Wonderful Museums

Day 33 – Tuesday, August 25th

Although the weather report called for mainly cloudy and possible showers, it was still a pretty nice day today. Patti was much more rested and ready to get back in to doing some blog writing. After breakfast, we headed to downtown. As expected, parking was a problem but we were in luck finding a place to put our car. First stop was the Olympic clock. Actually there are two, one for the full Winter Olympics to start in late winter and also one for the Para-Olympics, to start shortly after the conclusion of the first.

Then we went into the Vancouver Art Gallery, the city’s premier art museum. We were excited to see that they were featuring an exhibit of Vermeer and Rembrandt (and many others) from the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. It is entitled: Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum at the Vancouver Art Gallery. “Vancouver Art Gallery presents the largest exhibition of Dutch Masterpieces ever shown in Canada. They are renovating the museum in Amsterdam and have sent many of their finest paintings on a world tour. The exhibition of 128 works of art features paintings by celebrated masters such as Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as a remarkable selection of drawings and decorative arts.” What a fine exhibit it was! We were especially struck though, about how crowded this museum was on a Tuesday morning at the en of August. We literally had to wait in line to see many of the pieces. There were also an amazing amount of parents with quite small children helping their kids to actively engage with the art pieces….music to Patti’s ears from her stories for art work she has done in museums. Dick has been to the Rijksmuseum several times and really enjoyed being transported back to there.

There was also another exhibit that especially captivated us: an artist created 6 apartments one on top of another, each decorated in a style typical (or stereotypical) to specific eras from the 1950’s to today. Fun to see what he chose: everything from light fixtures, kitchens and bathroom furnishings, but then things like bowling trophies and Trivia Pursuit games. What fun! http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/

After lunch at a very busy down town food court, we were off to yet another high quality museum: The University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. This museum especially features some astounding old and new Coastal Native carvings. We have been learning a lot about these carvings, the processes to create them, and what it takes to be a master carver. This was a treat to see some great work, including a more contemporary great carver and teacher named Bill Reid. He did a huge carved piece form a story called Raven and the Creation of the First Men. Wow! Highly moving. http://www.moa.ubc.ca/

They also had a really interesting photo exhibit focusing on Samoan Tattoo artistry especially for those living in New Zealand. GREAT photos presented very thoughtfully.

This was our last night in Vancouver, but we felt like we were able to really enjoy ourselves and catch our breath a bit before we really start down south to get back to our regularly scheduled lives. Dinner out and walking about the lovely downtown area topped off our great final day here.