Palladianism in Kane, Pa., and Yorkshire

McDermott Mausoleum

Kane, Pennsylvania

Temple of the Four Winds

Castle Howard

Yorkshire

Wikimedia Commons

By jcw1967 from Leeds, UK - Temple of the Four Winds, Castle Howard, 17112017, JCW1967, EOS 1Ds (2), CC BY 2.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78305779

39 x 2 = 78

I do enjoy when numbers line up or add up as much as I enjoy a good sentence. Well, maybe as much. Words and numbers. Sometimes mirrored like palindromes. This morning, I stopped for gasoline before I went to Wegmans to get my Sunday New York Times. The total purchase was $20.78 for 6.078 gallons. Off to Wegmans where I picked up groceries along with the three papers for me and the two Lindas (Alfred friends for whom I pick up and deliver their Sunday papers). My Wegmans bill was $60.39, minus the $21 for the three papers is $39.39. Thirty-nine is half of 78. When I added the grocery total to my monthly food expenses, the total was $638.78. I guess it's just going to be a 39 and 78 kind of day but no "palindrome" yet.

One of the pictures you get when you search the internet for "39 x 2 = 78." It (39 x 78) happens to be the size of sheets for a twin bed.

Harmony Hammond at the Whitney Biennial

A wonderful paragraph, for a variety of reasons, from the review of the 2024 Whitney Biennial in the New Yorker by Jackson Arn entitled "The Whitney Biennial's taste for flesh." Posted March 22, 2024, to appear in the April 1 print edition:

By a close margin, the four fabric assemblages of Harmony Hammond are the fleshiest things in this show. They use a variety of materials to suggest a whole menagerie of bodies, from pimply-shiny to aged and chalky. Colors are subdued for the most part, and strategically so: when a touch of red shrieks out of the dirty white field of "Chenille #11," it almost hurts. Hammond has suggested that flourishes like this were meant to evoke "sexual brutality against women," but take a few steps back and marvel at how this only deepens her work's mystery -- if the red is brutality, what are the string, the smeared white, the grommets? Interpretation is interwoven with the sheer, thingy strangeness of the object, and can't be ripped out. Art like this is built to last, I would guess. But if you prefer your political messaging neat, no chaser, you are welcome to walk to the other end of the sixth floor, go to the terrace, and spend some time with Kiyan Williams's big dirt sculpture of the White House sinking into the ground, complete with upside-down American flag. There's a label in case you can't figure out what it means.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/the-whitney-biennial-art-review

Some of the reasons:

• descriptive words, rich and evocative
• I was lucky enough to spend time with Harmony Hammond when we were both active in the Queer Caucus for Art, an affiliated society of the College Art Association (now rebranding itself as simply CAA).
• particular memory of drinks and conversation after a caucus business meeting in Philadelphia when the last remaining folks in the hotel lounge were several older lesbians and me, and then we walked each other back to our hotels. The younger folks had gone off dancing.
• memories of visits to various Whitney Biennials; this one has just opened and runs until August so there's a chance I might get to the City to see it
• I actually said the word "chenille" today when a friend asked us what color we thought her sweater was. I asked about the material. "Is it chenille?"
• the ending of the paragraph

trying to remember the artist's name

Some months ago, I was reminded of the work of a contemporary artist who does watercolors of animals, usually with captions beautifully written in the image. Kind of Audubon-like. I tried all kinds of googling and just could not get a result that included the artist. I had become familiar with the artist when I worked at the Amon Carter Museum and I searched their collection online and that of other museums that might have had a work by him. I thought of sending a note to Milan (a colleague at the Carter) to ask about the artist. The desire to remember his name came and went. I cannot really say I was obsessed but I was frustrated. I felt like I could kind of remember his name but it's hard to search "kind of" on the web.

I hadn't thought about it for a while but, this morning, as I was reading the style section from last Sunday's Times, the social event pictures were from a centennial event at the Morgan Library & Museum which happened to mention that one of the guests was artist Walton Ford. Ta da! That's it! It is Walton Ford that I was trying to remember. Now I wonder what I just forgot so I have room for "Walton Ford" in my brain.

