railings

Driving home, on S. Hoover St - one of those moments when lines and light fall into some excellent relationships with one another.  

 

vegetable curatorship

This onion is destined for the compost.  It didn't really appreciate us going away for the week, and it was starting to become a little whiffy, even if there's something aesthetically appealing in its decomposition.

One of the papers that I heard at CAA - on a panel about toxic media - had to do with what to do with toxic materials in an archive or museum (think of Eva Hesse's use of asbestos fibers, say) - including one particular installation that the speaker had visited that included - even consisted of - a heap of potatoes, that, it turned out had been treated with fire retardant (a notoriously toxic substance, even if, obviously, a useful one).  The whole paper raised some fascinating questions about what it is that museums actually collect - antique formaldehyde, for example.  But somehow (albeit in a sanctioned fashion) the speaker had abstracted a couple of potatoes from the heap - and one of these she'd let grow, and grow, and grow ... when does the organic impetus for decay contained in an art work take over?  

Unfortunately, I think this onion has reached the end of its natural/abnatural days ...

 

a winter's morning

Although these slopes may look brown, after the rains there is, by now, a miraculous sprouting of green: the wildflower seeds that I scattered, optimistically - oh, maybe back in November - are starting to grow.  Another substantial shower or two - not that there's anything significant in the forecast - and we may yet see some flowers.  Meanwhile, I'll just keep admiring the Meyer lemons ...

 

reunited!

It was a long ride home ... but look who couldn't wait to get on my shoulders!

 

the dull, the droll, and the delicious

The view from our window was ... dull - at least in the sense of the weather: a couple of hours of snow, and now it's switched to some dismal rain.  But most of the day I was in conference sessions, hearing many many really good papers (and one woman who didn't seem to understand the concept of Timing, even after a cell phone timer gave her the nudge, and then she was given a verbal, very pointed nudge: some minutes [or so it felt] later - "so now I'll come to my conclusion."  Reader - never, ever be that speaker).

Perhaps the most memorable image was that shown by Wanda Corn (who not only gave a great paper on Grant Wood, but had, deservedly, a wonderful reception) - of Wood's American Gothic, sculpted in butter by Norma "Duffy" Lyon, doyenne of butter sculpture and shown at the Iowa State Fair in 1996 (she also showed a slide of Lyon's fine butter cows).

And then a wonderful (early birthday) dinner at 53, which is - unsurprisingly - on 53rd street - and wins this trip's culinary prize, hands down: salmon carpaccio, and then miso black cod tossed up in some kind of crispy rice bowl, and then miso butterscotch icecream. I'm much looking forward to coming back to NYC, whatever the weather's like ...

 

Valentine's Day in NYC

I went up to the Met to see the Caspar David Friedrich exhibition (having reached that CAA point when one want to see actual art work, not power points) - amd walking back, this sun dog, above the elms in Central Park, seemed like a perfect restaging of his fusion of the natural and the divine (minus the fir trees that, he was convinced, had a great deal to do with inspiring Gothic church architecture).  The show was terrific: go, if you can.

En route - more mundane kitschy Valentine's stuff, but surprisingly wound round construction scaffolding, all the same.

Every time I go to the Met I try and go and see something new - or that I haven't seen for a long time - and today it was Renaissance portraits.  This is Fra Filippo Lippi's Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, from c. 1440 - the first surviving Italian double portrait, and surely highly suitable for Valentine's day.

Then Central Park again, walking back -

and a Valentine's Day dinner in - where else? - the Oyster Bar on Grand Central Station.  Admittedly we had to wait a very, very long time - let's say we had a 7 p.m. reservation, and the food arrived at 8.20 - and my fish was very, very cold (and yes! we got a comp on that, because of the wait and the far from ideal temperature when it arrived) - which made it a very cheap, but delicious martini.  The dinner company was pretty good, too.  I couldn't believe Alice had never eaten there before - such a longterm favorite spot of mine.

 

Inside and outside CAA

I'll start with the good news - our graduate admissions portal has now unfrozen, and all is rolling along again.  But that was a very queasy-making 48 hours, and who knows what is to come.

Today's serendipity - I was sitting over on the very far side of a session, and had to take a photo of the slide on the screen and blow it up in order to read its caption - and realized that in doing so, completely inadvertently, I'd taken a happy photo of one of my colleagues.

And then, outside, on 6th Avenue, in the real world, the notice on a lamppost advising one what to do if ICE turns up at one's home, and what one's rights are.