Posts Tagged ‘Museum’

I had a package deal that allowed me entry into any five of the museums on the Balboa Park grounds. I decided just for fun to go into the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, which is the largest such museum in North America. I had an electric model train set when I was a boy, but never really caught the “bug” and went beyond that point, but have always been fascinated in the elaborate detail and often humorous touches that go into such large-scale layouts.

Thanks to the lighting and the pervasive glass, I found that it was next to impossible to get good shots of moving trains with the gear I had with me. So I concentrated on some of the miniature details. If I had a tripod with me I could have done better, but I still like some of shots I came away with from that visit.

I noticed that the Wikipedia article on this museum didn’t have any shot of the museum, so I posted the following image to Wikimedia Commons for use on the Wikipedia page:

Facade of the San Diego Model Railroad Museum

Enthusiast Among a Small Scale Layout

A Contented-looking Engineer

Traffic by the Pacific Hotel

My chief reason for wanting to go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum was to see its “reserve head“, one of only a few dozen in existence, dating to the Old Kingdom period of Ancient Egypt. They are roughly contemporary to the time of the pyramid builders, and are thought to depict the relatives of the pharaoh and some of his chief officials.

I first saw them at an exhibition that came to the Royal Ontario Museum over a decade ago, which was about the art from the Old Kingdom period. A subsequent visit several years later to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where they have several of them renewed my interest in the subject.

The appeal should be fairly obvious, in that they while they are somewhat stylized, but they are life-like and seem to reflect distinct individuals, something that is virtually unique in sculpture from that period. There are also some mysteries that have not been fully or (to my mind) satisfactorily explained, as many of the heads show distinctive patterns of deliberate damage.

In one of the articles I read about the reserve heads, it said that there were few images of all of the sculptures from the sides and back, so where possible, I try to cover that angle as well.

The Kunischistoriche Museum’s reserve head was in a glass case set on a pedestal, allowing for a 360 degree view. Here are the shots I took:

This particular reserve head is cataloged as: ÄS 7787, was found at entrance of burial chamber, and is thought to date from the mid- to late-4th dynasty.

Have already posted these to Wikimedia Commons, and will add a picture to the reserve head article on Wikipedia.

I had a full day before the DITA Europe conference started, so I met with the Schengili ladies at my hotel and we headed off together to the Kunsthistorisches Museum down by Museum Platz. (A central place for museums! Heaven!) 😉

The chief goal of visiting this museum was to visit its Ancient Egyptian collection, primarily to get a good look at and photograph one of the rare Reserve Heads from the Old Kingdom in its collection. Teresa and her daughters were very good-natured for putting up with me and my interest in this area, and am hoping I made it up to them somewhat by explaining what I knew about the context for the objects that we saw.

The first thing that greets the visitor to the wing of the museum is the mock-Ancient Egyptian facade done in marble by the entranceway, with a distainful looking Pharoah looking down upon would-be visitors to “his” gallery; definitely not the beatific look of a typical Thutmosid bust. He is flanked by a couple of snakes, though he has no Royal Uraeus on his head-dress — so definitely a Viennese confection. I was also told that the wording for the gallery above him is in an old form of German, which somehow seemed to fit with the grand imperial-era look of the museum itself. The entrance is flanked on one side by a life-sized figure of the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet, presumably one of the several hundred fashioned for the funerary complex of Amenhotep III, and consequently nearly ubiquitous in Ancient Egyptian collections world-wide (there were two more such statues inside the gallery).

I heard about this place from a colleague of mine at work, who took his son to this museum. Coincidentally, the day or so before it had been officially changed its name to the “Canadian Air and Space Museum”. Vanessa was away all day, so Annie and I made the trek all the way up to Downsview via TTC and got to the museum, which is housed in the old de Havilland Canada aircraft manufacturing building (basically a big old warehouse).

The Entrance to the Museum

A restored Tiger Moth

The vintage maple leaf on the Tiger Moth

Avro Lancaster being restored and the Avro Arrow replica

Full-sized Avro Arrow Replica

This was the Avro Lancaster that had formerly been mounted on a podium near the CNE grounds, and was a familiar site when driving around that part of Lakshore when I was a kid. One of the people there told me that mounting the plane had permanently rendered it unflyable, but the current restoration effort was trying to fix up the plane as much as possible. Made during the final stages of WWII, she never say any action and was in fact pressed into service to help in search and rescue efforts on the coast prior to being “mounted”.

One of the Merlin engines of the Lancaster

I found this an interesting object to photograph: a thoroughly shot-up fuselage of a Lancaster that was used as target practice at a firing range, which apparently still had some useful parts for the reconstruction effort.

The “Ruhr Express” nose marking, which has an interesting history

The iconic British markings from the Lancaster

A classic from the 1930s: A Stinston Reliant

It’s spotless rotary engine

Not just airplanes, but training gear as well: a Link Trainer.

