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December 2024

Lloyd Center Journal

· A Photographic Project by Horatio Hung-Yan Law ·

“I see my buildings as pieces of cities, and in my designs, I try to make them into responsible and contributing citizens.” – César Pelli, Argentine-American architect (1926–2019).

About a century ago, a young man with a vision started buying parcels of land on Portland’s East side. His plan for a large commercial hub away from downtown was realized some 40 years later, when he had become a loaded southern Californian oil company executive with the means to hire the best architects of the day. Ralph B. Lloyd (1875–1953) did not live to see the opening of the mall that bears his name, in August 1960. By that time it was touted the largest mall in the U.S., designed by John Graham Jr, architect of Seattle’s famed Space Needle, as one of the first in a string of commercial centers his firm became known for.

Lloyd Center, with its open air plan, anchor stores and various attractions, including a famous ice rink, soon became a landmark of the city. Lloyd and his architects understood the lure of free and ample parking. Enough spots for 800 cars materialized. So did the customers. In the 1990s the mall was enclosed and provided with a food court. Even though that separated the complex from the previously open connection to the neighborhood, it remained more than just a place to shop. The entire complex served as a “contributing citizen” reminiscent of Pelli’s formulation. Walking groups of all ages used the space in rainy season. People found shelter from summer heat in the air-conditioned passages. Kids experienced their first taste of freedom when dropped off at the movies or the game rooms. Students hung out, and the ice rink provided endless opportunities to marvel or just people watch. Importantly, it was a community space that reflected economic and racial diversity, so sorely missed by many of us in other parts of the city.

Between the advent of E-commerce, the Covid epidemic, and changes in the overall economy, things went into a downward spiral eventually. Anchor stores left, gang-related crime and the number of houseless congregating around the neighborhood rose, and we are now at a point where the mall will be closed for good by the beginning of August.

The current owners of the center, Urban Renaissance Group and KKR Real Estate Finance Trust Inc., plan to demolish all of it and divide the 29.3 acres into 14 parcels to be sold for mixed-use redevelopment. ZGF architects offered an urban renewal proposal, and a Master plan was approved by city’s Design Commission on March 5th, 2026. Strong opposition by neighborhood groups, including the Save Lloyd Ice Coalition, and the Save Lloyd Campaign in partnership with the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, ignored by the Design Commission, have now led to appeals of this decision. The City Council is scheduled to hear arguments against efforts to replace the mall on Wednesday, June 24 at 9:45 a.m., deciding on approval, modification, or opposition to the proposal entirely.

***

Impending loss of the familiar spurs melancholy for some, curiosity for others. The increasingly abandoned Lloyd Center drew photographer and public art and installation artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law for repeat visits. They turned into a months-long project of poignant documentation of a communal space under the threat of an uncertain fate. The photographic voyage is currently on exhibit at PLACE in NW Portland. Run, don’t walk, to catch this show before it closes on May 1,2026.

Tomes have been written about the lure of ruins and abandoned or decaying industrial and commercial space for photographers. Lucky for us, Law does not yield to the temptation to accentuate morbid aspects of decline. Instead, he provides a portrait of a place that still occasionally vibrates, still has moments of beauty, still conveys a sense of the original optimism of builders trying to integrate structural elegance and airiness into dens of commerce. Add to that choice of positive depiction a clever way to display his photographic harvest: the images on the wall are sequenced in various fashions that echo the feelings of walking through a Mall. There is no unifying style, color and black&white happily co-reside, sizes are all over the map, prints refuse to be rigidly aligned. Some walls are dedicated to architectural themes, others hint at subjective moments that roused emotions in the photographer. Busy views are counterbalanced by quiet glimpses. Law’s capture of the space mirrors both aspects that were emphasized by the original designs (as well as the plans for redevelopment), namely activation AND lingering.

The artist is surely familiar to ArtsWatch readers for his Urban Studies series, portraits of Portland’s neighborhoods taken with his iPhone on daily walks. These images are picked up by chance and a discerning eye, linked only by the fact that they were spotted during ambulation. Almost always interesting takes by our flaneur-in-residence. I had also reported on his curatorial prowess with works by contemporary Asian-American artists at the Portland China Town Museum, where he served as Artist Residency Director. (He will soon again curate a community assemblage, Portland as seen by photographers over age 65. The line-up of 40 participants is a veritable who’s who of the photographic community’s éminences grises, in this case more referring to hair color than actual hidden powers, I presume. Running for 6 weeks again at PLACE which generously donates its space, it promises to be a gang buster event starting at the beginning of May.)

This was the first time I saw an entire body of work exhibited by the artist, again with terrific moxie to break the rules. Simply pinned to walls, repeat motifs with slight, but important modulations. If he can continue to stay safely away from the cliff edge of vaulting into technicolor overdrive, the work could be meaningfully gathered into a book that many of us, I believe, would cherish as a memento of times coming to a close.

***

“At the heart of capitalism is creative destruction.” – Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter.

You’ve probably walked by this sculpture near Lloyd Center a hundred times. Larry Kirkland’s 1991 stack of money on an ionic column in a fountain is titled Capitalism. If you ever read the inscriptions on some 25 of those coins, you likely agree that their outstanding feature is a competition for triteness. Samples:”Business without profit, is not business anymore than a pickle is a candy.” “Never invest in anything that eats or needs repairing.””That money talks, I’ll not deny, I heard it once. It said: “Goodbye”. I rest my case.

