Revealing visions

The Presidential Inauguration and MLK day were marked by the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore in a very popular family festival, which included a live screening of the ceremony in the gallery's auditorium and films of the I have a dream speech shown throughout the day.  It was also the last day of Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, a fascinating and bold exhibition which brought to the fore African figures depicted in paintings, sketches, sculpture, maps and prints, including works by Rubens, Durer and Veronese.  The display buzzed with visitors who were responding very positively the text panels which invited them to draw their own conclusions over the nature of these representations.   

I then traced European artists' encounter with Africa through time in the gallery of nineteenth-century Orientalist art.  These wonderful bronze sculptures of Said Abdullah of the Mayac from Darfur and an unknown African woman by the French sculptor Cordier from 1851 were noted at the time for the figures' expressions of nobility and dignity, Queen Victoria numbering among the purchasers of casts.  Other absorbing displays in the Walters included the room designed to evoke the spirit of 17th century Dutch collecting, the 'Chamber of Wonders'.  I enjoyed greatly meeting the gallery's education staff to discuss the various ways they are engaging by the diverse communities of the city and surrounding states with the collection.

A completely contrasting experience was to be had at the American Visionary Art Museum, devoted to the work of self-taught artists, often those without formal training.   For me, the most powerful pieces in this eclectic collection were those devoted to storytelling, particularly a heartbreaking tale told through large embroidered panels by Esther Krinitz about her flight from the Holocaust.  A display of automata showed some wonderful flights of imagination, for example a row of seated figures of Anubis, who at the touch of a button started doing sit-ups.

As a devotee of the Wire, the tv series whose vision of Baltimore I admit formed many of my own preconceptions about the city, I tried to take in as many of the downtown locations as possible on my long walks between museums. I decided against the 54 mile driving tour on Wikipedia but used the exhaustively researched webpage to ascertain when I was passing a cafe/hotel/pub/park where key, or even fleeting, scenes were shot. City Hall, externally glossy yet internally, in the series, home of corrupt political antics, was the final box to tick and much to my excitement a film crew was set up outside - was I to be an extra in an as yet under-wraps new series?!  No, but I did discover that they were filming the new series of political satire Veep.  Debating whether to linger and celebrity-spot, the bone-crunchingly cold temperatures (-5ish apparently) soon got me on my way.  

Following the sporting theme from the last post, across the city on the morning after the game were plastered the purple and black colours of the Ravens, every shop, businesses, office windows emblazoned with banners declaring their support. All I heard across town was talk of the game with huge anticipation of the Superbowl as well as the enticing prospect of the two competing teams being coached by two brothers.  The pre-match build-up on tv is well-under way and my knowledge of american football is improving accordingly.