The first human-carrying ornithopter to actually fly

Annie is a-okay in the cockpit

A Bell CH-136 Kiowa Helicopter

A Beechcraft CT-134 Musketeer trainer

Interior of an Air Canada Viscount Simulator

Gears, motor and armatures behind the Viscount Simulator. Flame Out!

I made the short walk to my hotel from the Pergamon Museum, and promptly put the rechargeable lithium battery in its charger. Then I went back downstairs and headed off to get a quick bite to eat. The museum was set to close at 6pm so I let the battery charge for about an hour and then made my way to the Altes Museum, where the Ägyptisches Collection is being housed temporarily while reconstruction work continues on the Neues Museum, where the whole of the collection will eventually be housed — its original venue in Berlin prior to WWII and the political division of Germany.

The Egyptian collection is located on the top floor of the building, where I paid my admission, doffed my coat and made my way inside.

Despite the lateness of the day, the museum was still busy, though not as busy as at had been at the Pergamon earlier in the day.

The first room is filled largely with the busts and statues of royal or related images. Here’s the photo-tour:

Statue of a Pharaoh Just Inside the Entrance

This is the first thing you see when you make your way through the entrance to the museum. A crowd of people gathered around it in a mix of awe and appreciation.

Receiving much less recognition was this small, impassive statue described as a baboon god. But in terms of history, this was arguably much more significant than the grand, kingly statue beside it, as it has, scratched in its base the catfish and hammer glyphs that represent the pharaoh Narmer, who is generally recognized as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

Baboon God Statue with Pharaoh Narmer’s Name Etched in its Base

A significant piece in the collection, and given pride of place near the entrance. I couldn’t help but find it suspect the difference between the quality of the piece and the relatively crudeness in which the name of the pharaoh was carved into its base. Hmmm.

Elsewhere in the room were other famous faces of various pharaohs, most dating to the time of the New Kingdom.

Bust of Sesostris I

Fragmentary Statue Head of Hatshepsut

Kneeling Figure of Sobekhotep V

There is a division in the room and then you see a collection of statues primarily of private citizens, some with their families, others obviously important officials.

Block Statue of Senemut and Princess Neferure

This particular block statue (a popular form in Egypt used primarily by non-royals) struck me as particularly interesting, as the head of the young royal girl was also represented. This turned out to be a depiction of Senemut, who was tutor to princess Neferure, who was the daughter of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. He is also credited with being the architect of several of Hatshepsut’s more impressive buildings, including her funerary complex — and also possibly the pharaoh’s lover.

There is an interesting mix of other pieces in the room, a real jumble of largely non-royals from several different eras and styles.

For example this late period statue of an unnamed official faces the head of Khaemwaset, one of the sons of Ramesses II.

Late Period Egyptian Official

Prince Khaemwaset

The real gem in this part of the room was the famous “Berlin Green Head”, a finely crafted head carved in greywacke of some unknown late period official.

The Berlin Green Head

Just beside this last piece is the entrance to the hall containing the highly expressive art pieces from the Amarna period, which is recognized as the highlight of this museum’s collection.

A German-led expedition went to the long abandoned city of Amarna early in the last century, which was the seat of power for the “heretic” pharoah Akhenaten, who created a monotheistic cult of the disc of the sun god, called Aten. This is the first piece one sees when you enter the room: a broken relief depicting Amenhotep beside a falcon-headed Aten figure. He would soon after change his name to Akhenaten.

Falcon Aten and Amenhotep IV

The next depicted was the next thing that grabbed my attention: the head of Queen Tiye:

Head of Queen Tiye

This image has been endlessly reproduced, but I was surprised by its size it’s small. I had always thought it was life-size or near it, but the head is perhaps half life-sized, which makes the fine features of Queen Tiye, very much an individual, all the more impressive. Can’t help thinking she must have been formidable in person.

What follows are several plaster heads of Akhenaten and members of his court, presumably artist’s studies that were abandoned along with the rest of Amarna upon the death of the pharaoh.

Plaster Heads of Akhenaten (x2), Nefertiti and Aye

They reminded me of the so-called “reserve heads” I had seen at an exhibition of Old Kingdom objects a few years back, and while that wasn’t the intention here, Akhenaten was clearly well supplied with plenty of them for his ba-soul (so the belief went) to find refuge in.

Elongated Head of an Amarna Princess

Theories have abounded on the strange shape of Akhenaten’s face as well as though of his family, including such exotic diseases as the “elephant man’s disease” and Marfan’s syndrome, but after looking at all of the lifelike busts, and the fact that the more exaggerated appearances tend to date to the later part of his rule, I can’t help but think that this was a stylistic difference, intended to make the king and his family appear “otherworldly”, something recognizably human, but exaggerated Don’t get me wrong, am not talking the silly flim-flammery of invoking Velikovskian aliens, but there has always been a tendency in art to emphasize certain physical features (just think of any of the pre-historic “Venus” figurines of Europe as an obvious example) and I would guess that the change in appearance has much more to do with exaggeration (and possibly caricature?) than any actual physical ailment. The mummy of Tutankhamen showed that his head was not markedly elongated, and he was almost certainly a descendant of Akhenaten. Until Akhenaten’s mummy is found (or identified) his ba-soul will have the last laugh.

