An Afternoon in the Museum

Sep 06, 2013

I made it a field-trip day, and ventured to the Dayton Art Institute all by my lonesome to look at Asian Art. While it would have been nice to have a companion, the museum was all but deserted, and I had a peaceful meander through the rooms. The lower level of the museum is laid out so you begin in Africa, and then proceed in more or less geographical order to the west around the world. I took a lot of photos, I'll share some below. I went to the museum for the Japanese swords. I'm planning on making them a centerpiece for my Art of China, Japan, and Korea class, where we will be writing a paper on an artwork with comparison. I found so many lovely works to admire, though… It's going to be hard to choose. I may have to go to Cincinnati to see more ;) The museum has another level I barely touched on, and two cloisters, which I walked through the Hale Cloister, but the gothic cloister seemed to be partly broken down from an event (or in set-up, hard to tell). I will have to go back again to see more. I had reached a point of visual overload and needed time to process it. Much of the African art was incongrously 20th century artifacts, interesting, but not really what I expected. The pre-columbian artifacts of Peru had some really interesting works, and I loved the shapes of the animals. The pudgy little dog tickled me. The Jaguar metate looked more like a badger or wolverine. Walking into the Asian section a gorgeous silk kimono was the first thing I could see. I didn't get a good picture of it. All the glass reflections were hard to work with, and some displays were either under-lighted, or even not lit at all. I'll leave you with the photos. I still can't decide what piece I'm going to write about…