(Mostly) Outside The de Young Museum

I'm still at Mom's, and yet somehow posting more often than when I'm home. How's that work? Well, I'll tell ya. That magic spell worked so well, but I didn't have another one handy. So I time traveled to next Monday (that would be your day after tomorrow), and made this post, which I backdated to the previous Saturday (aka: TODAY to you). Then I returned to Sunday 10/9 (the real TODAY, which you sillies think was last week) so I could tingle with anticipation waiting for it to appear. Oh well, don't question it, just enjoy!

Here are two shots of the beautiful new de Young Museum building (2005), one taken from the Living Roof of the California Academy Of Sciences...

...and one from the Music Concourse below.

I didn't go into the museum on this trip, but I hope to take you there someday. However a trip to this world class museum really should begin with a tour of the works on the grounds outside the building. I am going to share a few favorites with you.


First is the tower itself. The graceful curves and strong angles of the tower rise 144 feet, providing wonderful panoramic views of The City from the Observaton Floor, which is open to the public without charge.

And, because turnabout is 180°, here is a shot of the Living Roof and part of the Music Concourse, taken from inside the tower.

These guys are just plain joyful, and I love them. I think they suffer just a bit of "cartoonishness" because of all the recent animated features about penguins (particularly singing, dancing penguins, eh?), but if you can get past that, then they are just plain joyful.



From simple joy to the obfuscation of simplicity, and perhaps joy as well, by overlying the classic, graceful curves of the urn with complex garlands and figures struggling to climb to the top. What of those who've reached the lip of urn? Do they drink? If so, what will they find? Water, Wine, Poison? Does the next group of aspirants push them over the edge, to drown in the reward they strove so hard to claim? Can they even see beneath the garlands, and appreciate the beauty of the elegant urn?
Urn and Tower. From one angle the tower is an inversion of the urn, narrow base to wide apex, and appears at odds with it. From another they seem to mimic and hug each other, straight lines and curves achieving the same flow.
I think you can tell I really love this urn, and there in the background is another old favorite, one of the two Sphinxes that once guarded the entrance of the old musuem building, and now flank the urn.
Ok, can you even stand all the the superiority and wisdom and strength in that face? Is it intended to mock the folly of the figures on the urn, in their mad race for who knows what reward?

The Sphinxes will always be among my favorites. I remember how very much I wanted a Sphinx for a pet when I was very young, so the nightmare monsters could never get me.
The Sphinxes never appeared to be monsters to me. Even then I felt a tenderness in the strength and a real sense that this is a guardian that takes the responsibility to heart. Behind the stern face, it's as if the Sphinx wants very much to share its wisdom with us, to save us, even from ourselves perhaps.


And finally, The Caveman. I have never had a stronger sense of attachment to any work of art. There he sits, pondering a rock. He could easily be figure of ridicule. But I have so many emotions for him, about him.


I want tell him "Hey, I feel the same way sometimes." - I stare at something and say What might become of this? What is its potential?

I want to tell him that he is holding the beginning of the universe in his hand. I even want to tell him "Yeah, it looks like a potato, but it ain't Dude, it ain't."



I want to laugh and leap, and dance around the fire with him when he first discovers that this rock can be a tool. That he can change his world with it. I want to watch and celebrate and console as he tests it against every new object and surface he encounters, a hundred new triumphs and failures, every day.

I want to be there when the first glimmer of understanding appears in his eyes, that this rock could be a weapon. That he can kill his own kind. I want to see him turn away from that awful power. But that story has already been written, and it didn't turn out that way, did it?