The centerpiece (literally) of the Amarna exhibit is the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti.

Bust of Queen Nefertiti

People Looking at Nefertiti Bust

A small crowd had understandably gathered around it, with a tour guide explaining things in German. The bust is striking, and so realistic that it must have been based on life — not a homogeneous, highly idealized image but clearly that of an individual. Which is why this has become a singular work of art which has been seen to typify that of Ancient Egypt, when in fact the opposite couldn’t be more true — it is a work from a very specific era when individual artistic expression was allowed to flourish. What came before and after did not express the same artistic range seen in the Amarna period.

Clasped Hands from an Amarna-Era Statue

There were various other pieces dotted about the rest of the room, but this piece nicely concluded my visit: two hands holding each other, presumably of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, all that is left of some larger statue. At once the fragment is tender and evocative, though still clearly Egyptian in style.

After the highlights of the Amarna room anything else that would follow it would seem anti-climactic, but I was taken aback at the display in the next room of a number of papyri I knew the Berlin museum had these, but I didn’t expect to find them on display, even under the low-light conditions present in the room. Some of them were famous, such as the Papyrus Westcar, in which fantastic, magical tales are told to Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid. Then there’s the “Debate Between a Man and his Ba-Soul”, which is basically the first known piece of writing that deal with the topic of suicide (the Ba-soul suggests that it is not such a great idea). Then there are more colourful treatises detailing a soul’s passage to the underworld. I took plenty of (non-flash) photos, and will hopefully be able to stitch some of them together later in PhotoShop.

Westcar Papyrus Photo-montage (if you look closely you can see me taking the picture in reflected glass, twice

“Guide to the Afterlife for the Custodian of the Property of the Amon Temple Amonemwidja with Symbolic Illustrations Concerning the Dangers in the Netherworld”

“Guide to the Afterlife for the Custodian of the Property of the Goddess Mut Sesech with Symbolic Illustrations Concerning the Dangers in the Netherworld”

The doorway to the next room was framed by a series of mummy masks.

Mummy Masks Flanking Doorway

The room that followed contained several late period mummy cases and mummies (all wrapped up), including a family dating to the Greek or Roman period. These are the ones that include a painted portrait of the individual family member as they appeared in life. Couldn’t help but think of what my two young daughters would think about seeing mummies of children their age or younger.

Mummies of Late Period Children

Was getting near the end of the Egyptian exhibit at this point, and the most impressive thing at the conclusion were a pair of statues of full-size lion headed goddesses Sekhmet, both clutching a very large ankh, the symbol of life, in their right hand. This particularly formidable-looking pair of goddesses were believed to protect against illness, and I had recently finished reading an article about their construction during the reign of Amenhotep III, who constructed a vast number of these statues. The thinking was that they were made during a time of repeated plagues, these statues ultimately a vain attempt at a preventative health measure against the pestilence which struck the land.

Pair of Sehkmet Statues

Close-up of Ankh

The exit immediately led to the bookstore, which had plenty of interesting titles, only a small portion of which were in English. Was most tempted by a stack of back issues of KMT, but they were all ones I had read at some point in the past. Was also tempted to pick up a plush blue hippo for my daughters, but I remembered the injunction from my wife not to bring back any more stuffies for them.

I thought that that was pretty much it, but it turned out that there were more Ancient Greek and Roman pieces downstairs. Entrance was through a circular atrium filled with statues of the gods. There was a skylight at the top of the dome which would have filled the atrium with light on a clear, sunny day, but it was late afternoon and the otherwise unlit room was gloomy and did not lend itself to picture-taking.

All of the explanatory text in the subsequent exhibit halls were exclusively in German, so I did not linger long over much of the rest of the exhibits. There were a few interesting busts of a few famous personages I either recognized directly or was able to figure out from the German labels.

Bust of Pericles

Doleful Looking Bust of Julius Caesar

Bust of Emperor Arcadius

Bust of Emperor Hadrian

Getting somewhat museum-ed out by this stage, but still restless, I decided to go for a walk down Unter den Linden so that I could see the Brandenberg Gate. By this point my camera’s battery was on the verge of giving out, but I managed to take a few more interesting shots.

Berlin Cathedral and the the Fernsehturm (TV Tower)

While this picture above may seem like it was taken in late afternoon, it was taken when it was much darker outside. I managed to prop the camera against a tree and held the camera steady for the second or two it took to get the exposure. Beside me were a couple who taking pictures with a flash camera. Given that the cathedral was across the park, I would bet that my pic came out better than theirs. Visible to the left of the cathedral is the iconic TV tower, the Fernsehturm, made by the East German government and definitely Stalinist in look.

