Pennsylvania Art Museums: Day 1/4

Thursday, October 31, 2019 - Wendy has a Retreat this Friday-Saturday-Sunday up in New Hampshire, so I'm leaving a day early for a 4-day road-trip, mostly focused on Pennsylvania Art Museums. I knew that I could get as far west as Pittsburgh (in 2 days):

Pisstburgh is far-left, and the other museums-I-could-get-to are on this map (Philadelphia on the far-right).

I needed to do a mid-week day visit to see the University art collections (Penn and Drexel), so Friday I would visit Philadelphia Art Museums:


Which left me Thursday to get down to that area. After my Thursday Mens Breakfast in Boston, I banged the corner in Albany, then headed south:


In addition to the Hudson River School, I really like Jackson Pollock's "drip paintings", and have been blessed to have seen 33-of-the-84 works he did between 1943 and 1954. Today I get to see "Number 12, 1952" (1952 oil) at the Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Albany, NY. Pretty impressive area:



The indoor mall area - not so impressive:


but it was great seeing the Pollock:


and also Paul Jenkins - "Phenomena Mistral Veil", 1970 acrylic:


45 minutes later I was down at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site:

Their 2019 exhibit was "Thomas Cole's Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek", which ran from May 4 through Nov. 3, 2019 (ends Sunday!!!). There are 15 pieces on display in The New Studio, including 4 from "Private Collections". Very tastefully displayed:



Quite a contrast to the Albany State Plaza mall/concourse.

Highlights include:

Thomas Cole - "Autumn Landscape (View of Mount Chocorua)", 1827-28 oil [The Jack Warner Foundation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama]:


Thomas Cole - "View of Catskill Creek (formerly Distant View of Roundtop)", c. 1833 oil [Albany Institute of History and Art]:


Thomas Cole - "Mill Dam on the Catskill Creek", 1841 oil [Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H.]:


Frederic Edwin Church - "The Catskill Creek", 1845 oil [Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, N.Y.]:


From Catskill, New York, I made it down to the Princeton University Art Museum by 5 PM:

Wendy and I had visited here in April 2014 - glad to see not much (outside) has changed:


Although many areas were closed for Exhibit Preparation, beautiful highlights include:

Claude Monet - "The Houses of Parliament, Seagulls", 1903 oil:


Claude Monet - "Meadow at Giverny", 1894 oil


J.M.W. Turner - "London, from Greenwich", 1811 etching and mezzotint


Giovanni Battista Piranesi - "The Man on the Rack", 1761 etching and engraving


And finally a "picture from across the room" - Childe Hassam - "Rainy Day, Fifth Avenue", 1916 oil:



Easy drive from Princeton down to the Econo Lodge in Mount Laurel, New Jersey (right across from Philadelphia). Pizza and Thursday Night Football - Thank you God for these wonderful adventures!

Today, for my listening pleasure, I am listening to a book-on-cd. My last day-trip to NYC worked out so well, listening to one, that I thought I would try Issac Asimov. "The Stars, Like Dust" is the first of his "Galactic Empire" series, and I got the 6 cds from Topsfield Library on Wednesday:



Well - it was lousy. I don't know if it was because it was written SO LONG AGO (1951) [although that was a part of it], or because it is actually a LOVE STORY [although that was a Big Part of it] - it was just a very dissatisfying audio experience for the day. Rock and Roll for the rest of this trip!