An alternative would have been to include some of Schumpeter’s wisdoms, his theory of creative destruction. It describes the process where new innovations replace outdated systems. Whatever you think about capitalism, insights on business cycles, entrepreneurship, and capitalist development need to be considered for modern economics. Or city planning, for that matter, if you want keep your foot in the world as is, rather than what we wished it to be.

I understand the nostalgia, the love for places that served a meaningful role in the community. I also believe we must look forwards, with the contemporary needs for affordable housing and more green spaces overwhelming. Infill of central spaces, linked to public transportation, is paramount in my opinion, IF we can guarantee that the needs of the populace are filled, and not neglected at its expense. Building housing and parks on former parking lots and store fronts sounds like the right move to me. The question is, of course, if the manifold promises and allusions to neighborhood improvement found in the development plan (downloadable here) approved by the Design Committee, are nothing but.

Are there fixed requirements of x units of this or that? Did I miss them, perusing the documents in front of City Council? Are there development laws I am not familiar with? In the plan outlines on policy for Housing Diversity (Policy 2.LD-4), at least, we read: “Encourage development of new housing, especially in Central Lloyd and on the Irvington and Sullivan’s Gulch edges to foster a sense of community and support efficient provision of residential amenities and services.” (My bolding.) A discussion of required features of any redevelopment of Lloyd Center should be paramount during the appeal process in front of Portland City Council.

Then again, we are not facing the erection of a data processing center, or a warehouse to be used as concentration camp on these 29 acres. I guess there’s always something that could be worse.

Or something to be grateful for: in this case that we have Horatio Law’s splendid documentation of a Portland landmark that can serve as a memento to mid-century architectural citizenship.

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On the Road home.

1100 kilometers on the road in the car by myself. A lot of time to think, and a lot of occasions to stop, stretch my legs and feel awe for the beauty around me.

At this time of year, central California is a riot of color, before the drab of drought sets in. Blossoming oleander lining the median of the highway, fruit trees in bloom, and every where the brilliance of mustard plants. Their yellow against the blue mountains on the horizon reminded me of the war in Ukraine, with another spring under assault, no end in sight. The impunity of those declaring war, the suffering of those forced into it, betrayed even by former allies.

Fire towers everywhere. Birds were searching for grubs, meadows in yellow and purple, again the color combination forcing me to think eastwards. Enough, I decided, let’s get distracted by some surely apolitical site, an abbey built by and for Cistercian monks. Hah! Leave it to me to find the politics there as well….

The Abbey of our Lady of New Clairvaux is located in Vina, California. The small hamlet is close to I-5, and attracts thousands of visitors annually mostly because of the New Clairvaux winery operated by the monks. I did not visit the winery, but drove through the vineyards and beautifully planted and maintained grounds up to the church nearby.

The visitor is greeted by a sculpture outside the church doors that signals strong “Take the baby, Joseph, I’m late for my shift!” vibes. Just kidding, it is of course a representation of a savior offered to the world, beautifully rendered. Surprised me, though, since the core tenet of Trappist monks, as I understood it, was to pray in surrounds bereft of ornamentation, stained glass and sculptures included.

It turned out that you can only enter the church between 2:30 pm and 5:00 pm, the only time not devoted to different chapters of prayer service. But seeing it from the outside was worthwhile the detour, once I learned the history of its construction.

In 1955, Father Thomas Davis, abbot of the newly-founded abbey of our Lady of New Clairvaux, noticed piles of stones in San Francisco’s Golden Gate park, which turned out to be the original building blocks of the Cistercian Monastery of Santa Maria De Ovila located in Trillo, Spain. The abbey had been abandoned for over 150 years and at times used as animal shelter. (I’ll get to how they got there in a minute.) After much historical research, documentation and architectural planning, the stones were brought by 19 trucks to Vina and used for restoring the abbey in the 1990s.

About 60% of the stones could be salvaged. A quarry in Texas delivered what more was needed for the building, and to reinforce the structural integrity of the original stones, which were made in 1181, architects used concrete blocks. That also checked the requirement to be earthquake proof. I obviously missed seeing the ancient stones on the inside, given the visiting hours, but some of the remaining ones are incorporated into the landscape outside the building, much to the photographer’s delight. You can read more about the specifics and the general philosophy behind Cistercian architecture here.

How did the original cloister stones get to San Francisco? A tax-evading millionaire, of course…

It turns out, William Randolph Hearst had shipped the stones from Spain to incorporate into his estate in Wyntoon, in the remote Siskiyou mountains in Northern California. He believed these historical elements would sufficiently reflect his wealth and taste for the extraordinary. It cost him $97.000 in 1925 to buy the monastery, shipped to San Francisco after dismantling in 1931. They were given to the city as tax abatement. Who cares about historic artifacts, spiritual ones no less, dumped into the maintenance grounds of a park….

Cue the “loot or buy up foreign artifacts and antiquities” debate? Not today.

The politics I want to circle back to are written up perfectly by Noah Hawley in a terrific essay in The Atlantic: WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BILLIONAIRES AT JEFF BEZOS’S PRIVATE RETREAT – For the richest men on Earth, everything is free and nothing matters. (I tried to set it up as a gift link – free to read. If it isn’t working, let me know.) It analyzes the historical developments of impunity for the rich. Here is the concluding paragraph to whet your appetite.

“The world has always been run by rich men. The robber barons of the Gilded Age were known for their ruthlessness in the accumulation of wealth—hiring Pinkertons to shoot striking unionists. But they directly engaged with the world around them, using their wealth and power to muscle it into its most profitable form. And although today’s billionaires are clearly manipulating society to maximize their own profit, something else is also happening—a disassociation from the reality of cause and effect, from meaning and history. These men no longer feel the need to change the world in order to succeed, because their success is guaranteed, no matter what happens to the rest of us.”

