One of the hardest things about being a parent so far from our family and friends is the difficulty of finding babysitters. We have one incredible babysitter who lives in the far north of the city, but it's tricky to get to her house in winter driving conditions. Lately, the only nights out we've managed are for Saturday night dinner parties planned well in advance.
What I'd really like is a teenage babysitter who lives down the street and can just pop over to our house for a few hours on a school night so that Kevin and I can go out to dinner or see a movie. Before we became parents, we used to go to the movies once or twice a week. This year, the only Oscar-nominated movie Kevin and I have seen is Toy Story 3, and we've seen it about 100 times now.
But finding such a babysitter has been next to impossible. Kids these days are so over-committed with school and sports obligations. And after our last experience with one, in which Colin apparently cried for three hours straight, I don't think we'll be able to get her back. In the meantime, though, I think I've found a stop-gap solution: the lunch date.
From 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every weekday, we have excellent full-time childcare for Colin, and it doesn't require any special planning or extra money on our part to use some of that time for ourselves. So recently I made Kevin come downtown in the middle of the day and take me on a date to the local art museum. After all, we work only about 10 minutes away from each other by subway, and we had never visited the new Art Gallery of Alberta, which has been open for about a year and is only two blocks from my office.
The Matisse I missed.
I must confess something, though: this art major hardly paid attention to the art. I was much too giddy with the thrill of just being out--spontaneously--in the middle of the day with my husband to look carefully at the Matisse prints we had gone to see. It almost felt like we were having an affair, I guess because we were sneaking around behind someone's back--Colin's.
Nonetheless, it's certainly a thrill I plan to repeat, just as often as I can get my husband to take a little more time away from work. There are so many great restaurants downtown I've never tried--restaurants that don't allow children! And just next door to my office, there's a movie theatre, and right now, it's showing an "Oscar Marathon." I think it's a date!
Me (with a sculpture of a whale skeleton by Brian Jungen), feeling very much like a whale and not at all skeletal.
This past weekend, Kevin and I took the family to Fort Edmonton, the city's "history" theme park. We're not much for theme parks (carnival rides make us both sick), but history theme parks--that we can do.
In fact, we both find Fort Edmonton so charming, we'd kind of like to move in there. It has a glamorous old hotel, The Hotel Selkirk, with a glossy mahogany bar. There's a replica of the original Fort Edmonton--a Hudson's Bay Company trading post for fur trappers in the early 1800s. Then there are wings dedicated to the city's pioneer days, its Edwardian boom, and its Depression-era bust. And even though the Edmonton of the past was a dirty, rugged place, in many ways it was a lot more beautiful than the city of the present--in my opinion at least.
Colin seemed to like it a lot, too. He loved talking to all of the farm animals in their many languages: "baaa" for the sheep, "naaay" for the horses," "wee-wee" for the piggies, and "duck-duck-duck" for the ducks. (If only he could speak English so well!) He loved running around on the wooden boardwalks, which Edmonton had in lieu of paved sidewalks at turn of the century. But most of all he loved the trains--especially the refurbished, 100-year-old Yukon & Pacific Railway train, which operated in the city from 1900 until about 1950. Colin's Granpa Bob was a lot less impressed. He rode the train on his first trip to Edmonton in 1940 and thought it was as uncomfortable now as it was then. (Yes, he's really that old.)
My only regret from our day at the park was that I didn't take more pictures because nearly every "scene" is picture-perfect, especially with a little one running around. And boy, did he run around! I had my hands full making sure he didn't run under the wheel of a train or a horse-drawn wagon. Oh, well! There's always next year.
Writing to a friend after having just returned from a trip to Oxford in 1903, Edith Wharton wrote: “In England I like it all – institutions, traditions, mannerisms, conservatisms, everything but the women’s clothes, & then having to go to church every Sunday.” After having just spent a week in England, I’d have to disagree with Wharton. I like absolutely everything about England – even the women’s clothes and having to go to church.
