation, something I'm a total flop at, because I am a deep-dyed dork. Our comparative modes of dress could stand as a synecdoche for the difference between her and me in the lives we have lived: mine mostly private, hers public. She independent, me embedded in my family. She, always hard working and focused on her goals, even very long-term. Me, often reluctant to work and not always sure of where I'm going, meandering through life as if I had all the time in the world.
At the time of her visit here she was planning a trip to various African countries; she was editing an anthology of works by African woman writers which still is not finished. Three out of four volumes have been published, she says in her blog.
Her blog is also at a very high level, like everything she does. Above all, if you compare us, she defines the difference between an amateur and a pro.
Teju Cole interests me as a writer and as a person. Somehow I identify with him and can't say why. One clue could be his total alienation from his parent of the opposite sex. But who knows.
Open City is one of my all-time favorite reads. He captures the floating identity of a dreamer in the big city. It's about being young, I think. It can be enriching to be rootless at that time of life.
I just finished Every Day is for the Thief, which was actually written before Open City. The narrator, in this fictionalized account of a visit to Nigeria, the "happiest country in the world" but "a hostile environment for the life of the mind" portrays a country that has pushed the tendencies of capitalism to their ultimate conclusion: abundance for the rich and crumbs for everyone else.
Unless you are a member of the kleptocracy the only way to get by there is through bribery and extortion in a Hobbsian world. A few people may care for each other, but it's mostly all against all. Maintaining a middle class way of life is virtually impossible. People burn out just trying to get through their daily routines.
He mentions a music school that offers excellent instruction but " is available only to the wealthiest and most dedicated Nigerians. But it is better than nothing." He bemoans the National Museum, which has little art and is badly maintained; most of the wonderful pieces are in Western cities, anyway.
Already in this country the best and finest stuff is supposed to belong only to those with money and taste and is in private hands. Look at the attempt to sell off Detroit's magnificent collection. We are, in short, acting like a poor country. Are we modeling our society on Nigeria's?
One way people in Nigeria are probably happy is that there is no ambiguity, no need to hold your temper and consider consequences. The narrator describes two men getting into a car accident and immediately jumping out and assaulting each other. In the absence of any justice, it makes sense to inflict as much damage on your opponent as you can. So you don't have to worry there about being inhibited. Of course you may be terrified by the no-holds aggression of almost everyone, and that is not so nice. In order not to be a victim, attack becomes the wisest strategy.
The saddest thing to the narrator is the cultural disintegration of a once cultivated people with a terrible past and a depressing present. Part of this is the denial of the history of this place, where hundreds of thousands were sold into slavery and sent to the New World. Imagine having no sense of history at all, even less than Americans. We at least make up stories about our past. Nigerians don't even do that, apparently.
Cole's central metaphor is of looking through windows: seeing things but not being directly connected to them. Alienated, in other words. An observer rather than a participant. Creating a collage of impressions in order to fashion a larger picture of a country and a people. Every human encounter is painful in the world of Hobbes.
As usual, lots more to say but out of time. Maybe more later.
