Museum Cruising

[Benisse]

This thread is for sharing about your latest museum-based adventures...

Okay, I'll start.
This week I got my family and some friends to go to see the Dog Architecture exhibit in a local art museum. This exhibit features dog-inspired structures by a group of artists from Japan. For example there was a doghouse that rocked, and a hand knit bed/crawl space for a bichon frisee to camouflage itself in:


Although all dogs that visited this exhibit had to be carried through the galleries, there were outdoor replicas of several of the creations outside in the courtyard for dogs to play on/in. Also there were free download-able blueprints for the creations so you could build your own versions of these pieces to photograph your own dog with. Such a cool idea for a show!

[miniver]

That is a hoot, Benisse! It must have been such fun. (I demand equal time demanded for cats! Except of course that few cats would Behave while being carried around in a museum.) The photos are hysterical, especially the camouflage bed for the bichon frise.

[Benisse]

Friday I spent 3 hours at From Pencils to Pixels which covered the history of (mostly American) animation starting with praxioscopes and zoetropes-- and taking us through the development of the multi-plane horizontal camera, claymation, stop motion animation, xerography, and digital animation and more. I got to learn about legends such as Winsor McCay (of little Nemo fame) with a screening of Gertie the Dinosaur, one of his early cartoons. In addition to Origins of Animation, there were lots of exhibits, footage, maquettes, storyboards and more from the Walt Disney Family Museum, Dreamworks, SONY Pictures Animation, 
Chuck Jones Center For Creativity plus a hefty dose of Saturday morning cartoons, Anime, and even Video Game Animation. Even though there were some pretty big holes in the coverage (for example, Hayao Miyazaki was a foot note, and Pixar was absent!) this exhibit was fascinating and amazing in scope.


artist's conceptual art for How to Train Your Dragon


maquette from How to Train Your Dragon in the exhibit hall (doesn't the "water" look fantastic?!!)

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

HTTYD?! *fangirls*

[miniver]

I am jealous of you, Benisse! That sounds like such a yummy exhibit. I love Little Nemo. The quality of the artwork in that comic is so delicate and subtle. I suppose it's possible that Pixar wasn't included because of permissions reasons? Who knows. But what was there sounds lovely.

[aslie]

My latest Museum visit was to Monticello with my parents. It was neat to see Jefferson's home and the surrounding plantation. It was really cool to see how he built it, to hear the history behind the house and how he didn't like being president. We also saw where he was buried and what accomplishments he wanted the people to remember him by. He wanted to be remembered for establishing the University of Virginia and the Declaration of Independence.

[Benisse]

Ariel,
You would really have loved the animation exhibit. In addition to maquettes, footage, conceptual drawings and character keys from HTTYD, there were sneak peeks into HTTYD 2 that is in development!!

Aslie,
What a wonderful outing! I have seen some furniture and objects Jefferson designed at other exhibits, but to see his home filled with his memorabilia -- that must have been such a great experience!

Your comment about what Jefferson wanted to be remembered for is a fascinating topic. I think I will open a thread posing that question in another part of this forum.

[ShiofNarnia]

@Aslie: neat! I've been to Monticello too, its been a while though.

[Benisse]

One of my best friends and I took our kids to a railroad museum. It was special because a group from our church had volunteered for several months restoring a velocipede for that museum and it is prominently on display in front of the locomotives in front of the depot. (I was marginally connected with that project, working on taking off the corrosion off of part of one wheel...)

At this museum, I learned what a railway torpedo is: it's a detonator that makes a loud sound when it is placed on the track and a train runs over it. That way if there is a problem ahead, the engineer will know to stop. The trick is it needs to be placed on the track a mile or two before the problem area... I also learned what a difficult job the brakeman had before hydraulic brakes were invented. But our kids just had fun playing on the train cars, which was cool too.

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

Sneak peeks into HTTYD 2?! *fangirls all over again* I only saw the teaser for it recently (how I went for two months without knowing about it is beyond me).
So was there a ton of stuff or just bits and pieces or what?