I am back home now, tired, happy. Spring has arrived in Oregon as well. Soon we’ll walk together through familiar haunts! First I need to sleep for a week or two, though….

Music today is sung my Trappist monks.




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The Gall….

Merriam-Webster definitions:

– Nerve/Effrontery// Bile//something bitter to endure//bitterness of spirit : Rancor// an abnormal outgrowth of plant tissue usually due to insect or mite parasites or fungi and sometimes forming an important source of tannin see gall wasp illustration//a skin sore caused by chronic irritation// a cause or state of exasperation.

Last weekend a severe rain storm hit the Bay area. I found large numbers of oak galls under the trees during subsequent walks. The Diablo Mountain range is full of healthy oaks, not yet hit by oak wilt, the fungal disease ravaging the eastern parts of the US.

The funny, apple-like appendages you see on oak trees during spring and summer,

and then on the ground later in the season, are actually small temporary homes of wasps.

These tiny wasps use certain chemicals mimicking growth hormone to induce growth on the leaves and branches of oak trees, reminiscent of tumors, but not really harmful. There are many species of these gall wasps (800 in the US alone), and they all produce different kinds of galls, often on the very same tree.

The larvae use the galls for shelter and food, and eventually the fully formed wasps bore holes into the wall through which they emerge. Their reproduction is pretty nifty, too:

“Many species have alternating generations, meaning all of the adults emerging from galls during one time of the year are female-only, while the adults emerging in a different season have both males and females. Most species have females that can reproduce using parthenogenesis when they emerge by themselves. This means that their eggs are essentially clones of themselves. What’s more, some species appear not to have any males at all.” (Ref.)

The galls sustain a large ecosystem of birds and ground mammals, but also had their benefits for humans. People have used them to make indelible ink for more than 1400 years. If you squash the pulp of galls and add iron sulfate ((FeSO4) and mix in a binder, usually gum arabic, you get a grey ink that will eventually darken to a purplish black. Use was widespread, and often specified by law: Great Britain and France specified the content of iron gall ink for all royal and legal records to ensure permanence. The United States Postal Service had its own official recipe that was to be used in all post office branches for the use of their customers. In Germany the use of special blue or black urkunden- oder dokumentenechte Tinte or documentary use permanent inks is required in notariellen Urkunden (Civil law notary legal instruments) (I am told by Wikipedia).

I’d rather think about the beauty of those structures, here on my last day in California. And the poetic response they elicit, with so many subtle meanings of the term added, the bitterness of bile, the gall to spit out endless vitriol…

GALL

Those from Aleppo were bitterest, 
yielding the vividest ink. More permanent
than lampblack or bistre, and at first pale grey,
it darkened, upon exposure, 
to the exact shade of rain-pregnant clouds, 
since somewhere in the prehistory of ink 
is reproduction: a gall-wasp’s nursery, 
deliberate worm at the oak apple’s heart. 
We knew the recipe by heart for centuries:
we unlettered, tongueless, with hair of ash, 
the slattern at the pestle, the bad daughter. 
But all who made marks on parchment or paper
dipped their pens in gall, in vitriol; even 
the mildest of words like mellow fruitfulness,
of supplication like all I endeavour end 
decay equally in time with bare, barren, sterile;
the pages corroding along all their script  
like a trail of ash (there is beauty in this)
as the apple of Sodom, the gall, turned
in the hand from gold into ashes and smoke.

by CAITRÍONA O’REILLY

Here is another “girl’s lament“, a poem by Schiller set in an oak forest, intoned by Schubert.

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Art on the Road: Monet and Venice.

“Although I am enthusiastic about Venice, and though I’ve started a few canvases, I’m afraid I will only bring back beginnings that will be nothing else but souvenirs for me”.

Claude Monet, letter to Gaston Bernheim. Fondation Monet.

***

In the early 1980s you could sneak into a Forbes exhibition of Fabergé eggs in New York City for free. I went there during my lunch breaks at the New School, across the street on 5th Ave, entering windowless, dark rooms with glass vitrines lit by invisible sources. Inside, the ornate concoctions nestled in dark blue or black velvet, each prettier than the next, gold and pastel colors. As long as you didn’t think about the way the Russian peasantry’s blood and toil enabled the Tsar to acquire such luxury items, you could revel in their beauty.

These associations popped up when I visited the de Young museum’s current exhibition, Monet and Venice, in San Francisco. Dark, windowless rooms, painted in velvety blue, contain numerous gold-framed, jewel-toned showpieces, each as pleasant and precious as a Fabergé egg, albeit rectangular. Fetching, exquisitely crafted, decorative. First impressions, of course, for someone who has never been much of a fan of Monet, and is wary of the through-line of decorative focus expressed by much of his work.

Claude Monet Palazzo Ducale (1908)

Second impression was admiration for how the entire exhibition was set up. The stellar collection of some 30 plus Venice paintings from the artist’s 10 week visit in 1908 (many executed from sketches, likely photographs, and surely memory in the ensuing 4 years back at home) is smartly framed by additional materials. Visitors get exposed to historic photographs of the city, as well as of the Monet couple visiting, and are provided with lots of quotations from the artist about his approach to art, process and subject. First shown at the Brooklyn Museum last fall, the exhibition was co-curated by  Lisa Small, senior curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Melissa Buron, director of collections and chief curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum. A truly successful collaboration.