Although Oxford is a small college town, the University dates back to the late 11th century and there’s a superabundance of local history and architecture . After four days of pounding the pavement all day every day, I only just scratched the surface. I visited quirky little museums like the Museum of Natural History, where dinosaur bones mingle with Gothic tracery, and the famous Ashmolean Museum. The latter houses a collection of curiosities begun in the 17th century by John Tradescant (my hero) and includes a beaded robe that belonged to Powhatan, the father of the Pocahontas.
I strolled through the Botanic Garden, which in early November was still ablaze in color. I took guided tours of some of most famous university buildings: the Bodleian Library and Christ Church College. I ate lunch in the dining room at Balliol College with our host, Claudio, and felt as if I’d stepped into the Great Hall of Hogwart’s Academy for Witchcraft and Wizardry. (Actually, the dining hall at Christ Church College was the inspiration for the Hogwart’s set, but all those colleges look pretty much the same on the inside: rich, rich, rich). One day, Kevin and I even drove a few miles outside the city to visit Blenheim Palace, one of the most famous homes in all England. For three centuries it belonged to the Dukes of Marlborough, and it counts Consuelo Vanderbilt and Sir Winston Churchill among its many famous inhabitants.
Of all the places I’ve been in England, Oxford is the place I can best imagine myself living … happily and for the rest of my life. I never thought of myself as much of an Anglophile, but I guess I am. After just two days in Oxford, I was begging Kevin to let us live there – forever, or at the very least for us to come back for a year when he’s on sabbatical. Unfortunately, the dollar is so weak right now and the pound so strong that for an American to stay there for very long would be financial suicide. While we were there, we rented a car a drove across the South to visit some of his family in Devon, and the gas bill alone nearly broke us: At £1 per liter and 25 liters per tank, a tank set us back $50 U.S.! Still, it was worth it, for in my opinion there is not place on earth prettier than the English countryside. But more on that later.
There's no question that Berlin has brilliant architecture to spare, but I find it interesting that besides the Reichstag, the city's two most interesting pieces are memorials to Germany’s darkest moment: the Holocaust.
Peter Eisenman’s ""Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" is quite simply one of the most interesting and emotional pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen. Thousands of concrete stelae cover a space in central Berlin that’s roughly the size of a football field, and each stele is said to be unique – in terms of height and thickness – representing, in a way, the uniqueness of the individual victims of the Holocaust. For a contemporary viewer like me, who’s heard the figure “six million murdered Jews” repeated again and again until it almost loses all meaning, it was a powerful reminder of the individual nature of this colossal tragedy.
More astonishing, though, was the site’s uncanny resemblance to the Jewish cemeteries of Old Europe, with its crowded disorganized rows of wilding-titling rough-hewn stones. Of course, all but a handful of these cemeteries were destroyed during Hitler’s reign of terror, and apparently it was not uncommon for the Reich to reuse the stones as street pavers. The only extant example I’ve ever seen is the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, and Eisenman’s memorial perfectly captures the feel of that unusual space. I find it really fitting that a memorial to Europe’s murdered Jews also manages to pay tribute to, and in a way to recreate, a such an important symbol Europe’s ancient Jewish culture – without it seeming contrived.
Visiting the memorial is also deeply unsettling physical experience, one that’s to make you feel small and vulnerable. As you walk down a subtle slope and deeper into the memorial, the stelae, which appeared about waist high from the outside, suddenly shoot up like trees in some petrified forest. The towering stones, leaning as they do at noticeable angles, looked as if they might fall at any moment, and the cobblestone paths between them are uneven and undulating, as if the Earth is rolling beneath your feet. It reminded me a bit of being eight years old and walking through the “Casa Magnetica” at Six Flags, where everything was built at a 45-degree angle, and yet the memorial always manages to stay above the level of some amusement park ride.
In the center of the field the stelae reach their greatest height, some ten or twenty feet tall, and no matter how bright the sun is shining very little of it ever reaches the ground. It is a very deep, dark place. From this vantage point, the rows of stones stretch out as far as the eye can see, curving slightly at the ends so that there seems to be no exit. It’s very easy to become lost inside. Once Kevin and I became separated, and it was twenty minutes before we found each other again – calling out for one another over the tops of the stelae.
