What's happening at your local museums?
 

Many major metropolitans have an abundance of museums. There are many museums in small communities that go unnoticed. We went to a Petra's Stone Museum in Stöðvarfjörður on the Eastern side of Iceland one year, it was in some old lady's house and backyard. She collected rocks from all over the area since she was a little girl.

Petra's Stone Museum on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

So one cannot dismiss the idea that a museum must be this huge building with antiquities or art and history.

But the major museums, they generally have some sort of program changes that highlight some period, era, interest.

Post a nearby museum and what's currently happening there.

small nearby museum:
Flickr: tenement.museum's Photostream

There's an incredible set of Lee Miller photographs at the SFMOMA.

Some of the current exhibitions on display at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
Irish Museum of Modern Art: Exhibitions > Current Exhibitions

And The National Gallery of Ireland
Exhibitions

CFAM Exhibitions

This is the only art museum I go to in Orlando. In fact, I am planning to take my daughters there this weekend for the Corps Exquis exhibit.

The Orlando Museum of Art is a joke. Right now, their exhibition is on the art of William Joyce. Don't get me wrong - I like William Joyce alright. But it's not an exhibit I'm real anxious to go out and see. To their credit, they did just finish a nice Norman Rockwell exhibit.

But for serious art exhibits, the Cornell is the place to go. Too bad it's so small.

Mennello Museum of American Art
This one can be interesting. I haven't been in a long time...hmmm, I notice they changed the name. Used to be exclusively a folk art museum.

I don't think I'd ever stop orgasming if I lived in a place like NY or London or Paris where I could see great art all the time. :p

This is not near me, but I was near it. So I thought I'd post this in here. Here is what I saw at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. I was unable to film or photograph any of it, so I will do my best to convey the show to you. I will tell you about my favourites.

The show was called Máquinas&Almas (Machines&Souls - as it was translated officially)

All of the works involved a mixture of art, science and technology.

Instead of being all descriptive, this is really about trying to show you what I saw.

Sachiko Kodama's work:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/members...hikokodama.jpg



If you don't quite get what this is, basically the piece consists of a vat filled with ferrofluid which is moved by powerful magnets around these two tower structures. Also there was another model, similar to this:



Though visually powerful, I'm not too sure about the work's concept. But I do like it and was seriously impressed to see the liquid move before my eyes. It felt like I was in a sci-fi movie!

Next, I saw the work of Paul Friedlander.

Unfortunately his work isn't so easy to find on youtube so here is a pale version of one of the works I saw plus a photo of the piece "Wave Function":

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/members...vefunction.jpg



To get a clearer idea of what I saw, check out this page in his site:

Paul Friedlander

It has several videos of the works - seriously it has to be a video.

All his work involves movement, light and physics to create visually fascinating effects.

I also liked the work of Daniel Rozin very much, who I've mentioned before in another art thread. I had never seen it live before and it was really wonderful to finally see. Only thing I wish I could show you is the back of the mirrors...seriously high tech.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/members...anielrozin.jpg







After this piece, I saw a really great work by two artists, Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen. The piece seemed particularly relevant because it used data collected in real-time from online forums - of course I thought of the TFP!

The piece then used the info to make a visual and audio composition, that at times was quite poignant. The videos here are of several stages within the piece. Some it is only selecting out sentences people are posting that start "I am". Others it's reading random sentences in an overlapping sequence. In the last one it is saying random words in different tonalities, almost singing a song.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/members...ening-post.jpg







Finally, I found the work of Theo Jansen quite interesting and different, though I did not get to see it live in action.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/members...theojansen.jpg



This is a BMW commercial he's been in:



How neat is that? It's like being a kid and building fun things just because, and then making a living off it!

There was more but these were my favourites! I think there's plenty there to think about anyway. What do you think?

That's very cool Tippler...

Where I am they are running the 2008 Biennale... there are several venues and the theme is "Wonder".

Sadly, I have yet to get out to any of the events that I have wanted to see. I was out of town last weekend and week nights are a virtual write off. I am hoping to see something this weekend but with the F1 in town I don't expect that I will be able to get near any of the venues.

The Robots exhibit is still open at the San Jose Museum of Modern Art. If you're interested but can't make it to the silicon valley before the exhibition is over on October 19th, you can take a virtual tour on
iTunes (warning, link will open iTunes). Did I mention that the iTunes tour is free? If you want to see the real thing, remember that unless you're a member it's $8 for adults.