Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York City - the Fifth Floor

This really was an artistic treat.  There are 6 floors of exhibitions with lounges and cafe’s and expresso bars.  Lonely Planet tour guide recommended we get tickets on line but I had no way of printing them so decided instead to get to the museum early.  This was a good idea. It opened at 10 am and when we left around 12:30 there was quite a line up for tickets.  $25 for adults and well worth it for the 5th floor alone.  This was the collection galleries 1880 to 1950’s.
I love Paul Klee. I love Marc Chagall. I love Gustav Klimt.    I love the impressionists. I love the post impressionists.  I love the surrealists especially.  It’s all so inspiring.  So we walked around the gallery full of favourites like going to a concert with dozens of stages.  Visually this modern art is like seeing live, Sinatra, Elvis, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Dylan, Joni Mitchell. It’s that sort of experience.
I love Picasso’s early paintings and his later cubism.  Without knowing what an incredible artist he was in pictures the boy with the horse or his blue period I’d not appreciateh is abstract art.  He’s so accomplished.
Starry Nights by Van Gogh.  There’s the song and here was the original.  Wow!  I loved seeing the surrealist Salvador Dali’s clocks.  Wow!
Seurat and Monet.  So many greats, a generation of artists to choose from and there were a whole lot of lesser known but equally or almost equally as exceptional.  As a result of the world wars there was a lot of repudiation of the modern.  Lots of soul searching and trying to express this.  Surrealism was a dream like exploration with elements of Freud.
A whole room of Matisse.  Matisse’s dancers and the dancers of Degas.  So uplifting. I forgot how much I loved Rousseau until I saw his pictures, thought I love that, and found out it was Rousseau.  And Gauguin of course, The Frenchman’s dream come true. We just fell in love with the Fifth Floor and had more floors yet to go.  Unbelievably rich eye candy, mind changing, soulful experience.

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

My goodness, this is the most awesome museum.  Rated alongside the British Museum and the Louvre it’s a masterpiece of it’s own.  The Winter Palace was begun in 1754 by architect Rastrell.  Catherine II purchased Gotzkowski collection,  first collection. The little Hermitage and then the great Hermitage were built, 1764 to 1787. 1852 was the opening of the Imperial Museum of the New Hermitage. 1865 Leonardo Da Vinci’s  Madonna and Child (Litta Madonna) was purchased. 1914 Leonardo Da Vinci’s Madonna with Flower was purchased.
Vlad, Barrett’s brother in law, accompanied us.  Through translation I learned from Barrett that ,”he likes to go to art galleries to improve his mood.”  I thought that as good a reason as any. I’d just told Barrett I thought a walk in a museums and art gallery was as close as one could get in the city to a walk in the woods in the country. I love museums and art galleries and have been truly blessed to have enjoyed many of the world’s finest.  It was when I was a young man working in London I made a point of using my lunch hours to stroll the British Museum. No wonder I was thin back then.
Today we hiked for hours and miles. We mounted the famous Jordan Stairway first.  Then there was just an endless collection of art and not enough time to see it all.  Vlad asked what I most wanted to see and I said, the da Vinci, Picasso, Rafael. He said he liked the Medieval period most..  On the way to the da Vinci he pointed out his favourites, mostly religious scenes. There was so much.  The Leonardo Da Vinci is of the mother and child, the child suckling.  It’s is a moving portrait. Later I’d learn I walked right past the only Michelangelo there. I was looking at the Rodin sculptures and missed the Michelangelo. I can’t say how much I missed but what I saw was truly inspiring.
I love the Manet.  More Picasso Blue Period.  We’d walked and walked and were hungry and wanting lunch when Barret asked if there was anything else I wanted to see. I’d been reading about the Hermitage and it came to mind that this was the place where Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son was. I’m a big fan of Henri Nouwen’s Prodigal Son writing and loved the idea that there are two sons, not just one that returns.  It’s really an amazing discussion of Faith and Works, or more importantly Grace.  I’m moved personally by the story.  And there was the painting. What an amazing portrayal.
More Matisse, more Gauguin, Flemish school, French, and finally leaving some Roman and Egyptian floors. We’d fluttered about and come to nest here and there but so much had just been wall art which we’d passed as if it were elevator music. It was beautiful. The whole of the museum is that. There’s everything, from great wooden carved desks to massive bowls and intricate porcelain.  It makes one admire the human capacity for transcendence.  I loved it all and feel my mind has had a marvellous cleansing, a rite of purification, a morning and afternoon, of being pointed upwards.  I know I’ll go back to dragging my knuckles but the memories are there. I love the line from Cohen in Chelsea hotel, “We are ugly but we have the music”.  Well, I may be ugly but I’ve got the most beautiful memories.