I walked down Unter den Linden, taking in the sights. Past the Crown Prince’s palace, then the historical museum, the State Opera House, Humbolt University (with a statue of the man in front of it), lots and lots of tourist shops, a couple of upscale car dealerships, then the Russian and British Embassies, and just beyond the construction cranes loomed the Brandenburg Gate.

Brandenburg Gate at Night

Close-up of the Quadriga on Top of the Brandenburg Gate

These were the last pics I took before my camera battery packed it in. Satisfied, I made my way back to my hotel room for the evening.

The rainy weather which had been predicted for Berlin for much of my stay finally came in spades this morning. But I was determined to do something out of doors so that I could say that I had had a good look around the city, so after my breakfast I ventured out.

My original plan was to head to the Zoo, but the crummy weather — cold rain and a driving wind — quickly scotched that idea. Instead, my curiosity was peeked by the rotating “Berliner Ensemble” sign directly across the river, so I made my way over to it.

I had thought when I arrived that this was a musical ensemble, but the large bronze statue of Bertolt Brecht told me otherwise: it was a playhouse dedicated to performing his plays. The current run included “Mother Courage”.

Despite the weather I wasn’t the only one in the small square beside the playhouse, as two elderly German women each took pictures of the other standing beside the statue of Brecht. And when they had moved on, I took mine:

Statue of Bertolt Brecht in front of the Berliner Ensemble Building

Boats looking like converted barges plied the river with tours, and I briefly thought about taking one as I sheltered under a train trestle from Friedrichstraße station, but I was intrigued by the glass-domed building not far in the distance. So I pressed on in the wet weather and found out that this was in fact the Reichstag. Couldn’t help but think of the famous war footage (restaged after the fact for propaganda purposes, but no less iconic) of a group of Red Army soldiers planting their flag at the top of this building, long ago but still within living memory

Looking at the Reichstag from Across the River Spee, with a Tour Boat in the Foreground

I also took some detailed shots in the rain of a decorative lamppost with various figures on it.

Lamp Post at the Reichstag

Lamp Post at the Reichstag – Detail (Yes, it was very wet)

I then stopped by the fringes of the Tiergarden by a row of white crosses, erected in memory of those shot while trying to escape East Germany over The Wall. An odd memorial, looking at once both impromptu and permanent, from the text typewritten in several languages, most of them quick biographies the victims, but also mixed in with messages asking for vengeance against certain individuals who had worked for the Stasi (the infamous East German secret police) and even contractors who had helped to build The Wall. In memory of those who died I left a Euro to help pay for flowers.

Part of the Memorial to Victims of the Berlin Wall

The Brandenburg Gate on a Very Rainy Day

I went to the Brandenburg Gate and took a few more pictures, and then looked up the street and saw some memorial within walking distance. I made my way over to it, and it turned out to be the Russian war memorial. Two (name) tanks flanked the entrance, then two artillery pieces, all leading to the central grand figure of a common foot soldier. All grandiose in a Stalinesque way; impressive but impassive.

T-34 Tank Flanking the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin

The Central Pillar and Statue of the Soviet War Memorial

ML-20 Artillery Piece at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin

By this time I was beginning to feel thoroughly drenched, so I headed back to the Brandenburg Gate to where I had seen several tour buses parked.

Cheesy yes, but I wanted to see more of the city and so shelled out the 20 euros for a seat on the upper deck of the bus. I found a pair of headphones in front of me and switched the playback to English. The volume control was long gone, but I didn’t mind the volume much as I ended up sitting in front of a bunch of very loud Italians. Not knowing what “shut the hell up” was in Italian, I hunkered down, kept my peace and enjoyed the tour as best as I could. Which wasn’t really a whole much — in addition to the annoying passengers the tarpaulin over our heads leaked, and the people in front of me had to fight with the front of the lashings a few times when the wind or acceleration picked up. I did get to see more sights of the city however, including a royal palace, found out where the Holocaust Museum is and also where the local Cirque du Soleil show was playing. Most interesting was the short stretch where one of the last remaining sections of The Berlin Wall still stands.

Segment of the Berlin Wall (Seen Through the Bus Window)

I got see a fair bit of the city on the bus, though the rain drops on the window meant I couldn’t do much photography. I have a much better idea as to where to head the next time I am here – hopefully when it is not as drizzly as it was today.

Then the bus turned a corner and I could see Checkpoint Charlie at the end of the street. If I couldn’t get to the zoo this was my second choice for a place to stop. It was still pissing rain, but I had to get out of the bus and check out this landmark from the Cold War.

Looking into the Former Communist Zone from Checkpoint Charlie

The Famous Checkpoint Charlie Sign

The Other Side of Checkpoint Charlie Sign (Once I got here I had to find out what it said on the other side. Now I know).

It turns out that the Checkpoint Charlie booth depicted today is a recreation of the original military checkpoint from the era when U.S. and Soviet tanks stared down at each other from the early 60s.