Carlo Ponti Piazza San Marco ca 1860-1870

Importantly, some works of other artist fascinated by Venice, among them Turner, Sargent and Canaletto, are interspersed with Monet’s cityscapes. (By all reports, he was hesitant to visit the city in the first place because so many admired colleagues had painted it, and the trip was planned by his wife Alice as a recuperative sojourn only, for the aging and cataract-plagued painter. But paint he did, barely arrived.)

Giovanni Canaletto Venice, the Grand Canal looking East, with Santa Maria della Salute, (1749-1750)

Michele Giovanni Marieschi Views of Venice (1741)

John Ruskin The South Side of the Basilica de San Marco, from the Loggia of the Palazzo Ducale, ca 1850.

Give me a Turner, any time.

J.M.W. Turner The Campanile and Piazza of San Marco, Venice (1840)

J.M.W. Turner Boats at the Entrance to the Canale della Giudecca, Venice, off Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana (maybe 1840)

That said, the shimmering Adriatic light of the Venice lagoon was spectacularly captured in Monet’s paintings on display, but it (or any other bright light) was sorely missing from the surround. The contrast between the dark walls and the relatively small, bright canvasses made the latter into somewhat confined objects, constrained instead of unfolding into their surround.

Claude Monet San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk (1908)

The only thing viscerally reminiscent of Venice were the crowds – here as there, amorphous units wafted from painting to painting, location to location, nowhere more dense that in the final room where large water lily paintings hung. The lure of the familiar, I guess. (This, by the way, despite timed entry slots for the exhibition. Lucky I was double masked.) The contrast could not have been more pronounced: the small cityscapes felt like glorified postcards compared to the immersion effect provided by the large pond canvasses, any given visual angle across the room still enveloping the viewer into the depictions.

Claude Monet Water Lilies (1914-1917)

The works themselves were pleasing in the impressionistic way, but for me became interesting at second glance, if and when I had a chance to break through the cordon of visitors bulging in front of each painting. They are, in some sense, studies of a given subject – this or that Palazzo – from slightly different perspectives (often just a minimally extended surround included) and under different lighting conditions that change the hue of the pastel tones applied. But they are also often horizontally bifurcated – with the top half devoted to depiction, however impressionistic, of a given architectural structure, and the bottom half a laboratory of ever more abstract painting of water.

Claude Monet The Grand Canal, Venice (1908)

The proportions of water to shore (large over small) seemed different from my memory of the canals (narrower in relation). I first thought that maybe we were seeing the psychological effect of boundary extension. This concept refers to remembering a previously viewed scene as containing a larger extent of the background than was actually present, and information that was likely present just outside the boundaries of that view is often incorporated into the representation of that scene. But here we are confronted with the reverse: it is the foreground, the water, that is larger (and also emptier, rid of most of the water traffic surely present in 1908 as well,) than the likely objective perspective. Lots of canvas space to develop abstraction rather than depicting optical impressions, uninhibited by the need to represent anything, perhaps. Have to give Monet that – always exploring, even towards the end of his by then illustrious career, at the height of his renown.

Claude Monet The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore (1908)

Some sentence I picked up at the Marmottan in Paris at a previous visit had stuck with me: “The artist invites universal thoughts of peaceful contemplation.” I wondered how this could come from a man, who was, in his own ways, politically engaged. He was a friend of Emile Zola’s and joined him and other liberals in their belief that Dreyfus was innocent, during the times of the Dreyfus Affair. He was drawn to Courbet, a radical leftist at the time. Prime minister Clemenceau was his friend, and during WW I Monet saw it as his patriotic duty to support the war effort with a victory garden and donations of his paintings to raise funds for victims and the wounded. I scoffed at the notion of art => peaceful contemplation, thinking of it as placating, rather than depicting the world as it is, moving us to remedy what’s wrong.

Goes to show that I am as thoughtless as the next person, if biased about a source. The same invitation to slow down, contemplate and introspect from a different corner – the curator of this year’s Venice Biennale – seemed like just the ticket. Then again, maybe it is not the act of contemplation, but the subject that irked me: Monet hoped for the restorative effect of contemplating the aesthetics of fleetingness in nature, the light, the atmospherics, major keys beauty. Which brings me to Venice 2026, more precisely the 61st Biennale which is about to open in early May. Here we are asked to focus on the “minor keys, the overlooked, disguised, fervently guarded spaces reserved for human dignity.”

(And yes, to all of you who frown, “What’s wrong with restorative beauty?” Nothing at all. It, as any consoling work of art, certainly has a prominent role for anguished souls. I just feel that time is running through our – my – hands like sand, urging a use of art to focus on the most important issues of our world to save what can be saved. Art as the canary in the coal mine. To put it bluntly, the beauty of water lilies or Venice will be a mute topic, once the ponds are dried out, the city drowned.)

Claude Monet Water Lilies (1907)

***

In refusing the spectacle of horror, the time has come to listen to the minor keys, to tune in sotto voce to the whispers, to the lower frequencies; to find the oases, the islands, where the dignity of all living beings is safeguarded.

—Curatorial statement by Koyo Kouoh, “In Minor Keys,” 2025

***

The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, will run from Saturday 9 May to Sunday 22 November 2026. It has seen its share of tragedy and upheaval long before it started. Curator Koyo Kouoh, highly respected in the art world, died suddenly late last year, leaving her team scrambling to consolidate and materialize her vision for this year’s exhibition. Another death struck, with Henrike Naumann, who was to represent the German pavilion, succumbing to cancer at age 41.