On the day we visited, I noticed several younger tourists used this very sense of disorientation to play an excellent game of hide-and-seek. However, some of the older visitors were really put off by this, deeming it inappropriate behavior at a Holocaust memorial. But Eisenman, himself Jewish, has emphasized from the beginning that he didn’t want to dictate the memorial’s interpretation or even its use. “People are going to picnic in the field. Children will play tag in the field. There will be fashion models modeling there and films will be shot there. I can easily imagine some spy shoot 'em ups ending in the field,” he told Der Spiegel. “What can I say? It's not a sacred space.”
But the Germans had other ideas. Fearing that the memorial might become a target for neo-Nazi graffiti, they insisted on coating the stones with an anti-graffiti sealant. But Eisenman was against this from the start, saying that the memorial could serve as an important litmus test for public sentiment. “If a swastika is painted on it, it is a reflection of how people feel,” he said. “And if it remains there, it is a reflection of how the German government feels about people painting swastikas on the monument.” So far, no graffiti of any sort has appeared.
In addition, the private foundation that owns the site has also installed an “education center” beneath the memorial, also against Eisenman’s wishes. It explains, in very apologetic tones, the history of the Holocaust and points out the meaning of the memorial and the lessons the visitor should take away. It never ceases to amaze me how the Germans can never let a thing just be. They are big on intention, interpretation, and didacticism here. Fortunately, you can completely avoid this room, which is underground, and interpret the memorial for yourself. You might not know it’s there at all unless you go looking for it.
Just a few blocks away, is Berlin’s other big Holocaust attraction, if one can call it that: the Jewish Museum-Berlin. A few years ago, the museum got a new look: a building from the American architect Daniel Liebeskind, the one with the funny black glasses who won the competition to design site plan for the new World Trade Center. Titled “Between the Lines,” the Berlin building is a “deconstructivist masterpiece” (or so says the museum’s Web site), and immediately after its completion it was opened to the public – long before it held any exhibits. The empty space itself was unusual enough to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Like Eisenman’s memorial, the Jewish Museum is designed in such a way as to create a sense of insecurity through uneven and sloping floors and walls that jut-out at odd angles. (I apologize for not knowing which architect first came up with this concept; both structures were built around the same time.) But the Jewish Museum caused even more of the “Casa Magnetica”-effect than the Holocaust memorial: I actually felt a little dizzy and nauseous inside, especially on the staircases. Even more than Eisenman’s project, though, Liebeskind’s building attempts to give a physical form to the idea of the Holocaust. Its footprint is an enormous zigzag, which Liebeskind calls a “broken Star of David.” OK, then. If you want to be literal about the extermination of the Jews, I guess a broken six-point star is the way to go.
Critics of the museum have claimed that the space is overly thought-out at best, and downright kitschy at worst. Compared to Eisenman’s more stripped-down space, I would have to agree. The main exhibit space consists of three long halls, or “axes” as Liebeskind calls them, awkwardly named “The Axis of the Holocaust,” “The Axis of Emigration,” and the “Axis of Continuity,’ which – you guessed it – correspond with the typed of stories they tell. Still, Liebeskind’s boutique design is not the real purpose of the Jewish Museum. The exhibits, which chart the stories of a few dozen real families through the years of the Holocaust using their letters and photos and artifacts, are why I went and why I’d go back again an again. I guess the most that can be said for the axes is that they don’t detract from the brilliantly curated exhibits they hold.
However, Liebeskind’s “voids,” five enormous empty spaces at the end of the axes, are amazing. There are five voids in all, but the two that stood out most were the “Memory Void” and Liebeskind’s own masterpiece, “The Holocaust Tower.”
The “Memory Void” houses an installation by Israeli artist Menasche Kadishman titled Schalechet, or “Fallen Leaves” in English, but the 10,000 or so three-dimensional plates that fill this void are about as much like leaves as, well, a fish is like a submarine. The heavy, iron slabs are coarsely cut into the shape of human faces, and they play with the same ideas of individuality and repetition as Eisenman’s stelae: Each face is hand wrought and so is a little bit different. And here, too, the visitor is encouraged to participate – by walking across the room, on top of the exhibit. Of course, walking on top thousands of metal faces is terribly disconcerting, not to mention the enormous racket it makes in an empty concrete hall. I couldn’t help feeling the way a cat must feel when he wanders into a puddle by mistake: I just wanted to get back out again, as fast as possible. I have a hard time putting in to words exactly what this has to do with the Holocaust, nonetheless, it was a rare experience, and one that everyone should experience for himself.