The Wall of course is long gone (other than for increasingly rare isolated patches of it, such as the one I passed earlier on the bus), and now tourist shops and cafes line both sides of the street (on the former U.S. side; there’s nothing much on the former Communist side, though the rain was so miserable I didn’t explore far), and cut flowers now lie on top of the sandbags in front of the outpost. A tall square sign at the end of the street depicts a young man dressed in Soviet military garb facing the Western Zone on one side, and on the other side facing the former Communist Zone is a picture of a man in a standard U.S. army uniform. Tourists lined up to have their picture taken in front of the sandbags in front of the checkpoint.

After taking some snaps of Checkpoint Charlie myself, I went to the entrance of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum just up the street.

Facade of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum

I knew from my tour book some of the history of the place: it was a private museum opened up by a West German resident as his own form of personal protest against the wall. They unfortunately had a ban on photography in the museum, and given that there were security cameras all over the place, I thought it best not to defy the ban.

The museum is in a former house, and when you go inside the original amateur, ad hoc nature of the place is immediately evident. The initial exhibits are clearly in areas that used to be a former storefront and dwelling area, with labels written in German, English and French (and occasionally, for a new class of tourist, in Russian as well), looking like they were written up using one of those old large-text typewriters long before the age of personal computers. But the information and exhibits are fascinating, most detailing how people attempted to escape from East to West Germany. There are several cars where you can see the hiding compartments where people would be smuggled out. Or the pair of suitcases where a man managed to smuggle his petite girlfriend out of the country as she lay across and inside them adjacent to each other on the luggage rack of a train. This trick was later updated in the 80s by using a pair of hollowed-out surfboards mounted on top of a car’s roof rack. There was also parts of a balloon that smuggled a couple of families out in the 70s, and the ultralight aircraft — along with video footage of the escaping flight from the plane’s vantage! — where a young man managed to ferry himself and a companion out of the GDR.

There were also exhibits detailing what people were up against as well, including the mechanism the automatically fired bullets at would-be-escapees when a trip wire was hit, the bloody clothes of at least one person who survived such an assault, and the near-iconic black and white pictures of those trying to escape from the East, not always successfully. The saddest such picture to me was that of a young dead boy who had drowned in the river — it was considered to belong to the East Germans, and West German guards were not allowed to try to save those who may have accidentally fallen in. Underneath this were some life-saving equipment and a short piece about an accord that permitted rescue efforts by the West in the latter part of the communist era.

In addition to what had obviously been the original house that contained the collection was a new wing that detailed the struggle for freedom in other countries. From the description in the Lonely Planet guidebook I had I wasn’t expecting much, but instead this was where the amateurishness of the previous exhibits went away. Starting off with a section on Ghandi’s resistance and peaceful protests against the colonial British in India, it continued to look at various uprisings in the former Soviet-controlled nations, including all of those that led to the collapse of the Eastern Block countries. Everything was well-arranged in museum quality, and the labeling professionally done. Impressive and well-organized, though most visitors seemed more interested in the previous materials on display.

I managed to sneak a picture of the following slogan, which made me laugh out loud when I read it:

Stalinism is Dead. Long live its Junk!

Surrounding this were examples of Soviet-era posters and knick-knacks, including jumbles of medals like so much candy wrappers, a candle shaped like Stalin, and the stuffed badger found in the office of the former head of the East German secret police. Other exhibits in this area, obviously gathered together since the fall of The Wall, including chilling pieces, such as sections of Stasi files where neighbours had spied on each other, and other tales of personal betrayals.

Scattered throughout the exhibits were various pieces of art, most donated to the museum over the years. Frankly, most of it is indifferent in terms of quality or artistic nature — there’s nothing quite as iconic as Picasso’s sprawling Guernica here. For the most part I wouldn’t miss them if the majority went into storage should the museum ever undergo an overhaul. Some of the better examples were those that were painted directly onto the wall itself, a few samples of which I did manage to take some pics of in the concluding gift shop of the museum.

Art on a Piece of The Berlin Wall (from the Museum Gift Shop)

More Berlin Wall Art

Even More Berlin Wall Art

Photo Essay Showing How They Make ‘Wall Art’

The Piece of Art from the Photo Essay

Information on How to Distinguish Fake GDR Plaques (again from the Museum Gift Shop)

By the time I was done it was dark, and time for dinner. Though the tour bus I was on earlier made regular stops in front of the museum, I hadn’t seen one stop by outside the widows of he museum for a while, and concluded that they end their tours in the evening. Even the Starbucks at kitty-corner to the museum was closed. It was a Sunday after all.

The rain had by now thankfully lessened considerably, so I started trudging my way back. I started walking away from Checkpoint Charlie, thinking I would be walking more or less straight to my hotel, but when had a harder look at my map about a half hour later realized I was in fact heading further away from where I wanted to go. I had inadvertently been tracing the path of the U-Bahn subway system, so I located the nearest station, bought myself a ticket on the platform, and tried to sort out which way I needed to go. From the range of tickets offered by the ticket machine I figured out that I needed a single-journey ticket (an Einzelticket), and turned to a map to figure out how I needed to get to Friedrichstraße, which was the terminal closest to my hotel. I was lucky in that this station is at the terminal of several lines, and I was close to an interchange to led to it. I got to Friedrichstraße in under half an hour, went to a pizza place close to the hotel to get a quick bite to eat, and then made my way back to the hotel soon afterwards.

