Favorite Art Museums

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Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose. I'm someone who didn't go to art school, but I have been to a lot of art museums. I think they're very fun to go to and we're going to be talking about some of them today. 

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Betty: Awesome! Hi, I'm Betty. I'm also someone who did not go to art school, but I have been working at an art gallery for the past seven and a half years, so I do actually go to an art museum about every week. And then I have also gone to many, many more art museums as well. So I am very excited to talk about—not all of them, because we'll be here for hours, but some of them with you. 

Quinn: Our highlights, our faves. So this is actually a topic that was suggested by Derek. They asked us to talk about our favorite museums for art museums or art galleries, and also perhaps shouting out our faves in particular areas, which I do—I have a couple—in my list, I tried to spread out like of different places that I've lived or spent significant amount of time like, okay, here's the places I would shout out from there. I'm, I'm sorry if you live in like, California, I have nothing for you. I've been to one museum in California and it was cool, but it didn't make my list, sorry. But between the sort of East coast, Midwest area, I think we've got some good suggestions.

Betty: Yeah, yeah. Mine is gonna be quite North American focused, unfortunately. But that's just cause I haven't been to too many other places. But maybe in the future we'll do an update once we've traveled to more places.

Quinn: Well, let's just jump into it now. We're going to go back and forth talking about some of our favorites and we'll have a kind of a "bring out your dead" round at the end to shout out any others that we didn't go too in depth in. But do you want to kick us off with one of your favorite art museums?

Betty: Yeah. Okay. So I am actually going to start off with something that's probably on your list. But anyway, we can both talk about it. It's the Art Institute of Chicago.

Quinn: Woo!

Betty: Woohoo! So it honestly, like, I mean, I was thinking, oh maybe like, you know, you're going to talk about it, maybe I'll find something else. But I just, I just love it so much that I actually like think about it all the time, I just want to go see it. And I'm jealous that you actually live there and you have proximity to it. So the Art Institute of Chicago is obviously in Chicago. I assume it's like the biggest art museum in the city, probably?

Quinn: Yes. I believe it's actually the second biggest art museum in the country.

Betty: Oh, wow. Okay. That's, yeah. That's pretty big. Yeah. The, I assume the top one would be the Met. 

Quinn: Yeah. The Met is... a city upon itself. [both laugh]

Betty: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the thing I actually love the most about the Art Institute of Chicago is actually, I think in the basement or one of the lower floors, there's actually a miniature room. It's a gallery, and there's little windows on the wall that you can peer into, and when you look inside it, it's a miniature of... like a house or like an 18th century interior, or like Louis the 16th interior, or even modern interiors, and they're just two scale models of just all kinds of interior design throughout the years. And for me, as someone who went to design school... and this was actually, the first time I went to Chicago was we had a school trip there during our first year, and this was when I discovered it, and I was just like, oh my God. You know, I love like miniatures, just overall, and I loved building Lego as a kid. And yeah, like it's, I have a—there's actually a really great collection of decorative arts in general in the Art Institute. And it's kind of a confusing term in general, decorative arts actually means like furniture, like tables and chairs and stuff. So there's a great collection as well. But then there's a miniaturized version of it, so—I just love that so much. And then obviously the Art Institute has some of the, some of like—probably the most famous artworks that many of you may know. There's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, by Georges Seurat. There's Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, American Gothic by Grant Wood. And there's actually a really cool series of stained glass windows by Chagall as well. So, yeah, like, it's just really... there's really iconic pieces there. I love the—but my particular interests and the things I actually love the most about the Art Institute is the decorative arts and the miniatures collection. So I didn't know if you wanted to talk about why you love the Art Institute or if you wanted to jump on into something else.

Quinn: Well, I did have this on my short list, so I'll say a little bit about it. You covered a lot of awesome things about this museum. It is giant and it is really close to me, which is awesome. I've only been there a few times. Unfortunately, it is an expensive museum. They do have free hours for residents, so luckily as someone who lives in Chicago, I am able to occasionally go there for free, which is awesome. A pro tip for basically any museum like—I'm not sure there are any museums in the United States that don't have at least some free days or free hours, at least for people who live in the city or state. And so—or for example, are like teachers or something like that. So always look up your museum, local museums, even if they are like these super big expensive ones that are like $30 a ticket, they're pretty much always going to have some free opportunities. So always look out for that. Okay. Museum public service announcement over. And my particular shout out with the Art Institute is, you mentioned the Georges Seurat painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which is the painting that's featured in the musical Sunday in the Park with George. And it's the really famous one that's just, it's all dots making up the painting rather than brushstrokes. And has also featured in one of my favorite movies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. So it was very special to me the first time I saw it. As well as being able to see something like Nighthawks in person for the first time. The Art Institute is one of those museums that has so much within its walls that you can see things that are, very like, not well known at all, or something very specific, like your decorative art section. But you can also see these things that are legendary. And I think that both of those things have a great value, especially when they're located so close to each other. And you can go from room to room and be like, I'm learning so many new things and I get to experience something that I've seen pictures of so many times. But now I can see these dots of paints up close and actually understand what that really looks like for the first time. And that's very special. 