Finally, Liebeskind’s real pièce de résistance is his Holocaust Tower, a bare, concrete room, semi-detached from the rest of the museum, and one which is neither heated or insulated. The temperature inside is always the same as the temperature out-of-doors, and the room isn’t lit. The only light in the space comes from a long slit near the ceiling, which allows in a narrow stream of radiant natural light. I’ve heard this room compared to a gas chamber and to a cattle-car, one of the infamous train cars used to transport Jews to the concentration camps. Both of these descriptions are pretty apt, although I prefer to see the space as a less blatantly symbolic. Quite simply: You feel trapped here, and the light streaming in from above is a reminder of you of the world you are cut off from as well as a sign of hope. And that’s a pretty remarkable feeling and a pretty remarkable space.
Disclaimer: I apologize for going on and on about Berlin’s architecture. I realize this is no less than my third post on the subject, and I promise it will be my last. My excuse must be that, while at my former job, I worked on two websites related to this topic: one on Daniel Liebeskind, and another on Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial. Although I spent months researching and writing on these projects, I never visited either site in the flesh until now, and although it is now some years later, I guess I had a few ideas still rolling around in my head.
The week I was in Dresden it rained all day, every day, so there was nothing for me to do but visit museums all day long. Fortunately, Dresden has dozens of world-class museums, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice on my part. I spent my third day there exploring the rambling collections of the Zwinger. Originally built as a pleasure palace for Augustus the Strong (he kept his concubines in the galleries and held tournaments in the courtyard), it now houses several museums: the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meisters (Renaissance and Baroque paintings), the Rüstkammer (armory), the Porzellensammlung (porcelain collection), among many others.
The Gemäldegalerie has a reputation of being one of the best museums in Europe, with important works by Raphael, Botticelli, Titian, Dürer, Holbien, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and basically anyone else who ever achieved a modicum of fame, but it was it was a less famous work – Ruben’s Leda and the Swan – that really took my breath away.I have long been a fan of this painting, which depicts the maiden Leda being seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan, and I used to keep a postcard-size version of it on my bulletin board when I was in college.
I loved how Leda’s pale skin and the swan’s snowy white feathers glow against the solid black background. And I always found the graceful arch of the swan’s neck as it reach up to give Leda a kiss right on the lips terribly erotic. But it wasn’t until I saw the 10-by-12 foot original, that I realized the painting it positively pornographic! Leda and the Swan were actually “doin’ it,” and the evidence is right their in front of you in all its glory. Needless to say, I bought a new, larger copy of the painting to take home with me.
Next, I visited the Rüstkammer. Now, I’ve never cared much for the history of warfare, but the elaborate gold and silver and jewel-encrusted suits of armor were pretty cool, and so I did like everyone else in the museum was doing and whipped out my digital camera to take a picture. Two seconds later an angry female guard was all over me, yelling in that angry guttural voice that Germans always have in the movies. It turns out that you had to pay an extra 5 euros in order to be able to take pictures in the museum. Who knew?
Anyway, I hated to come across as “the ugly American,” but I wasn’t about to pay 5 euros when all I wanted was a single picture, so I just packed up my camera and moved on. But not five minutes later, I was yelled at again for leaning in too closely to a suit of armor. Yikes! And I wasn’t the only one: Visitors were getting chewed out left and right by the museum’s staff of very severe-looking female guards and for relatively minor offenses. Dresden’s numerous museums are overrun with these dower-looking middle-aged women, about one every 10 feet. It makes absolutely no sense that the museum should employ hoards of people for such a useless task since it already has a thoroughly modern security system – until you consider that the unemployment rate in Eastern Germany is even higher than Germany’s national unemployment rate of 14 percent. People have to earn their daily bread somehow, and I guess the government would rather employ them in useless jobs in the state’s art museums than just putting them on the dole.