I did investigate the possibility of heading to a show, but soon realized that my English-language options were severally limited. There were two sets of cabaret shows just up and down the street from my hotel, but both were in German, and both satirical of the current government. Since I knew little of either I decided to simply stay in my room and prep for my business meeting the following day.

I woke up later than I intended, just shy of 10am. In the end I decided I liked the room, loved the view, and the difference between staying at the Vivaldi or the Melia was a matter of only a few Euros, and they threw in breakfast to boot. So instead of packing up and heading back to the Vivaldi I made my way to breakfast at the Melia instead, after having re-checked in until Tuesday at the front desk.

After breakfast I headed out to Museumsisel, or “Museum Island”. A grey day, hinting at possible rain later. I was practically on top of the museum already from the hotel, and it was only a short walk before I could see a long line of tour buses lined up along the side of the street, and I could see an equally long line of people in front of the Bode Museum, with banners flying alongside proclaiming its recent re-opening.

The Bode Museum

Bode Museum Banner

Upon taking a closer look at the sides of the building I could see that chunks were missing here and there, giving The Bode and the building next to it a somewhat ragged and worn look. And then I realized that they were the remnants of old bullet and bomb shrapnel “wounds” to the building, likely from WWII.

Along the way there were also a multitude of vendors who had set up stalls hugging sidewalk directly across the river from the Bode Museum. There were used booksellers, used CDs/DVDs, and endless trinkets and souvenirs from the Communist past – I was walking through what used to East Berlin after all. Medals, buttons, military hats with insignia, there was even a gas mask which some reseller had put over a red bi-valved emergency water pipe that emerged from the ground, which added an extra layer of creepiness to the whole thing. There was a small gold bust of Stalin I looked at for moment that I though would make for a good bookend, but the kitsch value was outweighed in my mind by the thought that someone might mistakenly think I somehow revered the man, so I left the hollow golden visage of the man on his table, leaving him to guard his thin metal trinkets from another era.

First stop, the Pergamon Museum. I shucked off my coat and dumped my back-pack in a small locker, since the coatrooms was full. It was a popular day to visit the museum. Bought my ticket, picked up the audio guide that was provided free, and made my way into the museum. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next: a full recreation of an ancient Greek Temple, and friezes of battling giants and monsters, gods and goddess, all larger than life. I knew that the Pergamon Museum had a world-class set of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, but this single room easily rivaled the size and scale of Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon currently held in the British Museum. The thing was absolutely massive, with people staggered on the rows of steps leading to the top of the temple, and all enclosed, a diffuse glow of outside light filling the entirety of the room.

The Great Hall in the Pergamon Museum

So I started taking pictures. I ended up taking series of pictures that could later be merged into photomontages, but here are some highlights from the main room:

Pergamon Frieze Detail

I then headed to the left, and entered a room with more monumental architectural elements, clearly meant to impress. It still works.

A Temple Facade

A Very Tall, Looming Façade. Sheer Height Designed to Impress

I then entered a display of Ancient Greek statuary, starting with the archaic era. These are all highly stylized, the figures of people appearing somewhat stiff, seemingly with traces of Egyptian influence to be seen in its formal nature and the way they seem configured to the shape of a large rectangular cube.

Archaic Statue of a Woman

Detail of an Archaic Statue of a Resting Lion

Then there was a room filled primarily with funerary monuments from a slightly later period that had largely moved beyond the formal stiffness of the archaic.

Ancient Greek Funerary Stele

A Guardian Lion

Taking Leave of His Wife in Death

After this was a room filled with Roman statuary, all copies of earlier Greek works that had been cast in bronze and are all now lost.

Woman Holding Cornucopia, Thought to Depict the Face of One of Julius Caesar’s Daughters (Julia, if I remember correctly)

Wounded Amazon (with Three Small Droplets of Blood Trickling from her Armpit

Hermaphroditus

I did a double-take when I first saw this last statue

In the next room was a section devoted to busts of Ancient Greek philosophers, and other Hellenistic sculptures, which was followed by Roman sculptures.

Busts of Three Julio-Claudian Emperors (Germanicus(?), Tiberius, Claudius)

Standing Statue of Emperor Hadrian

Bust of the Severe-Looking Emperor Caracalla

This was then followed by details from Roman funerary monuments and sarcophagi.

Detail from a Roman Sarcophagus

Detail from Another Roman Sarcophagus

In a complete contrast to this, what followed was an exhibition of some of the works by Heinz Mack, which couldn’t be more different from what went before.

