Philadelphia

A lot of today was spent in Philadelphia Museum of Art - both in the magnificent American Watercolor show, and tracking down the Whistler Nocturne (which I'm writing about in relation to fireworks, or in this case, lack of them).  Some reproductions - not the Museum's own - show a hint of a star in the sky, and I wanted to check it out.  No pigmented star at all - but there's a raised speck of paint that catches the light from some angles.  That fits into an argument, somehow.

That's Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Diana (1892-3) created in 1892–93 as a gilded weather vane for the tower of New York’s Madison Square Garden, and rescued in the early 1930s by the Museum, when it had fallen into disrepair; and then the huge 1964 Angus Calder mobile, Ghost - in other words, a pretty striking entrance hall, and, even with these two large works, a place of contrasts.

So is the city - I was left craving an informed walking tour of the city's architecture, old and new.  I was embarrassed, all the years I lived in NJ, that I didn't spend more time in this city - I have no sensible explanation as to why not - and hope to get to remedy it ...