This thought softened my heart for a moment, but then, a short while later, I was yelled at yet again, this time for talking to Kevin on my cell phone. Now, normally I would say that talking on a cell phones in an art museum was the height of rudeness (I used to work in an art museum, after all), but I had had the ringer turned off and took the call in a secluded corner of the museum, where I never spoke above a whisper. Besides it’s not like I could have gone outside to take the call – it was raining cats and dogs! Despite my precautions, one of them hunted me down and nearly bit my head off. I was about to give her a piece of my mind, but fortunately, my German wasn’t up to the task. So, I just left.
I wanted nothing more than to go back to the hotel and nurse my wounded pride, but it was still raining, so I decided to take my chances with the guards one more time and went next door to the Porzellensammlung. Now, I’ve never cared much for porcelain – it’s much too frilly and fragile for my tastes – but even I have to admit that the museum’s collection was pretty cool. One large white room contains dozens of nearly life size porcelain animals, all in white. The rest of the museum’s long, narrow galleries display almost two thousand years’ of Asian porcelain in arrangements 20-feet high and set against brightly painted walls in orange and red and purple. The effect on the viewer is like being a tiny figurine in a giant curio cabinet. Or maybe just a “bull in a china shop.”
Anyway, I desperately wanted to take a picture, but again I was too cheap to pony up the 5 euros for a photo-pass. Still, I figured it never hurt to ask, so I mustered up my courage – and my recently acquired knowledge of the German subjunctive – and said to the little old lady guard in my politest voice: “Would it be possible for me to take a picture here, just one?” Of course, her response was, “Do you have a photo-pass?” I shook my head and started to move on. But I guess my use of the subjunctive must have had its affect on her. Or maybe she was just amused that someone my age would want to take a picture of the collection – I was the youngest person in the museum by about 50 years – so she relented and let me take my picture. She even led me over to the one spot in the tight little wing where I could get the best shot!
"In Dresden, there is one thing that you should endeavor to do and that is visit the so-called Grünes Gewölbe or Schatzkammer.” (Johann Georg Keyssler, from his European travel guide, 1730)
Although written nearly 300 years ago, these words could not be truer today. In 2004, after a fifty year hiatus, the famous Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vaults), the royal treasury of the Electors of Saxony, where restored to their original home at the Residenzschloß in Dresden and reopened to the public. It’s funny to think that Dresden, with its troubled history and impoverished landscape is home to one of the world’s wealthiest museums. But even before having read Keyssler’s advice, it was already my number one reason for visiting Dresden. I spent my entire first two days there, and I didn’t even break for lunch.
The Green Vaults are above all a royal treasury, or Schatzkammer, but they are also an excellent example of Wunderkammern (cabinets of curiosity). The idea behind wunderkammern such the Green Vaults was to assemble in one place the most amazing objects that Art and Nature could produce, a sort of Noah’s Ark of the wonderful. The best pieces would seamlessly combine the two, for example the coral and silver challis (above, left), which depicts Ovid’s tale of Daphne’s metamorphosis into a laurel tree. The point of objects like these was not utilitarian (it’s unlikely they were ever even used), but to surprise and dumbfound the viewer. Few modern visitors are likely to believe that a rhinoceros horn drinking vessel is made from a gryphon's claw, but they’ll still enjoy how it tickles the imagination.
First I visited the Historic Green Vaults on the ground floor of the museum. Even in it’s modern incarnation, it’s clear that you’re going inside a high-security vault: Tickets to this exhibit are only available to groups of thirty people at thirty-minute intervals, and before entering the exhibit you have to leave all your belongings at the coat check and step through an air-locked entryway. But once you’re through, you enter a series of rooms, each more wonderful and luxurious than the one before. I felt a little like Charlie seeing the Chocolate Factory for the first time.