Then South Africa canceled its pavilion. The South African minister of culture had taken political issue with the work of Gabrielle Goliath, who had been unanimously selected by committee. “Elegy” was a decade-long project, a performance and video series that honors women, gay, and trans people who have been victims of violent killings. The new iteration at Venice was to include a tribute to Hiba Abu Nada, a Palestinian poet killed in an Israeli airstrike, as well as the tens of thousands of women and children who have died in Gaza since October 2023. Government and artist tied up in law suits over this perceived censorship move, until the state declared final refusal to be represented this year in Venice at all in February.

The U.S. was not far behind. We will have a Pavilion, but the final choice of representative is highly controversial. For the first time ever, the State Department took on the selection process, sidelining the NEA with budget cuts. Applicants had to pass the “Trump test” that proposals must not “operate any programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.” Apparently, the almost unknown artist Robert Lazzarini had initially been selected before being nixed by the State Department, to be dropped for “bureaucratic rather than ideological reasons,” as later reported. Other artists came on with proposals, among them  Andres Serrano and Curtis Yarvin.

Who was finally picked? An American born sculptor, living in Mexico, who never applied to show at the Biennale in the first place. Alma Allen has only once been included in a major exhibition in the States, the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Last year some of his sculptures could be seen adjacent to NYC’s Park Avenue. Compare that to the standing of his Biennale predecessors: including Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Jasper Johns, Martin Puryear, Simone Leigh and Jeffrey Gibson, among others. He is currently not represented by any gallery. This was his commentary in the NYT: his galleries, Mendes Wood and Olney Gleason, asked him not to accept the Venice Biennale commission and dropped him when he did. Both galleries confirmed that they were no longer working with him, but declined to explain why, making the entire nomination and the obscure process behind it even more controversial.

I learned that “organizing the pavilion this year is commissioner Jenni Parido, founder of a pet food company and now executive director of the mysterious American Arts Conservancy (AAC), a new Florida-based nonprofit established this September with a mission to advance American visual art through diplomacy, education and cultural legacy. As its website states, it was “founded on the belief that art is a foundational element of a thriving democracy.” (Ref.) All in line, one presumes, with what curator Jeffrey Uslip highlights as “Allen’s alchemical transformation of matter explore the concept of ‘elevation,’ both as a physical manifestation of form and as a symbol of collective optimism and self-realization, furthering the Trump Administration’s focus on showcasing American excellence.”

***

Pavilions unfilled, pavilions filled with murky selection processes, and now pavilions demanded to be removed: many artists sent out an urgent call to ban outright or relocate national representation of countries engaged in warfare or genocidal action, including Russia, Israel, and the United States. There are precedents: the Russian and South African pavilions had been previously excluded, and there was political reaction to Pinochet’s takeover in Chile in 1974, with all national pavilions closed.

Not exactly minor keys, but a loud cacophony of conflict preceding the opening of this important touchstone in our contemporary art world. More Shostakovich’s 7th in C major than a Schumann concerto in A minor. I will report later how it all unfolds after the opening.

In the meantime, pay the De Young a visit if you are in San Francisco. It is a treat to see the accumulated art works in the current exhibition.

Here is my musical choice, to no-one’s surprise .

Claude Monet The Palazzo Contarini (1908)

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During these Times

We have no other time than here and now
A time that's cheating us with half-filled bowls
We have to drink since refills are denied,
In front of our paradise
The sword already lurks, for which we, the heirs of lost sons 
driven from their land, were chosen
We grew old, before given a chance of ever being young
Our current life a state of not-yet-dying
We once arrived naively filled with faith
Into a century ravaged by storms
Our prior hopes replaced by stunned internal silence
Aid only possible for those who'd loudly cry
We furtively dream of woods and meadows
and a morsel of happiness thrown at our feet
But no tomorrow will restore the present day
we have no other time than here and now
We have no other time than here and now
We have no other time than here and now 
We have no other time than here and now, here and now, 
than here and now, here and now, here and now, here and now


by Mascha Kaléko

Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko’s later writing was suffused with the experience of exile. Moving from Poland to Germany, fleeing to the US during Nazi rule, eventually emigrating to Israel where a lack of Hebrew isolated her even more, she was a chronicler of hardship, crushed hopes, victims of displacement.

Little of her oeuvre is translated into English. I tried my hand on the verses above, fully aware I’m not a poet. I kept her punctuation, but was obviously unable to maintain the rhyming scheme. I was more interested in getting the meaning across, her acknowledgement of an inevitable fate and yet an insistence on agency, amidst the most dire circumstances.

During this week in particular I have been thinking about the fate of the displaced, in all the ongoing war zones, the fate of those for whom the sword is lurking, whose lives already are or will be exposed to existential threat.

The whole of Tuesday, after the early Presidential threats of exterminating an entire civilization, never to be restored again, I was in such a state of anticipatory anxiety that I could barely function. Then I woke up enraged this morning, feeling the emotional abuse of threatened violence, keeping a world holding its breath, manipulation only matched by that of the stock market. Those thousands killed, kids included, billions spent, our defensive arsenal depleted. Our reputation in the world in ruins, international transportation made more expensive, an oppressive Iranian regime more secured than ever. A people promised liberation offered obliteration on the turn of a dime, on the whim of either a madman or an intentional manipulator. And none of it providing the security that it won’t start again at any moment in time.

