A Day at the Museum

Six Tuscan Poets, Giorgio Vasari, 1544.

Retail is not a long-term career for me, but one of its benefits is having weekdays off.  This time lets me focus on writing and allows for impromptu adventures around town.  A favorite excursion of mine is visiting local art museums - either the Walker Art Center or the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

I interned at the Walker last summer, so I spent plenty of time there in 2016.  I don’t go to the MIA as much as I’d like, but I rectified that yesterday afternoon.  As a child, my parents dragged me there kicking and screaming twice a year.  I was always thankful for the experience afterward, because I suspect that I subconsciously recognized the powerful impact the art had on awestruck patrons (that, and they would take us out for lunch afterward, which was always a treat).

The past several years, I’ve reacquainted myself with the MIA as an adult.  I spend much of my time, however, with the special exhibitions and the modern wing on the third floor because I found these the most accessible way to acquaint myself with the art world, to start modern and go backward into history.  Since I'm visiting New York next month (more on that another day), I want to make sure I study all the MIA’s galleries before going.  After all, one can’t visit the Met or the Whitney or the Frick Collection without context.  A little background knowledge makes museum hopping and traveling richer.

The Immaculate Conception with Saint Francis of Assisi and Anthony of Padua, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Il Grechetto), 1650.

And, oh!  What my young eyes missed.  I ambled through the early European galleries with a hungry mind and open eyes, transfixed by brilliant flashes of color that brightened up desaturated scenes.  There is no experience in the Twin Cities that is more powerful than walking into the gigantic, marble-clad room filled with 16th-18th century masterworks, some which reach the vaulting ceilings.  Reacquainting myself with Il Grechetto’s The Immaculate Conception with Saints Francis of Assisi and Anthony of Padua is the highlight of my year thus far.  In the painting, the Virgin Mary stands atop a crescent moon and glowing orange-tinged clouds illuminate the radiant pink and blue of her flowing robes.  Beneath the Virgin Mary stand Saints Francis and Anthony, looking up in awe, their figures sitting in the shadow background created by her flowing dress and the dark side of the moon.  For any artist and photographer, there is much to learn from these schemes - I read an article on Valet this week about how photographers can create more powerful work through juxtaposing orange highlights and blue shadows - opposite each other on the color wheel - because they convey a sense of mood that is universal and theatrical.  Not only is this Il Grechetto my favorite painting at the MIA, but its composition set the template for mood and color in imagery for the past five centuries.  And it’s right here in Minneapolis, this international treasure.

The Doryphoros, Artist Unknown, 120-50 B.C.

That’s not all - the ancient Roman and Greek marble sculptures entice visitors as they ascend into the second floor hallway.  How far we’ve come from the ideal figure found in Polykleitos’ The Doryphoros, since the original bronze was sculpted in 440 B.C.  The marble recreation is not much newer (dating between 120-50 B.C. and reproduced by an unknown sculptor).  Even with missing appendages, sword and genitalia, The Doryphoros remains glorious and valiant.  Do we not all pose like this (with clothes on, of course) as self-made models on Instagram today?  Art informs the way we live, and the best art does so millennia after its creation.

Location: Minneapolis Institute of Art