Tiny Blogs (Volume 2): Art Museum twice in one week
As soon as there’s a chill in the air, I’m probably walking around the art museum. We have a few art museums in Minnesota, but I prefer the Minneapolis Institute of Art, because it's free for general admission. I get a lot of Mondays off at work, and its a bad schedule for art museum adventures, because many spots aren’t open on Mondays, so when a rare day off on a random weekday comes about, it feels like a must to wander the art museum, since they aren’t open when I’m free, typically.
I wandered the art museum, not once, but twice in the last two weeks. I went with my friend right before Thanksgiving, and then with Eric, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I think the main reason was just finding indoor places to get my steps in, and the museum involves the dual action of walking and “becoming cultured.” I also noticed while scrolling the MIA website that they had a free exhibit called “Gatsby at 100,” which celebrated art from the era of The Great Gatsby. They also had a rare printing of The Great Gatsby in near-fine condition behind glass, and I was geeked to see it in person.
Winter leaves me lethargic and listless. At other times of the year, if I’m bored or feeling lazy, I go for a long walk around the city. I still can, I guess. I’m a born and raised Minnesotan, so I have that culture of like… its 40 degrees, its T shirt weather. Like I am capable of bundling, but walking on snow and ice is very laborious. My thing is winter just makes me much lazier. I’m sure its biological, like our bones are meant to rest during the cold, but I don’t want to. I’m on a mission to find places to get my steps in, at the very least!
With my friend Tess, we explored the museum, looking at everything honestly, and some things twice. We really loved the Japanese and Chinese art, where they had some really intricate details on the furniture, the kimonos, and the samurai armor. There’s this wall with intricate things people would carry around with them, like cricket cages, and daggers and literature. One of the items was a petrified mushroom. I was amazed to see a mushroom in a glass case, to be honest! It was called “Ling-Chih Fungus of Immortality.” and it was a symbol of health and long life. I hope it rubbed some luck onto me by standing there fore a few minutes admiring it.
Last, but not least, I went back to the museum with Eric on a Sunday. It was seriously cold, like a high of 15 degrees. That’s usually the low for a December day in Minnesota. That’s more of a January temperature. So I asked to go to the art museum again so I could look at a few things that I missed last time. Specifically, I didn’t see the Gatsby book. I told Eric that we should skip the first level, because I could look at art and vases and statues from around the world all day, but we did accidentally start on the level I was trying to avoid, and I was once again, obsessed with the cool things from around the world until closing time!
They made the announcement that they were closing in 15 minutes, and I was navigating the museum like a rat doing a maze for cheese. Finally, with 5 minutes left, I found the room with the Gatsby at 100 exhibit. I had been there days before with Tess, but there was a guy standing in front of the glass case, and I didn’t notice the book’s spot in the display. Thankfully with Eric, there was no one in the exhibit and I had a solid 2 minutes of time with the old copy of Gatsby. It really was in near-fine condition, and believe me, I touch like 100 books a day, so I know an old book is in excellent condition. They also had a couple pieces by Matisse on display, which was neat!
Getting some meditation in this room of stones
That’s it for today! Thanks again for reading Tiny Blogs by TheRollerCodester! This is volume 2, but it's much more in line with the series format. The first one should have been called “Volume 0” since it’s more of an explainer of things, really. But yes, in case you missed Volume 1 of Tiny Blogs, I mentioned that these are short quickfire blogs about my daily life.
The tiny blogs are meant to have less structure, because I’m working on the practice of creating art that isn’t up to my perfectionist standard, ie: BAD ART. It’s not BAD really, but it’s unedited, and intended to only take a day to produce.
Most of my blog posts take about a week to write, and that’s if I don’t get in my own way, so these are something I’m trying in order to release myself from the perfectionist bubble (FREE ME, PLEASE). I’m trying to make this an almost daily occurrence, but I don’t want to burn myself out, so if you notice a skipped day, I just likely that I only went to work and then sat on my couch until bed time, so there was nothing to write about that day, okay?
Thanks again.
Kindly,
C