Heinz Mack: From a Set of Desert Installations

Heinz Mack: A Metallic Wall Display

A painting of a well-known optical illusion:

Heinz Mack: “Cinetic Painting”

I laughed out loud when I saw the detail in this piece:

Heinz Mack: “Cinetic Painting” – Detail

He had painted small white spots in the interstices of the white lines. And still that part of our visual perception that enhances contrasts still makes darks spots appear in the junctions where none exist.

After this I had to backtrack my way through the previous galleries in order to make my way over to the other side of the building. This is where I ran into the other impressive large-scale display, which is a recreation of the Gate of Ishtar.

Gate of Ishtar: Looking Back at the Entrance

A “Side Gate” of the Gate of Ishtar (notice everyone looking towards the entrance to the Main Gate, which also gives a sense of scale)

Almost without exception, everyone was looking up, impressed by the sheer scale of the gate, and honestly my camera was not up to the task of taking a picture of something so large in an enclosed space. This was the entrance to the Assyrian section of the museum. Here are some of the highlights I was able to capture:

A Guardian Griffin

A Colossal Statue of the Weather God Hadad”

A Cuneiform Tablet

Relief of the Royal Bodyguard

On the whole though, I found I wasn’t as captivated by this section of the museum as I was with the Ancient Greek wings. Admittedly my grasp of its history is weaker, but with few exceptions the works are designed to impress rather than to evoke sympathy or any emotional or sympathetic response, so I found most of the pieces cold and impassive when compared to the Greek pieces.

At this point, the battery in my camera was beginning to fail, and in all I managed to take over 400 pictures with my camera. Not bad for a single battery (no flash). My own “batteries” were also beginning to fail at this point, as I had been in the Pergamon for just shy of four hours at this point. There was still a wing on Islamic art that I decided to bypass, as well as the section at the top of the stairs of the Pergamon altar. And so I left in order to recharge the battery of my camera and get some food. The Altes Museum (“Old Museum”), which is the current exhibition hall for the Egyptian Museum, was my next target for the day.

Due to a scheduling snafu, I had to teach the second full-day session of my Information Architecture course at the U. of T. on the Thanksgiving long weekend. I was pleasantly surprised to see all of my students there, thinking I might not even have half the class turn up.

Afterwards, with no family to return home to (everyone had gone up north to the cottage at Deloro for the weekend, I decided to head over to the nearby Royal Ontario Museum and take some pictures in an unhurried manner. Here’s some of what I took:

Protective cladding is being applied to the angled surfaces of the “crystal”.

Jousting mural in the southwest quadrant of Samuel Hall/Currelly Gallery. The image features the Directors of the museum at the time it was painted in the 1940s, and features Currelly himself (the man behind the tapestry).

A Hadrosaur skeleton “stranded” in the Samuel Hall/Currelly Gallery while the new dino gallery is being built.

“Just arrived!” says the sign in the lower-left: A Triceratops skull giving a tantalizing glimpse of some of the new things to expect in the renovated dino gallery to come.

More signs of change as this glimpse of the former Insect Gallery, in the middle of being dismantled, shows.

This was a shock: finding that the European/Mediterranean ancient civilization galleries were closed and being renovated.

Bust of St. John the Baptist in the European Medieval Gallery

One of the Haidi Totem Poles — with nobody on the stairs! (the place was far from full when I visited).

There was an installation in a newly opened gallery on the ground floor by the Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa. This and the next image are panoramas I stitched together from several photos of a couple of his larger pieces. This one greets the visitor to the gallery, and is a model of a fictional urban complex made out of rice-paper lanterns.

This one is called “Negatividad”, made up of wooden toy trains.

The magnificent mosaic ceiling in the main foyer of the R.O.M.

Erika took her mother and Vanessa for some Boxing Week clothes shopping, so I decided to take Annie along to the ROM to see the newly opened galleries there.

We got their early enough to beat the initial crowds, and Annie happily settled in to the kids activities on the second floor. Once she was happy having drawn several pictures, worn some kid-sized armour and gone into the Bat Cave a few times, I managed to persuade her to satisfy her Dad’s curiosity and explore the new galleries on the floor prior to heading out for lunch.

Seeing the light emerge through the stained-glass windows above the old east-facing entrance was impressive, and the replica old oaken doors are more in keeping than the misguidedly too-modern glass doors that formerly graced that entrance.

Could see that the Weston Hall adjacent to the coat check room was still being worked on, but the fact that there was natural light streaming in from previously covered-up windows was already a good sign for future development.

The equivalent space to the north, where the gift shops and the Druxy’s diner used to be is now devoted as a gallery space for the First Peoples. Didn’t get to see much as Annie’s patience was already being stretched, but noted that very few of the displays had anything by way of signage, and also saw a few empty display cases. Clearly things were not completely ready for the re-opening, and that there was still much work to be done.

