Time to return home from my imaginary travels, but not without a layover in Washington D.C. The African American Museum will be opening soon, after what, 100 years in the making?

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/15/493909656/mission-of-african-american-museum-writ-large-in-its-very-design

The building looks spectacular, from what I can discern in the various articles published about it. The external, intricate ironwork that forms a diaphanous lattice reminds me of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris – that museum is stunning as well.

Here are some critical thoughts by expert Mario Gooden, a principal of Huff + Gooden Architects and a professor of practice at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) of Columbia University where is also the co-director of the Global Africa Lab (GAL), to be contemplated after the intense days of the opening are over.

http://www.averyreview.com/issues/6/african-american-museums

I chose portraits of the next generation, the treasures among us, for today’s features – may they grow up into a world that sees ever diminishing racism.

Back on a plane to London to make it for what looks like a fascinating conference on architecture and art, both of which I like to photograph, of course.

Chicago

Berlin

NYC Highline

https://www.friezearchitecture.com/home

How can you not be curious about a conference announcement that describes the meeting location, London’s Royal College of Physicians, as a spectacular example of British Brutalism? The array of speakers is promising and a year that has seen the passing of some stellar architects, I’m thinking Dame Zaha Hadid, for example, calls for deeper understanding of the subject.

Since I won’t have much time for the city per se, I’ll check out the treasure trove of the best photographs of London here:

http://www.timeout.com/london/art/the-40-best-photos-of-london-ever-taken

And then off to Alison Jacques for the Dorothea Tanning exhibit. I adore this woman from afar, a self taught artist, who managed not to be oppressed in her long marriage to Max Ernst (he divorced Peggy Guggenheim), a painter who took up writing poetry in her eighties. She was born in a small town in Illinois, moved around the country, then around the world, a global citizen. Held her own amongst the luminaries of the day, including Ernst, of course, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Dylan Thomas. I was artistically influenced by Ernst, Becker-Modersohn and Nolde – but if I had to chose a life to emulate, it would be one like Tanning’s.

http://www.timeout.com/london/art/dorothea-tanning

One of my earliest montages contains her portrait set against Ernst, whose misogynist work Une semaine de bonté I was fascinated with at the time. If you look closely you’ll find her portrait twice (once as a warrior) and his portrait once (about to be pecked by the strutting rooster) in the montage.

 Northern Chile, 1975

If I hurry, I’ll make it in time to Berlin to attend a concert with music by some of my favorite composers. The Berliner Festspiele/Musikfest Berlin had a line-up that would have had me there for almost every offering. Since I was still in Melbourne (theoretically,) I missed the concert last Monday that everyone talks about: Homage à Pierre Boulez played by Tamara Stefanovich and Pierre-Laurent Aimard on 2 pianos.

But I will, must make it to this one: http://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/aktuell/festivals/musikfest_berlin/mfb16_programm/mfb16_programm_gesamt/mfb16_veranstaltungsdetail_160365.php

My collection has grown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDQE82ElyJg  Zappa

Having traveled East I might as well stop by Korea. South Korea, that is, of course. Wouldn’t want to interfere with the next nuclear test ride further to the North….

Never been to Seoul. But this exhibit seems worth it – called Gathering Clouds.

http://www.randian-online.com/np_event/anish-kapoor-wook-kyung-choi-exhibition-kukje-gallery-in-seoul/

You have seen Kapoor’s work – cloud gate –  in Chicago, at the Tate Modern, or, if you’re lucky, last year in Versaille. An enormous installation by all reports, I wasn’t there, alas.

http://en.chateauversailles.fr/news-/events/exhibitions/kapoor-versailles

I have sometimes thought that one kind of reflectiveness of his work – the actual interaction with light – often overshadows (pun intended) the other kind of reflectiveness, the subtleness contained in his sculptures.

My own take on silver(lining) and clouds has as one ingredient the meat grinder and other machines used for the production of the Olympia Provisions delicacies. They commissioned me some time back to photograph their facilities for food production and those montages can be seen at their Northwest Thurman St. restaurant. Now I am combining them with landscapes.

The 17th century painter Jacob van Ruisdael could paint clouds like few before or after him. I’d like to hop around to three cities to look at his paintings in the respective collections of the National Gallery in London (20), the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (16), and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (9) – where I have never been.

Van Ruisdael has lately been picked up again by many an art critic with the acknowledgment  that he was for some time underrated. People nowadays are effusive in their praise, and imaginative in their interpretations of his work.

The Shore at Egmond-aan-Zee, c. 1675,
Jacob van Ruisdael, The National Gallery, London

And since we are fantasizing, once in St. Petersburg I would hitch a ride on the Trans-Siberian train to China – since the next stop on the exhibition circuit will be Korea.

So far I have not been able to travel abroad this year. For those who know me that is a first, given my passion for journeys. So this week I am imagining the trips I’d take if given carte blanche in the next several month, with a focus on exhibits that triggered my curiosity.

I would start with Switzerland, St. Gallen to be precise, for a show fitting with the apocalyptic visions of this fall. Then a little detour to the village of Lenzerheide, where I learned to ski as a child, to hike through alpine meadows which are filled with mauve gentians and the pink autumn crocus until the end of October.

Both form the crux of this thematic exhibition centered around a unique series of sculptures and large-scale installations by the legendary Swiss artist Martin Disler (1949–1996). These are surrounded by groups of impressive and uncanny works by Damien Deroubaix, Jutta Koether, Mona Hatoum, and Josef Felix Müller, among others. The contemporary pieces are augmented with works by old masters: the important Apocalypse series of woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and Les Grandes Misères de la guerre by Jacques Callot (1592–1635), which reveal an impressive panorama of social rejection and human abysses in dialogue with contemporary works across centuries.Curators: Konrad Bitterli and Matthias Wohlgemuth.” This intro from their catalogue does sound intriguing, doesn’t it? 

http://www.kunstmuseumsg.ch/unser-programm/aktuelle-ausstellungen/uebersicht.html