First: Happy Birthday, dad. He’s 52 today.
Second: Happy Birthday, Alexi. He’s 27 today.
Third: Happy Birthday, Ron and Chad. And I’m sure many others. Though, I’m not sure how old they are.
Friday night, I picked up a friend of mine in Framingham and we headed to the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to see what all they had. Since I’ve been “working from home” for so long, I rarely have to deal with traffic. Even still, traffic in Raleigh doesn’t compare to Boston. Congestion may be similar in places, but Boston drivers are definitely more aggressive. Needless to say, as someone who loves driving fast (and, by some standards, recklessly), I loved driving in it. Sadly, I don’t think my passengers hold the same sentiment.
Since it’s a part of town that I haven’t been to, and she’s only lived in the area for four weeks, we ended up a bit backwards on the way there and back. Go, go, gadget sense of direction.
We didn’t pay extra for the El Greco exhibition, in part because of time, and in part because we just felt it was unnecessary. We were, however, fortunate enough to see the Winslow Homer exhibition. (I’ll insert some business operations nerdiness here and say that I kept thinking “Frederick Winslow…?”).
The person I went with graduated from RISD, and might know a thing or two about art, what to look for, and how to appreciate it. For someone as relatively dense as I am to metaphor and the visual (and literary…and most anything that doesn’t go in your ears) arts, this seemed to help at times.
In particular, Homer often used unconventional mediums to texturize his paintings, adding a depth uncommon to other art I’ve been exposed to. There were certain ways of doing that, which I had questions about, and she was able to explain some of it to me in ways that made sense…and in ways that I generally think are pretty cool about any art, creation, or innovation.
Aside from the works by Homer, there were a lot of Greek, Egyptian, and Asian artifacts in their collection. While anthropology has never been a direct fascination or source of intrigue for me, it’s never a bad time looking at cool weapons that are hundreds of years old.