We then headed over to the Samuel Hall/Currelly Gallery space, which basically sports many, many comfy seats. I realize that the general age of the museum’s patrons is getting older, but I can’t help but wonder how long it will take for somebody to re-convert this space to something more functional than for just sitting around and taking a much-needed pause between exhibits. Annie had fun playing with one of two large touch-screen displays detailing the history of the ROM, and I noted the two newly mounted dino skeletons on the south wall, surely a stop-gap measure for those disappointed at the continued absence of a dinosaur gallery, which is slated to re-open when the Michael Lee-Chin crystal structure is slated to open late next year. It was also nice to see the two murals dating to the mid-1940s on the east walls flanking the entrance arch had been uncovered. They match those that had been uncovered for the past several years on the west side, these newly uncovered ones depicting crusaders on horseback facing an opposing Saracen cavalry.

We then made our way into the first of the Asian galleries. Again, it is obvious that things were a little bit rushed prior to opening, as there were next to no explanatory text accompanying the objects on display, save for the large signs containing the gallery names that thank the people/firms that made the galleries possible in the first place. The new Chinese architecture gallery was impressive, with scatterings of architectural elements, a facsimile of a royal façade, and a tomb flanked by stone camels. The absence of any contextual signs lends itself to free-association as to why particular artifacts are displayed together. A situation not likely to last long, I am sure, so I took a few pics of some of the architectural elements in one of the display cabinets.

Annie’s patience was being sorely tested by this point, but I managed to dash through some of the other Asian galleries quickly, enough to get a sense as to where things are and where to head next visit.

It was a dull, grey day when we got back outside, but I managed to take a couple more shots, once of the old planetarium building, which I posted to the McLaughlin Planetarium page on Wikipedia, and one of the newly uncovered façade for the east entrance, which I also posted to Wikipedia under the page for the ROM under a section detailing its construction.

As a member of the ROM in addition to getting free admission and notifications of any special events there, we also get a small flyer called ROMLife that lists all of the programs and courses taught there. What caught my eye a while back was a talk that Rick Green – former member of The Frantics, the “Green” of The Red Green Show and head writer for History Bites – was planning to give. I love the show and have managed to catch most of the four seasons currently being shows on History Television, so I arranged to go and see it. And since my Aunt Audrey lives close by and I haven’t seen her for a while, I asked her to join me.

Turns out she hasn’t seen the show, and that’s because it’s on an “upper channel” she doesn’t get, but she was up for an evening out with her nephew.

After catching up on what she’s been up to of late, we headed over to the ROM, getting there with plenty of time to spare in order to get tickets and decent seats in the auditorium. It started at 7-o’clock and after a brief introduction by the directory of the ROMLife program Rick Green took to the stage.

He talked about the show in general and how the show started. He started out by giving us a version of the 2-minute pitch he made of the show to the people at History Television several years ago. The basic premise focused around the idea that television had in fact been around for most of the events in history – that much is known to anybody who has ever watched the show. But as he then went on to say, the show will also designed to be a dark critique of television as a medium itself, showing how the viewpoint and the emphasis shown distorts the overall picture. The end result is something like a mongrel cross between the classic SCTV and just about any other show you might run across on History Television. Interestingly, he has nothing but praise for the execs at History Television, who have apparently given him all of the support he’s needed to start the show and keep it running, now into its 5th season.

He started by showing off a clip from a yet-to-be-seen show from the new season that looks at the antagonism between Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I. Rick introduced the clip by saying that in fact the two of them never actually met during their lifetimes, and that the writers had to think of something that would bring them both together and be a good forum to display all of the issues each of them had with the other. The result: The Jerome Springer Show featuring a pissed-off Mary Queen of Scots with a strong white-trash/Southern accent bitching away at the way she’s being treated by her cousin. Great stuff! Bracketing this sort of material was extensive commentary from three curators at the ROM, all experts in their field who provided extra details on the history. Sometimes they provided further background for other clips from the show that were then played, other times showing items in the museum collections relevant to that era, or providing an archeological perspective on the events covered in specific History Bites clips. It ended up being a good mix of comedy and history lesson, taught by the best in both fields. There was even a bit of crossover, as the archeologists tried out some very dry comedy, explaining how horrible human tragedies (usually massacres) usually left him to find largely intact pottery from the hiding places where people had hidden them and never returned to collect them. Bad for the original owner, but great news for the archeologist. The condition of any pottery that was found quickly became a running joke throughout the evening.

Fans of the show would have been interested in the back-stories behind some of the clips he played. He mentioned a few of the places used as backdrops for some of the scenes – not too surprisingly, the Medieval Faire that runs in Oakville during the summer cropped up more than once. He prefaced the clip from the new season that featured a scene from All in the Family set during the time of the first American Thanksgiving by saying that the two writers who wrote it had not been born when the show was originally on air. They had to rent some tapes of the show in order for them to understand the format. This happens a lot, ranging from shows just before my time (like The Ed Sullivan Show), to shows I vaguely remember (like Laugh In), to much more recent shows like Survivor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and so on.

The presentation went on for a couple of hours, and was lots of fun. I think you can measure its success by the fact that my Aunt, who had never seen the show, thought the evening out was a hoot.