The poem reminded me to stay focused on the here and now, because that is all we have, and should not waste with fears about an unpredictable future. You can go further, though, beyond the “all we have.” WE HAVE the here and now, and as such we can make use of it, with something, anything, to affect what future will arise. Maybe we can render aid to those who are muted into silence, after all, not expecting them to shout for it. Maybe we can refill the bowls of the thirsty, in defiance of the rules.

And just maybe we can unite to rip the swords out of the hands of the bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters that destroy the world for power and riches. We are in a here and now where action is still possible.

We can refuse to join the cult of lemmings bent on self destruction, reverse direction – in the here and now.

A much more elegant and extended version of those thoughts expressed by Rebecca Solnit can be found here.

Here is the original version of the poem.

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Something on the Road.

I had meant to offer a new Art on the Road episode, having finally made it to a museum during this California sojourn. Well, the museum was WILD – but art was not exactly how I would describe it.

If I ranked the weird museums visited across my life time, the Black Hawk Museum in Danville, CA would definitely make it into the top three. It is certainly worth a visit, mind you, if only to figure out the strangest thing among the many you will encounter. It was voted Best East Bay Museum in 2026 by the East Bay Times – which turns out to be a daily broadsheet in Walnut Creek, a small locality in Contra Costa County, which reports mainly on local highlights and is a reliable source of obituaries…

The museum is situated on top of a hill occupied by an originally posh strip mall, now in various stages of decay, stores closed down, fountains turned off, ponds dried out.

You climb steep staircases, approaching an imposing building that in no way reveals how much space it actually covers, burrowed into the hill. You are greeted by a humongous elephant and various African wildlife completely out of context on the front plaza. Ubiquitous signs inform you that the museum is independent of the plaza, as if it has to ward off that sense of impending closure.

Originally meant to house a vintage car collection offered by co-founders and owners Ken Behring and Don Williams, it opened in 1988, amidst a controversy about the tax exemption they received for donating the cars to the museum. The exhibition of some 90 spiffy old timers amidst old gas station props is indeed extraordinary. Many of those were in private ownership by the founders, but others have been added from owners whose famous names draw many visitors. They are housed in pitch-black rooms, with lots of tiny sparkling lights and spotlights that bring out the color and the shine of the various chassis. Signage is excellent, informing you about every detail of each car you’d ever want to know – or not.

The same can’t be said for the rest of the exhibitions – and the “rest” is an inexplicable hodgepodge of thematically focussed displays around various parts of the world and some natural history. There is so much to see that I did not even get to all of it. I missed The Spirit of the Old West and the World of Nature, spending as much time as my tired feet allowed looking at the Art of Africa and Into China, never mind a collection of powder compacts (culled from 1000s of such objects accumulated over the decades by Patricia Behring, the founder’s wife.) At least for this exhibition the signage was informative.

Once you step “into” China, you get statements like: multiple artists worked on this for 20 weeks or some such, no names, no information about time frame or regional location.

Porcelain swans resembling bathroom lighting fixtures greet you at the entrance of yet another cavernous room,

and “dream landscapes” line the walls depicting what I assume is a stereotypical country side.

A few pieces of solid China, vases and plates compete for attention with a carved buddha.

A recreation of the forbidden city had me longing for a miniature train, since the whole set up was reminiscent of those miniature affairs.

Replicas of a Golden Throne and some of the Terracotta Warriors are eye catchers, all of the installations dramatically lit with purple, red and golden lighting.

Ivory carvings abound, some recreating famous battles, others just hovering around. The one thing that spoke to me (and where I learned something) was an assemblage of historic musical instruments, in the farthest corner of the rooms, of course.

The Art of Africa should be more realistically called Sub-Saharan, Tanzanian or Serengeti Carvings, given the limited selection from an entire continent. There were some interesting carvings of wild-life migrations as well as masks, but also what you’d expect in a tourist market, selling stereotypical versions of what Westerners would count as authentic – not even clear what material used as the base of the carvings. Some of it look pretty plastic to me, but that might be my ignorance.

Supervised by stuffed leopards, and surrounded by wall paintings of African wildlife which really lacked but one thing – a velvet canvas – the exhibition mostly spoke to the interest of hunters.

That is no coincidence, given the passions of the museum founder, Ken Behring (1928 – 2019). His was one of the actually true rags-to-riches stories so prevalent in American mythology. Born to working class parents in Illinois, he made is way as a salesman and eventually real estate magnate, becoming one of the richest men in the US. You might remember his name as the one-time owner of the National Football team the Seattle Seahawks. His 9 year tenure was quite controversial – he tried to move the team to Southern California when he failed in a bid to get a new stadium built to replace the Kingdome. The NFL did not allow that move, and, after much strife with coaches and team members, Behring sold the franchise, once acquired for $80 millions, for $200 million to Paul Allen. The fans counted him as one of the worst pro sports owners in their history.

He was no stranger to controversy in general, including numerous accusations of sexual harassment, all settled out of court. A generous philanthropist, he established programs to donate needed wheelchairs across the world, and supported the Smithsonian to the tune of over $100 million. The first recipient, the Museum of Natural History, was supposed to also display his trophies from big game hunting expeditions – he was passionate about trophy hunting on African safaris and shot sheep in Kazakhstan a few weeks before they were put on the endangered species list. Much protest ensued with accusations of poaching and unethical hunting methods. – Later, a group of curators and scholars at the Museum of American History expressed concerns about Behring’s gift and worried that that he had been given too much power to “dictate the nature and content of the museum’s exhibitions. Yet today the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History bears the subtitle “Behring Center” and his requirements were fulfilled.