Walton Ford

"Dying Words"

Honolulu Museum of Art

(from his Wikipedia page)

Bute & Montmirail

This is a portrait of John, Lord Mountstewart, later 4th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bute. The portrait is now in the Getty and was one of the works in today's Artle. I hear "Bute" in the voice of Michelle Fairley who plays Princess Augusta in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Another of today's Artle works was a portrait of Charles Benjamin de Langes de Montmirail, Baron de Lubières. "Montmirail" was the noble name of the man who was obsessed by Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith) in the second Downton Abbey film. He left his villa in the South of France to her. Perhaps I'm living too much in historical spaces as manifested in popular culture. Or perhaps the real world needs to be escaped from.
 

another southern road trip, 2024

This road trip in the deep of winter to the southern states may be habit forming. Last year's road trip was quite focused on the Sargent show in Washington, visiting Jeanette in South Carolina, magazines to USModernist, visiting Elizabeth in Orlando, and the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum in Biloxi, Mississippi. This year, I did visit Jeanette again and spent a couple days with Elizabeth and brought her some papers from Alfred that she needed. But overall it was less focused. Here, again, I am posting a list of the overnight or other stops along the way.

• Fredericksburg, Virginia: after the bucolic ride through horsey Virginia country, the confluence of U.S. Route 17, U.S. Route 1, and Interstate 95 at Fredericksburg was almost more maelstrom than I could handle; I did find the Holiday Inn Express and settled into a yummy catfish and grits at the Orleans Bistro, a walk from the hotel; it was karaoke night at the bistro but I survived and woke refreshed; alas, I lost my beloved Harvard IT Summit 2011 travel mug when I left it on top of the car (I didn't drive away with it still on the roof but it wasn't there when I remembered to go get it after supper)
• Florence, South Carolina: overnight with Jeanette and Wanda, plenty of pleasant catching up
• Beaufort, South Carolina: intrigued with Beaufort, is it just because I like saying "bew-fert"?; the waiter at the Lost Local told me where I might find the Sunday New York Times the next day but City Java & News didn't come through and the Publix supermarket did; I enjoy traveling through the coastal salt marshes between Beaufort and Savannah though I didn't stop in Savannah this year
• Brunswick, Georgia: Main Street in the historic district; good pad thai at Basil Thai with a staff that included Asians, Mexicans, Blacks, and whites
• Flagler Beach, Florida: dreaming of an old-fashioned oceanside motel along the beach highway but ended up at a Hampton Inn in Palm Coast
• Winter Park, Florida: lunch, strolling, and shopping to spend time before getting to Elizabeth's after she did her volunteer income tax assistance sponsored by AARP at a community center
• Orlando, Florida (day 1): got to Elizabeth's before she was home; Capsi looked at me quizzically and then decided I was that guy from Alfred and started jumping and barking
• Orlando (day 2): both Elizabeth and I had a morning zoom; we had an easy day with a visit to the Orlando Museum and otherwise just kind of hung around and chatted
• Orlando (day 3): Elizabeth went to the community center for some more tax assistance and I walked around downtown Orlando, looked at some architecture books at the public library, and then went to the Orange County Regional History Center; the library had a historical vitrine display that included an early accession book; the new performing arts center in Orlando is named for Dr Phillips and I learned at the History Center that he developed the process for pasteurizing orange juice; I also learned that Hannibal Square in Winter Park was the former Black section of the downtown shopping area
• Sarasota, Florida: Ringling Museum of Art, particularly the new Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art (a small pavilion with a green-glazed terracotta façade, designed by Machado Silvetti)
• Sarasota to Tallahassee, Florida: I wanted to take the blue highways and ended up confused off the interstate around Tampa and discovered a pre-Vatican II chapel (Queen of All Saints Chapel) near Brooksville; I couldn't go inside since the dress code for men required coat and tie, no jeans, no earrings
• Tallahassee, Florida: what a hilly surprise (the seven hills, just like Rome) after several hours of flat coastal territory
• Bainbridge, Georgia: the Quality Inn here somehow reminded me of Mount Vernon (columns and porch)
• Blakely, Georgia: county seat of Early County (good courthouse and square)
• Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park, near Blakely: the Temple Mound is 50-odd feet high (I didn't make it to Teotihuacán last year but this mound was pretty impressive)
• Columbus, Georgia: the museum was mostly closed for rehabilitation but the Corn Center at Columbus State University had a Lennart Anderson show and several large Bo Bartlett paintings on view; downtown Columbus has a handsome new formalist Government Center that reminded me of Yamasaki and a performing arts center designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer; the symphony here is the second oldest in the U.S.
• Bremen, Georgia: El Morelia Mexican restaurant was just across from the Tractor Supply, near the Quality Inn
• Bremen to Rome: just the beginning of the international city names; U.S. 27 up the western side of Georgia was mostly four lane and divided highway and virtually empty; it was quite a surprise to re-enter the interstate world after Rome, Georgia