Betty: Well, I would want to echo your point about like seeing these pieces in person. Cause some people ask me, you know, with the internet, with like, you know, the Google Art Project, you can see paintings in high rez on the internet and it's like, Oh, why do you need to go to a museum when you can just look at it on your computer? And it is not the same. It's just—so in real life, the colors are so vivid and you can see the relief of the brushstrokes. You can see the dots up close, or you can see just so much, like it's almost hard to describe why you have to see it in person, but you just have to.

Quinn: Yeah, and that's not to say you have to see like, the Mona Lisa in person. or things like this that are like these huge big name paintings that are in major cities, but just—even being able to go to like your local downtown art museum, a local gallery, going to these kinds of free opportunities in your community. And while it is a super cool experience to see these paintings that you've always heard about, or other works of art the you've always heard about in person for the first time, the inherent value of experiencing art in person is not about like, paying $30 for a ticket and going to a very specific place to see a very specific thing. It is about experiencing the tactile—don't touch them [both laugh]—but visually tactile experience of seeing them, of seeing art no matter what it is and no matter who created it. That's where that value comes from. Not from like... because I never want to feel like I—I'm being like, "you have to go to Chicago to see this very specific painting." You don't. If you're here, check it out. It's a good time. But there are all these opportunities all over the place.

Betty: For sure. And actually I do want to add to what you were talking about earlier, the museum pro-tips, where in addition to free nights, you can... Yeah there's always, there's always discounts that are free nights or free tickets that museums will give. You know, if you're, if you're a veteran, if you're a student, if you're... Like for me, fortunately, because I'm always museum staff, like I get into so many places for free, which is lovely. But there's also something I didn't realize until a while ago, which is if you have a membership at your local art museum. There's a lot of reciprocal benefits that museums basically all around the world have with each other. So for me, I have a membership at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I'm pretty sure I can go to Chicago and get in for free with my AGO membership in the, to the Art Institute or the Met, like you just have to check, not every museum is on the list, but very often you can get these reciprocal benefits. So, so in that case, you just need to get one membership. You don't have to pay like $30 every time or hundreds of dollars for all kinds of memberships. You can just have one and go to museums around the world for free.

Quinn: Very cool pro-tip! So that was number one on both of our lists, I believe. So would you like to talk about your number two? I'm not saying these are favorite in order, but I'm just saying—

Betty: No, actually. Yeah, these are no in particular order. I just kind of thought of the Art Institute, basically when you mentioned this topic, I was like, yes, that is on my list. So that's why it's there. The next one I want to talk about is actually, it's the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. So this one, so I was going to talk about the National Gallery, but again, there's just so much to talk about and I feel like it's so typical or that it would be on my list. So I want to instead talk about the National Portrait Gallery, which is actually just around the corner, like it's in behind the National Gallery in London. And yeah, a lot of people may not know about it because maybe it's overshadowed by the National Gallery, but it's really cool. So it's basically an entire gallery. There's like multiple floors featuring portraits, portraits of all kinds, like from old Tudor paintings too... like contemporary portraits. And what I really liked about it when I went there, was I started on the ground floor to look at some of their contemporary portraits. And you see all these different interpretations of what a portrait can be. So you know, it can be a very classic picture of just like somebody sitting with dress really nicely with like a fluffy collar. That's maybe what you think of when you think of like paintings of old Kings and Queens. But you know, it could also be a very like, casual portrait that's done in a stylistic way. It could be photographs, it could be, it could be, like mosaics. It could be all kinds of different things. And, you know, like, I saw portraits of, yeah, the Queen, I saw there's portraits of famous people. I saw this really like, just like, interesting... A water, huge watercolor painting of the famous fashion journalist and editor Anna Wintour. And so it's like a big painting of her with her really iconic, you know, like bob cut hair and her bangs, and like, it's a very simple picture. It just looks like there's like a few big swaths of brushstrokes, but it really kind of highlights her look and her personality, I think. Then there's also another portrait I saw, which at first I was like, this is a portrait? It was a stick, and on the stick there was just like a mess of feathers. It was just a bunch of like, bird feathers and it did not look like somebody's face at all, but then I looked over to the side, there's a light that's shining on it and they cast a shadow on the wall, and the shadow is a profile of a person's face. So that was like a very interesting take on a portrait. Like it's not even a painting, it's a sculpture, but it's—like it's only the shadow that's cast on the wall that's the portrait itself. So anyway, so it's just, it's, it's a huge gallery and it's really interesting, they have a great permanent collection. And they also have temporary exhibitions. So I think if you're in London, England, I would encourage you to check that out.

