This post is about all of the museums we visited except for one, which will be a post by itself. Some of the good museums are in a row along the river and across the street from this wonderful walk under interesting trees. We walked to the furthest museum to work our way back to the pedestrian Iron Bridge (Eiserner Steg).
We tried to start at Museum Giersch der Goethe-Universität, but it was closed for exhibit rework.
The sculpture museum Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung was next on the road. It's in a nice old building which was a good setting for the old sculptures.
What is this actually about and would you put it in your front yard like the museum did?
"Hey, look at this!" "I see..."
The Städel Museum was probably the best one with a bit of everything from 14th century to an interesting selection of modern art. This was much better than MMK as an actual museum of modern art. I'll get more into that one later. Grrr...
The exhibition of Victor Vasarely was really cool with his shapes and colors. The precision of his work is impressive considering when it was made. It looks computer generated but this is from the 1940s-60s. The maze of walls added another dimension of interest and fun to looking at different groupings from various angles. We wandered around this one for a while.
Then on to some other modern art
Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto
obligatory Picasso
The Goethe House was interesting even though I know very little about the writer. The house of his birth and life is even more interesting because it's not really the original house. It's a newer house recreated to replace the one destroyed in WWII. It's now somewhat old since being rebuilt in 1954 so it does have an aged look to it. Here's the history of the house from Wikipedia:
"The house was bought in 1733 by Goethe's grandmother, Cornelia Goethe, a guest house hostess. It was in fact originally two houses, dating from around 1600 in typical medieval wooden-fronted style, until 1755, when Goethe's father extensively remodeled and modernized them into the single structure we see today. Goethe writes in his autobiography that his father was careful to preserve the double overhang of the facade, which was not permitted in new buildings under the codes of 1719 and 1749, emphasizing that it was a remodeling of the existing structures and not a new construction.
After leaving the Goethe family in 1795, the house went through a series of owners, until its purchase in 1863 by geologist Otto Volger (1822–1897), who restored it to the condition the Goethe family had left it in, as a monument to its famous inhabitant. The house was destroyed during the Allied bombing of Frankfurt on May 22, 1944, but was restored after the war between 1947 and 1951, as closely as possible to its original condition and furnishing, giving an insight into what life was like for a reasonably wealthy resident of Frankfurt in the 18th century. It is next door to the Goethe Museum, which opened to the public along with the restored Goethe House in 1954, and nearby are the excavated foundations of the Jewish ghetto, which, along with the Jewish cemetery, gives a further glimpse of the older Frankfurt as Goethe himself would have experienced it."
a device for pulling in well water
cool gaming table
"A special attraction here is the astronomical clock, which was built in 1746 on a design of Court Councillor Wilhelm Friedrich Hüsgen. The young Goethe may well have admired it in Hüsgen's house. Orbiting rings above show the date, and underneath them the time, the phase of the moon and the sun's position with the signs of the zodiac can be read." Goethe House
"The dancing bear in the little window below serves as a signal: before the complicated piece comes to a stop, he lies on his back as a reminder to wind up the clock."
a writing desk and a standing desk which is really catching on again in cubicle land
Faust
The Nightmare
We ventured on and came across this yard sale. It really sucked...
Actually, that was a "postmodern conceptual sculpture" in the final museum we visited. This deserves pictures for the building but the "art" was annoying. Some modern art is just crap assembled by some lazy person who didn't even bother giving it a title.
The modern art museum (Museum für Moderne Kunst or MMK) turned their entire building into one exhibit by Cady Noland. I think that was a terrible idea. There were some pieces you could consider art but they weren't really all that interesting. The random pipes, fences, tire swings, and collections of junk like the one above were a major part of the exhibit.
The modern art museum (Museum für Moderne Kunst or MMK) turned their entire building into one exhibit by Cady Noland. I think that was a terrible idea. There were some pieces you could consider art but they weren't really all that interesting. The random pipes, fences, tire swings, and collections of junk like the one above were a major part of the exhibit.
tire swings = art? not really
Yep, the fence on the floor and the one standing to the right are supposed to be art. I vehemently disagree with this huge waste of a good building.
The MMK 1 building is amazing to be in and deserves some real art. Hopefully they improve it with the next exhibit. It's odd to not have part of it devoted to some permanent exhibitions in case you don't like their featured artist. There's another building across the street called MMK 2 but their brochure said it was a single video exhibit by one artist. We didn't even bother trying to go in since that's all they had listed there.
No comments:
Post a Comment