Continuing to repeat last year's road trip, at a certain point I quit dawdling and interstated most of the rest of the northward journey. This year, I did a more inland trip, skirting Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Lexington, Kentucky. I stopped at Dry Ridge, Kentucky, because it was getting dark, it was about 25 miles south of greater Cincinnati, and it was just south of Sherman, Kentucky. It also happened to be just north of The Ark Experience in Williamstown, Kentucky. I did go look through the gates to The Ark but it wasn't open and I probably wouldn't have gone in even if it had been. Anyway, I looked around Sherman a bit and took a couple pictures.

I had started seeing snow alongside the road but it was bright and the snow was melting. I skirted Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland, Ohio. One more night on the road, in Painesville, Ohio, and then back to the blue highways in Salamanca, New York, for the last couple hours.

Beyond Bremen, Rome, and Salamanca, I also went through or saw signs for Paris, London, Chatsworth, Florence, Berlin, and Athens, and Ringgold.

Top picture is a church (no sign) in Sherman, Kentucky. The bottom picture is Ca' d'Zan, the Ringling mansion, Sarasota, Florida. More pictures at https://www.flickr.com/photos/56294332@N00/.

Miuccia Chickanzeff: ah, Venice

Queen of All Saints Chapel

I happened on the Queen of All Saints Chapel on Spring Lake Road near Brooksville, Florida, because I was lost northeast of Tampa on my way from Sarasota toward Tallahassee. But what fun to find this treasure of conservative traditionalism. It would have been fun to go inside but the dress code for men included coat and tie, no jeans, no earrings. Three strikes, you're out(side).

More pictures from my southern road trip at https://www.flickr.com/photos/56294332@N00/albums/72177720314881851
 

the big thrill

I was in Beaufort, South Carolina, last night, with early supper at the Lost Local for tacos (one ahi tuna and one carnitas) and a yummy margarita (Perfect Margarita on the menu). It was Saturday night so I asked the waiter if she knew where I might get a Sunday New York Times the next morning. She didn't know but asked one of her colleagues. One place was City Java & News so I figured there was a good chance they'd be purveyors of a good selection of papers including the Times. They weren't open after I left the restaurant so I couldn't ask. The waiter said she saw folks with Sunday papers so the chances seemed good with both City Java and the other coffee shop, over on the waterfront.

Well, when I went 'round on Sunday morning, neither of the coffee shops had any papers other than the local weekly. So I asked the City Java clerk if there were any big grocery stores. Yep, there's a Publix over on Boundary Street, on the way out of town, said she. And I'm delighted to say they had quite a stack of Times but one less after I got mine.

There was a fine used book store in Cleveland named Publix Book Mart. We medieval art history graduate students at Case Western used to find great treasures there. Like manuscript leaves (at least one of mine is from the Ege album), early prints (at least one of Chuck's was a Dürer and I found a page from the Nuremberg Chronicle), and other good stuff. 

Ege 13

Nuremberg Chronicle

reading at the taverna

"Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

 Each summer I rent a house in a village in the foothills of the White Mountains in Crete. There is one bougainvillea-shaded taverna, which shares the village square with a tiny Byzantine chapel, decorated with magnificent 14th-century frescoes. I go there at lunchtime with a book. The taverna owner, Kostas, brings me whatever he's cooking, with beer. He lets me talk my lousy Greek. Cats snooze. Dogs lollop. The local farmers come and discuss the price of watermelons. I'm in heaven."

Dan Jones, "By the book," New York times book review, January 28, 2024.

Sounds perfect, Mr Jones.