The museum understandably focuses on the positive aspects of their founder rather than inform about the raging Smithsonian (or other) controversy at the time. Given his wealth, one wonders why he did not find some more appropriate painters for the family portraits that are hung in the entry halls.

Then again, a curatorial team up to the task of somehow linking these diverse exhibitions and providing some signage backbone would have been a good place to spend some of his resources. Be that as it may, a visit to this place is certainly an eyeopener how private interests, the drive to collect and a good tax accountant can combine to provide some stimulating sights.

Art on the Road has to wait for another day.

Music today is a complex new album called Hellbent Daydream, I leave it to you to imagine what mine might be….

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Thoughts on Passover

I have been thinking about children again. This time cued by the work of a Turkish photographer, Ugur Gallenkus, who won the International Photography award for his book Parallel Universes of Children.

The artist creates photomontages that combine photographs of children from affluent, safe environments with those less fortunate – children living in war zones, filled with threat of instability, physical harm and starvation. The juxtapositions expose the reality of war, exemplified by its most innocent victims.

The images fit seamlessly with other thoughts on Passover, our holiday about to begin tonight. This year there will be heavy hearts around the Seder table, and there is much conflict and tension in larger Jewish communities as well. Intense disagreement about what has become of Israel, of the U.S., of all involved in the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, is driving entire congregations apart.

People cannot agree on what is just, what is moral, or if we see the beginning of the end of a (claimed) democratic project in the Middle East. Jews themselves cannot agree if anti-Zionism must or must not be equated with anti-Semitism. Jews see shadows on the wall, when U.S. courts force academic institutions to provide the administration with lists of names of all Jewish students and staff, the same institutions that stifle dissent.

Many of us speak of genocidal wars against Palestinians, others cheer the likes of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. He pushed through the death penalty by hanging for Palestinians convicted of having intended harm or committed terrorism against the state of Israel. Look at his lapel pin.

The new law, passed by the Knesset this week, is discriminatory in so far that non-Palestinians are exempted, widening racial discrimination already present in the state. (61 of 120 members in favor, 48 abstaining…)The UN Human Rights office is one of many voices strongly opposed to the death penalty, and points out that there are hundreds of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons, often for years without trial; just last week, a 17 year old died of starvation in prison in the West Bank. Will they face the death penalty as well?

Extra-legal killings have been occurring in the occupied territories for a long time (and now see a flare up in the West Bank where settlers are on a rampage.) Legalizing the killing of (only) Palestinians, as this law does, creates a new status quo: the entire Israeli people are now involved, since the penalty is legitimized and executed by the state by which they are represented, creating a form of Apartheid. The dehumanization of Palestinians progresses when it is formalized and integrated into the system in this way.

Which brings me back to Passover: it is a holiday that educates younger generations about the history of the Jews and their relationship to their G-d and the land they call their own. More importantly, though, it is an essentially biblical holiday. Here is what that means, best explained by Rabbi Dr. Ismar Schorsch, chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS).

“There are two strictures on Passover. Passover, as you know, is the moment when the clan becomes a nation. It is a momentous transition, but that national identity is not without its constraints within the biblical context. I will dwell for a moment on the origin of Egyptian slavery. Why didn’t our patriarchs end up in Egypt to begin with? And it seems to me that the structure of Genesis makes it very clear that before Israel could become a model nation-state, it had to go through the bitter experience of slavery. Granted that slavery and suffering does not necessarily translate into virtue, but it is a hopeful context for the structure of a better political society. (…) So, the first stricture that Israel faces is to remember its slavery, remember the cruelty and the political oppression which you suffered, for that is the polar opposite of the kingdom that I want you to create.

And the second stricture on this political entity coming out of Egypt is Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai follows the Exodus. The Exodus is not an end in itself. The Exodus confronts lawful behavior. Mount Sinai is the giving of the Torah. It is the giving of commandments. It is the imposition of principles and values that are to guide this political entity. The political entity created after the Exodus is not to be driven by greed; it is to be driven by constraints, morality, and fundamental principles. So, the nation to come out of Egypt had quite severe constraints placed upon itself in order to help it become the model political entity that might inspire the ancient world.” (Ref.)

If we juxtapose those strictures with what is currently done in the name of religion (different ones, no less, if you look at the American Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s emphasis on evangelical Christianity), the disparity between what is morally demanded of us, and what is actually unleashed upon the world, couldn’t be more obvious. No wonder, that even the mass media now shower us with headlines or opinion titles like America is Abandoning Morality, or America is now a Rogue Superpower.

The children, of course, are most likely to get harmed in the long term, if they are not outright killed to begin with. (The February 28 strikes in Iran hit two schools, using a new, untested weapon made by Lockheed Martin that unleashes an explosive barrage of tungsten pellets on its targets.)

As of 3/28 the US and Israeli military killed more than 230 kids. Children will also be disproportionally hit by the environmental damage produced by all the noxious metals and oil smoke from the burning tankers. In particularly small babies crawling close to the ground will absorb toxins both through skin and airways. Schooling is disrupted for long stretches, and access to medical care becomes close to impossible under live fire, as still in Gaza and Lebanon as well.

Hunger is harder on small bodies who succumb earlier, particularly when clean water is not available. (85% of all sewer treatment plants have been bombed to smithereens in Gaza and Israel opened dams that allow sewage to flood Gaza.)

None of that even includes the psychological damage from living under constant fear, losing parents, facing a future with no security guarantees and most likely living in refugee camps for years on end.

