Ok, so I went to a museum yesterday. And, I have been trying, repeatedly, to go to another museum I saw here in town. I decided to make today the day that I actually went. I got up early ( I had gone to bed really early: The other museum wore me out), did a load of laundry, then headed out to find breakfast along the way:
Noodle Bowl. With cilantro, a winter herb in China.
On my way to the ATM, I saw a sign at the smoothie shop I don't really frequent:
Mango-Pumpkin Milk Shake. Hmm...why not?
Someday, I will find a way to explain to people that "milkshake" implies not simply milk but, in fact, ice cream. But, besides that, and the fact that I don't actually like mango, the shake was delicious. Pumpkin, as it turns out, is a good match for mango. You should try it at home.
I took bus 603 all by myself toward City Center, and even got off at the right stop. The giant building I believed was the Shaanxi Provence Art Museum...
...turned out to be the Xi'an Public Library. Hmm. Go figure, a giant library. The staircase was even marked with one of these:
The Thinker. Or, a reasonable facsimile.
Apparently, you can get books from a vending machine here:
Book Machine. Maybe we have them in the US, too, but I've never seen one.
Anyway, I walked around to the back of the library and found the museum.
Shaanxi Provence Art Museum. Looked bigger from the bus.
The museum turned out to be a bit of a bust, even though the admission was less than $2. Most of the work looked like this:
Shaanxi Artwork. An example of the art at the museum.
That is, nearly 90% of the work in the museum looked exactly like that. You can imagine I didn't take many pictures of this exhibit. I did, however, take a close-up:
Close-Up. There, now just imagine that 120 times.
There were a few other pieces. There was a lower floor that I could see had sculptures, but the stairwell was blocked, so I couldn't go down there. I also wandered into a room with some absolutely exquisite historical pieces. As I entered, a guard asked me from across the room "你做什么？“ ("What are you doing?") to which I replied "我想看一下。" ("I want to look (a little)."). His response? "你不可以。" ("You can't."). So, no sculpture, no historical pieces, and 120 paintings of the same basic thing. Spectacular.
Well, there was one saving grace. A room off of the main lobby had about a dozen pieces by an artist other than the main exhibit. These pieces were varied and, actually interesting.
And that was about it. There, I saved you $2. And, well, a $1000 plane ticket.
On the walk home, I saw this gentleman:
Sidewalk Art. This just re-enforces my belief that the best art in Xi'an is all outside...
Hayden
No comments:
Post a Comment