In the morning, I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. When you enter, you see some art embedded in a glass floor, and some colorful pipes at the ceiling.
So far, so good. But then I got to the two exhibits. The first one, called “Will Things Ever Get Better?” had some good sculpture in it. There were several copies of the first sculpture, with the woman sometimes peering into a window cut in the wall, sometimes at a blank wall.
Then things went south pretty badly. I am putting in the tamest of the pictures here; one of the rooms had a sculpture of a seated, bald, nude woman that was the height of the room. Yeah, I know art is supposed to challenge you, but I draw the line somewhere.
The other installation was “Encorpsdages: Embodying Ambiguity” by Nicole Dufour. Part of it was people with rope wound around them; the other part was black ropes hanging from the walls and ceiling. The latter is the Fetishes series, which, according to the pamphlet, “is a group of sculptures that manifests intangible emotions.” (Can you give an example of a tangible emotion?)
Later that day, I was to meet with Amir Esfahani, who was a teacher at Evergreen Valley College. He and his friend Lisa offered to take me to the National Palace Museum. I got to the area where they live (Xinzhuang) a bit early, and got these pictures of the area. Near the metro station is a bridge over the river, and I took some pictures while walking across it. The last picture is the area where there is a night market.
I passed by a temple that had an LCD, which seemed out of place to me, but go figure.
We got to the museum, and Amir convinced me to get a picture of myself. I guess that proves I really did take this trip.
Unfortunately, the museum has a “no photos” policy. I decided that I would put my shoulder bag in their checkroom so I wouldn’t have to lug it around. They also have a “no shoulder bags in the checkroom” policy (a backpack would have been OK). There’s also no drinking in the museum, and there aren’t any water fountains in the building. This can make it a less than pleasant experience.
We went through the ancient bronze section, which was a bit boring. The ceramics section was much better; lots of colorful objects. The snuff containers were really amazing; very small bottles with incredibly ornate decoration.
At some point, we were all museumed out, and as we left, Amir noticed the buildings across from the museum, which made quite a contrast. At least the people in those apartments have a beautiful view from their windows.
We then went to a dim sum type restaurant downtown—one of the best in the entire city. Here are some pictures from our walk around the area after the meal. The oddly warped roof is on an antique store, and the small statue of the girl is in front of a patisserie; she is the store’s logo character.
As we finished our walk, we saw a building with reflective blobs on it, reminiscent of the large kidney-bean-shaped sculpture in Chicago. The building itself is fairly impressive.
First, let’s get the really awful out of the way, with this sign near Xinzhuang:
Here is a store selling some kind of fruit.
And, because the internet can never have too many cats:
Finally, the artwork from two more “metro etiquette” posters. The first one is fairly obvious; the second one tells you to be considerate of others when reading a newspaper.