The first room is the Amber Kabinett, where, as its name suggests, everything is made of amber: small sculptures, drinking vessels, a complete chess set, even a full-size armoire. The honey brown amber positively glows, as it’s lit from behind and set against dark purple walls. Next, is the Ivory Room, filled with at least a hundred delicate ivory sculptures balanced precariously on individual consoles against warm marble-patterned walls. Most of the sculptures are what’s called “turned ivory,” a single tusk of ivory that has been carefully “turned” on a lathe and whittled-down into mind-bogglingly complicated geometric shapes: an intricate spire set atop a hollow icosahedron containing six smaller icosahedra, one inside another, with the whole thing positively floating above a single narrow column. It’s impossible to comprehend that these marvels were carved with 16th century tools.
Beyond the Ivory Room are a pair of traditional treasury rooms, the first containing the Elector’s collection of silver and second his collection of gold (actually gold-coated silver, but who’s going to scratch the surface and find out?). Sadly, much of the family silver had to be melted-down and turned into currency in order to finance the Seven Years’ War, but what remains has been displayed to its best advantage. These rooms are decorated for maximum glitter effect: The Silver Room is bright red and covered with gilded mirrors, and the Gilt Room is lime green and covered with gilded mirrors. Like the Hall of Mirrors as Versailles, the scene is reflected back on itself, endlessly multiplying its already opulent treasures.
Next up is my favorite room, Pretiosa Room, which contains the most curious of the vault’s treasures. Hundreds of delicate sculptures created from coconuts, ostrich eggs, nautilus shells, barocco pearls, and rare stones line the mirrored walls. Each one is a perfect synthesis of the natural and man-made: such as an ostrich egg drinking cup in the shape of a very life-like ostrich. When you unscrew its head and try to drink from its silver neck, the wings flap in your face – a sort of Baroque practical joke, but an unbelievably bizarre and beautiful one.
Next door, the Coat of Arms Room appears a little bland after the opulence of the previous galleries, but it’s a welcome change, since by this point in the tour your brain is likely in sensory overload. Originally used as a sort of grand mailroom, new acquisitions and secret documents could be stored in hidden cabinets behind the plaques before they were put on display. Unfortunately, only 36 of the original coats of arms belonging to the House of Wettin remain; eight were destroyed by fire during the bombing of Dresden. The curators have carefully left part of the room unfinished to remind visitors of the damage the museum sustained – and overcame.
Beyond is the grandest room of all: the Jewel Room. The Electorate of Saxony was just one of many German principalities, but the family, under Augustus the Strong (1670-1732) endeavored to be the wealthiest and most powerful. In order to enhance its prestige among the other princes, and ultimately win their vote to become King of Prussia and Duke of Lithuania, the family amassed a collection of jewels befitting a king. The Elector owned complete sets of garnitures (buttons, buckles, rapiers, daggers, hat pins, etc.) for every occasion: sets in ruby, emerald, sapphire, carnelian, tortoise shell, and two sets of diamond. According to my audio guide the tortoise shell set was the most expensive, although it doesn’t explain why.
The Jewel Room’s most valuable object has been moved to a more secure location upstairs in the Neues Grünes Gewölbe (New Green Vaults), a larger, thoroughly modern gallery space, where visitors can get a better view of some of the collection’s most interesting pieces. “The Dresden Green,” a pendant originally belonging to August III, August the Strong’s son, contains the largest green diamond in the world – 41 carats. Its unusual green color comes from the fact that the stone was exposed to naturally occurring radioactivity below the earth’s surface. It is truly a wonder of nature – and art.
Although “the Dresden Green” brings in the crowds, it’s the collection of curiosities, like the cherry pit pendant carved with 185-unique heads, that captured my attention and kept me coming back for more the next day. Rather than describe ad nauseum all the really cool stuff I saw, I’ve created my own little wunderkammer, a "Best of the New Green Vaults.” (My apologies to the State Art Museum of Dresden for the liberties of their photographs.) I hope it gives you the same sense of jaw-dropping awe that I experienced. Enjoy!
One of the hardest things about being a parent so far from our family and friends is the difficulty of finding babysitters. We have one incredible babysitter who lives in the far north of the city, but it's tricky to get to her house in winter driving conditions. Lately, the only nights out we've managed are for Saturday night dinner parties planned well in advance. 
The Matisse I missed.
Me (with a sculpture of a whale skeleton by Brian Jungen), feeling very much like a whale and not at all skeletal.