CHILDREN. Include them in your prayers around the Seder table.

Chag Sameach.

Music by Ernst Bloch.

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Sign Selections.

On Saturday, we had a family outing to the No Kings Day rally in Livermore, California. Located in the DiabloRange, east of the San Francisco Bay Area, Livermore is a small town with some 80.000 inhabitants. It sported an earlier motto of “Live longer with Livermore.” During the 20th century, the dry regional climate attracted many suffering from tuberculosis to the various sanatoria in the city. The only thing that did indeed live longer, however, is a world record-setting light bulb. A 120+ year old 4-watt light bulb, called the Centennial Light, housed in the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department Firehouse Six, is still burning.

It used to be a railroad town, then focused on agriculture, mainly wheat production. Eventually, the vintners arrived. Since the 1950s, the city is home to two major research institutions: the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Sandia National Laboratories. The former, co-founded by Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence, does science related to National Security, in particular nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Sandia National Laboratories are in a similar business, including research on nuclear deterrence, arms control, and nonproliferation. It hosted some of the world’s earliest and fastest supercomputers, and is currently home to the Z Machine, the largest X-ray generator in the world, which is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. (Ref.)

It felt strange to be at a place so focused on nuclear weapon research, when we are in a war where the usage of nuclear devices is considered by the administration as a distinct possibility, or openly debated by the World Health Organization as a worst case scenario to be prepared for.

Home-made drawings…

The crowd on this sunny day brought home-made signs and cheerful sentiments, despite the expressed anger and revulsion on the placards. It was large; when I heard by the end of the day that the rallies attracted 8 million people across the US, I was not surprised. Even small towns mobilized significant numbers of protesters, many attending for the first time. In fact, two thirds of No Kings Day participants live in suburban, small town or rural areas, a 40% increase of protesters over last time, from outside big cities.

You wouldn’t know this by NYT reporting, which featured little, late, under the fold, and mostly cited skeptics, who turned out to be Republican leadership for the younger set. European mass media reported more prominently and in more details about what turned out to be the largest march in US history.

All age groups were represented, and a huge variety of causes addressed. Beyond the main refusal to bow to authoritarian power and anti-war proclamations, there were issues related to ICE, the abdication of congressional power, women’s and minority rights, racism, looting and self enrichment by the presidential family, and over and over complaints about lying and bending the truth.

Here they are, in no particular order other than that I really liked the last one of this set.

All pictures are mine with the exception of this one, taken in L.A. by a Getty photographer, Etienne Laurent. I included it because it is so apropos of our current national situation. Below was a participant in the Livermore protest, in less danger….

LAPD officers arrest a protester dressed as Lady Liberty in chains near the Metropolitan Detention Center during the “No Kings” national day of protest in Los Angeles on March 28, 2026.

We have to believe that the energy observed on Saturday will carry over to the mid-term elections. Assuming the administration and Supreme Court will not manage to significantly shrink the voter pool by all tricks of the trade at their command…

Listen to Springsteen….

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In America, there are no kings.

At least that’s the assumption. To make sure it stays that way, you might want to add your voice to the chorus. Tomorrow, 3/28, is another day of planned marches and gatherings. You can read up on what it’s all about here, and find a convenient location near you here.

I will be out under sunny California skies, with blooms wherever you look and the occasional bluebird visiting. One might forget for a minute that we are bombarding other countries, spreading death and destruction. Then again, making our voices heard against the policies of the day might be a good reminder of what we stand for and/or fight against.

The next day we can resume our usual daily walk again – oak leaves still in soft green, grasses blossoming.

Bees on ubiquitous lavender in front yards,

and flowering bushes and trees everywhere.

Cherry and plum blossoms almost gone. The early heat wave here contributed to that.

So much beauty. So much to preserve.

Music from a duo new to me.

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Whiplash

I look at a typical day right now (see below) and am not surprised that I am at times overwhelmed. As you likely are. So I will take a little time off from regular posting, go visit my kids down South, and along the way gather some renewed energy.

Morning: I read poetry, made for the moment, by Lebanese-Armenian poet Perla Kantarjian. Beirut is in flames as I write this. Under the cover of another war next door. If I had the energy I would write about the long-term environmental consequences of all the burning oil, in addition to the human suffering right now, but I don’t.

So I cry.

***

Then I go for my neighborhood walk, and find a fence made beautiful with eye candy – a group of crafters probably decorated together during the recent yarn crawl. This is an annual Portland experience, an event for fiber enthusiasts — knitters, crocheters, spinners, weavers, and felters — who spread through the city on a particular day to explore and support the many independent shops in and around Portland, Oregon, rather than buy on-line. Such a spot of upbeat color.



So I rejoice.

***

In the evening, I think through what art I saw that lingered from this day. Without competition, it was a project filmed in 2002 near Lima, Peru. A Belgian and a Mexican artist mobilized some 800 people to shovel sand to shift the top of a dune. You are rolling your eyes? Francis Alÿs is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on shared cultural histories, urban engagement, and the human impact on the environment. I saw his work years back at the Tate Modern, and continue to follow what he is doing. Here is an older project particularly apt for our current situation: It was called Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains) – and really: isn’t that what we need right now? Even if change is imperceptible, going slow, needing a lot of organizing and solidarity, something IS happening? Watch the video and see how students define their understanding of art, its social context and implications, the consequences of communal action.

So I feel hope.

I also feel whiplash, with all those intense emotions shifting constantly. Time to take a break! I’ll be in touch sporadically.

Here is music to help us crawl through the days.

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