Love In The Asylum

My dad and I stopped at the Sunflower Market on our way home from the Afternoon of Bowling and Shopping for Windows, so dinner tonight was grilled bratwurst, garlic mashed potatoes, and red cabbage pan-fried with bacon.

Somewhere, my German ancestors are glaring stoically over their beer steins with pride.

Before the hospital fiasco last night, I was going to post about our museum adventure yesterday, since they had a couple new exhibits I thought were interesting.

The Albuquerque artists' exhibit in the main gallery was a bit of a mixed-bag, as I suppose that kind of exhibit is always doomed to be if you aren't living in Chicago or New York City. But I think for the size of city that we are, we have a pretty well-established art community, and there are a lot of talented people working here now. There were some captivating abstract paintings (I am an only slightly apologetic modern art fan, I have to admit), a neat piece that was Japanese cranes embroidered onto a woven Pueblo-style blanket, and of course a decent range of Latino and Native American social and political art. And I somehow was not at all aware that Joel-Peter Witkin lived in Albuquerque until I came across one of his prints in the gallery, and guys. Guys. I have fangirled Witkin to a ludicrous degree since I was in high school - his photography is grotesque, yeah, and a lot of it is flat-out horrifying, but there's something...captivating in so much of his work that won't let me look away. It's beautiful in a way that it shouldn't be. So I started flailing right there in the museum, yes.

The other new exhibit was on photography of the Isleta Pueblo, and it was impressive, and also heart-breaking. The exhibit was supported and supervised by the Isleta Tribal Council, and so it is very focused on the photographs as a social/political discourse - because for the most part these are not photographs taken by Pueblo members, but pictures taken by white tourists, anthropologists, writers, artists, and businessmen who had a vested interest in imposing their own preconceptions onto a culture they didn't understand and didn't want to. A lot of the placards break down the pictures for how representative they are or aren't of actual Pueblo culture, and how they became political objects in the way they were used to reinforce stereotypes about their lives, and how little control they had over this process.

There is a lot of historical information about how the pueblo was affected by the Spanish and American settlers, the industrialization of the area, and the later tourism industry. And of course reading about the Indian schools always makes me want to punch people - my grandmother has a few friends who were forced from the reservation into boarding schools, and there are no words for how cruel and traumatic that was for them. Even the big section on traditional Isleta culture - the language, the festivals, the tribal structure - talked a lot about how outsiders have impacted it, and there was a lot of emphasis on this being a living contemporary culture that is still a huge part of people's lives, not some artifact of primitivism frozen in the past. On the whole, the exhibit gave me a lot to think about.

I also learned that my grandmother's first husband was part Chickasaw, which I hadn't known before - he doesn't come up often, since he only lived long enough to get my grandma knocked up with my aunt before he got blown up in the Pacific War, and I'm not related to him in any way. But it's still interesting to know.

And then there was art!

My aunt had a meeting with a client in downtown Sacramento today, and since she didn't want me to have to bang around all day by myself (not that I mind banging around all day by myself...) she offered to take me with and leave me to wander around Capitol Mall by myself for a few hours. And it turns out that that Capitol Mall has an art museum - the Crocker Museum - right around where we were going to be.

It's not a bad collection, overall. I'm perhaps a bit spoiled by the Albuquerque Museum, but I didn't entirely like the way the upper floor was displayed: they went with this weird thing where they have a high-ceilinged allery with paintings stacked four deep up the walls and labels in the corner with a little chart to show what every painting on that wall is. Confusing, and not helpful when I'm stuck in the middle. And I'm too short to see the top paintings well.

Most of the European art was from the 18th and 19th century, mostly lesser known artists but some very nice pieces regardless, and the contemporary section was neat - there was one that was a portrait of George Bush made up of smaller panels of skulls and crumbled buildings and bombs and stuff, and a painting of the Stonewall Riots, and some seriously creepy statues. The Asian art section was teensy tiny, but they had a few really lovely pieces of Korean celadon pottery and some nifty Buddhist sculptury from Myanmar and Thailand. And there was a temporary exhibit on Japanese women ceramicists. I did not know making weird looking pots was so controversial!

I like being in museums by myself. I mean, it's fun to go with other people, too, so you can pool art knowledge and vaguely philosophic insights and made fun of the really ugly paintings. But going to museums by myself is such a serene experience. I can put my headphones in and listen to Art Music and get as close to the paintings as I want and take too long reading the placards and just lose myself all the way in taking in the art. It makes me feel very...content.

Best thing about today, aside from the art: I had In-and-Out Burger for lunch AND dinner. SO GOOD.

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Art History Major

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