They say every cloud has a silver lining.
Yesterday’s clouds certainly did. And not just a silver lining – a whole silver city!
You’re looking at Zhan Wang’s Urban Landscape, a version of Beijing, rendered in stainless steel pots, pans and utensils, a metaphor of China’s rapidly urbanizing landscape currently installed at the Williams College Museum of Art. Amazing!
But what’s really amazing is that we weren’t going to visit this museum at all. The plan was to leave for Boston first thing in the morning. However, it was raining buckets, and Bao wouldn ‘t budge. So I decided to hang around for a couple of hours in the hope that the rain would stop. It did, but by then I was thinking, Why not stop off at the Williams College Museum?
It was one of my better thoughts. This place is a little gem. They’ve got a little bit of everything. And what they’ve got is very, very good.
There’s a Roman sarcophagus, and Khmer sculptures and Moghul watercolors and Assyrian wall reliefs from 880 BC. Unexpected things, too. Thomas Nast’s drawings for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A whole wall of Tanguys. And the Pollock. They restored Pollock’s Arabesque Number 2 and it’s there on display, along with a wonderful video explaining the restoration process. That alone would have been worth the entry fee, but there isn’t one. It’s free.
The Museum is much larger than it appears from the outside. I didn’t bring the stroller, and as you can see, Bao got tired. Never mind. The cool, wooden floors were a delight.
Back outdoors, the sun was shining.
The day was shot anyhow, so we made one more stop at the Frelinghuysen Morris house and studio in Lenox. You never heard of Frelinghuysen or Morris? Neither had I. George Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen were two fabulously wealthy people who got married, built a Bauhaus-style home in the Berkshires when the rest of us were living in little boxes made of ticky-tacky, and fancied themselves artists. You can do what you like when you’re rich. According to the brochure, George and Suzy “were a remarkable couple at the leading edge of the national and international art scene” back in the 1930s. The house is cute. The gardens are glorious. George’s studio is to die for.
Bao says there were no interesting smells. He says there hasn’t been an interesting smell since Niagara On The Lake.
I told him to stop complaining and count his blessings.
And bought him a steak for dinner.