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magidSunday being rainy and chilly, it was a perfect day for a long-delayed birthday outing to the Peabody Essex Museum. I'd never been, my parents hadn't been, and there was much to see. Too much for one day, as it turned out. (Well, perhaps it could be done in one day, but not with my knees.)
The space is very interesting, with the main atrium area emphasizing long curves rather than sharp lines. The rooms were mostly rectangles, but different sizes and connected in interesting ways.
The first exhibit we saw was the Yin Yu Tang house, a merchant family's house from a small town in China. There are galleries with detailed displays, everything from family photographs to a partial geneology (8 generations of the Huang family lived in the house, but there are records of another 12 generations as well), to displays of clothing, to tools and how the all-wood (no nail) joins were done in the house. When it was time for us to see the house, we got things that looked rather like large remote controls to do the self-guided tour. There were little stone cubes with numbers on them when there was something on the tour; I dialed in the number, and heard the commentary. Occasionally there were excerpts from primary sources as addenda to the commentary as well. Even though it was chilly, I had to listen to it all, which is why we were the last of our group to leave the house. It was just too interesting to miss anything, about the courtyard with two pools (currently hosting koi), the bedrooms (all beds were four-postered, with a top (for storage) and curtains; none of them looked long enough for me, and certainly not big enough for an adult plus kids), the main shrine downstairs (Mao et al) and upstairs (Kwan Yin, Buddha), the detailed lattice work and carved stones.
We went next to the newest traveling exhibit, Painting Summer in New England, which is what it sounds like, an exhibit of paintings of New England in summer. There were a few I liked a lot, many I found pretty, a couple I didn't like at all. What surprised me was how much was landscape/seascape/cloudscape; there weren't many with people, animals, or urban areas. Equally surprising was the lack of food: there was one still life with a cabbage, some beets, and a couple of summer squash, and that was it. Flowers, yes, tons, but what of the juicy peaches, or amazing tomatoes? Nothing.
We caught the last day of an exhibit of aerial photography by Alex MacLean; some amazing geometric shots, very beautiful. (Some of his photographs are at Harvard's Museum of Natural History for an exhibit about looking at landcape that is opening this weekend. The musuem is free Sunday mornings (9-noon).)
We meandered through a couple of other exhibits, including Taj Mahal: Building of a Legend and Owls in Art and Nature. And we skipped lots of other stuff, just due to knee and time constraints. I hadn't realized, when it was called a maritime museum, that so much of the focus would be on Asia, especially China and India, rather than on ships and whaling and such. Worth revisiting, sometime, maybe taking the commuter rail up, taking a picnic, and meandering around more of Salem.
The space is very interesting, with the main atrium area emphasizing long curves rather than sharp lines. The rooms were mostly rectangles, but different sizes and connected in interesting ways.
The first exhibit we saw was the Yin Yu Tang house, a merchant family's house from a small town in China. There are galleries with detailed displays, everything from family photographs to a partial geneology (8 generations of the Huang family lived in the house, but there are records of another 12 generations as well), to displays of clothing, to tools and how the all-wood (no nail) joins were done in the house. When it was time for us to see the house, we got things that looked rather like large remote controls to do the self-guided tour. There were little stone cubes with numbers on them when there was something on the tour; I dialed in the number, and heard the commentary. Occasionally there were excerpts from primary sources as addenda to the commentary as well. Even though it was chilly, I had to listen to it all, which is why we were the last of our group to leave the house. It was just too interesting to miss anything, about the courtyard with two pools (currently hosting koi), the bedrooms (all beds were four-postered, with a top (for storage) and curtains; none of them looked long enough for me, and certainly not big enough for an adult plus kids), the main shrine downstairs (Mao et al) and upstairs (Kwan Yin, Buddha), the detailed lattice work and carved stones.
We went next to the newest traveling exhibit, Painting Summer in New England, which is what it sounds like, an exhibit of paintings of New England in summer. There were a few I liked a lot, many I found pretty, a couple I didn't like at all. What surprised me was how much was landscape/seascape/cloudscape; there weren't many with people, animals, or urban areas. Equally surprising was the lack of food: there was one still life with a cabbage, some beets, and a couple of summer squash, and that was it. Flowers, yes, tons, but what of the juicy peaches, or amazing tomatoes? Nothing.
We caught the last day of an exhibit of aerial photography by Alex MacLean; some amazing geometric shots, very beautiful. (Some of his photographs are at Harvard's Museum of Natural History for an exhibit about looking at landcape that is opening this weekend. The musuem is free Sunday mornings (9-noon).)
We meandered through a couple of other exhibits, including Taj Mahal: Building of a Legend and Owls in Art and Nature. And we skipped lots of other stuff, just due to knee and time constraints. I hadn't realized, when it was called a maritime museum, that so much of the focus would be on Asia, especially China and India, rather than on ships and whaling and such. Worth revisiting, sometime, maybe taking the commuter rail up, taking a picnic, and meandering around more of Salem.
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Date: 2006-04-28 07:45 pm (UTC)It is right around the corner from my store. The kids beg me to take them back and see the YinYuTang house....they have seen it 5 or 6 times each already and will even sit through all the video presentations afterward. Good thing Salem residents get in free!
Ironically enough, because it was founded, essentially, by a bunch of old sea captains who wanted someplace to show off their trophies... they have ended up with a really amazing collection of contemporary polynesian/asian art as well.
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Date: 2006-04-28 08:49 pm (UTC)I wondered whether it was all kinds of trade trophies... Pretty amazing stuff. I'm always fascinated by carved spheres within spheres, and they had one on display that had 15 layers! And there were those little carved Japanese animals (blanking on the word for them). And metal model ships. And...
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 01:19 am (UTC)