Quinn: While we're on the London location, I want to talk a little bit about the Tate Modern.

Betty: That's actually, that was going to be the next thing on my list. 

Quinn: Hey, synchronicity! Yeah well let's get into this a little bit. So the Tate Modern is another museum in London. It's for modern and contemporary art. If that sounded very redundant, basically, modern art is an era of art that is a very specific movement in the 20th century, versus contemporary art is just a word for like, whatever art is contemporary right now. And that, so that kind of shifts over time. It's not the name of a specific art movement the way modern art is. So they are often grouped together because the modern art movement is still like very recent in terms of art history standards. But they are not necessarily the same thing anymore. But they're side by side in the Tate Modern, which is a very cool experience. I really like modern and contemporary art. I love seeing weird interpretive things. I love just staring at a painting of like, a square, for a while, and my parents are like, what are you doing? And I'm like, it's interesting. And they're like, we're going to go look at paintings that actually represent real things. And I'm like, okay, that's fair. But some of the specific things that I really like in the Tate Modern when I visited is they had a whole section of feminist art, and a lot of really cool things from feminist activist movements. And I actually bought a print, I think this is the only... this is the first artwork print that I ever bought, and it's a Guerilla Girls print from the Tate Modern that's a poster version of their artwork "The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist." Which is a lot of the—then it lists a lot of sarcastic things about what is quote unquote an advantage. Things like "being included in revised versions of art history," et cetera, et cetera. And so I, I was really taken by that section as well as, they have some really cool exhibits about media and the intersection of art and media, which is something I'm very interested in. They had a giant tower of radios all playing at the same time. And I just stood there and watched that for a while because to experience that so viscerally as opposed to just auditorially was very interesting.

Betty: On the topic of of the Tate Modern. So it's also next on my list of one of my favorite, uh, one of my favorite art museums. And yeah, like I, one of the reasons I actually, I really like it is it's—like a lot of museums, I like it not just because of its collection, but also because of the building itself. So the Tate Modern used to be a, uh, like an old power station, and then it was retrofitted in to be, to be an art museum. So if you look at it, like it looks really industrial, it's made of like brick. And they also just, I think a couple years ago built a new tower next to it and it's now got a lookout point where you can go to the top and look at the skyline of London. So, yeah, just as a building, it's, it's really interesting. And I always, I always really like retrofitting old buildings and reusing what was existing instead of building new cause it's like, you know, a much more sustainable way of building. But yeah, in terms of the exhibitions in there, there were, there, there was quite a bit of stuff when I was there. I honestly, I wanted to spend like all day there, but I didn't get there until the mid afternoon, I think, unfortunately. A few things that I remember from there... Yeah, there was an exhibition. I went there, I think it was 2017 so this was like three years ago. There's an exhibition called Between Object and Architecture. And it had a lot of artists who made works that are like in conversation with architecture and quite often in conversation with the architecture that the art pieces are situated in. So there was a... I actually, I actually took notes when I was there. I have this like, note with like, I don't even know what I was using it for, but I was like, Oh my God, this is so interesting. I have to take notes. Uh, so yeah, so there was a piece by Yayoi Kusama. So she's famously known for doing these giant infinity rooms with mirrors and all kinds of things. But there was a, it wasn't an infinity room, but it was a smaller piece made of mirrors. It's called The Passing Winter, and it has like circles and polka dots all over it. And it, it, like reflected the surrounding the surrounding room. And you can see yourself in it. You can see, you can actually look at it, look through it, and it reflects like the, another person who's looking at it from a, like a different side. And yeah, I just, I really, I really love Kusama works cause it's just, it gets, so, there's just so much, even though it's just like mirrors and it's seemingly very simple, but like all the reflections, just like, you know, it's really cool and dazzling. And it all is also kind of voyeuristic, like she based some of her works on like peep shows and things like that. So when you're looking at it, especially when you can see another person and you're not sure where they're coming from, like it seems quite voyeuristic. 

Quinn: Amazing. So moving on to, I wanted to have a couple of picks that are smaller museums, so to shout out one of those... I want to talk a little bit about the Harvard Art Museum. So I have gone to this museum a lot because as an undergraduate I could go for free. So obviously that was a big draw for me. And it was very accessible to me, and able to... I was able to go basically whenever I wanted, and it was a really important museum for me. Like I tended to just go there, like if I had a spare hour, I could just like walk around in a museum. That is such a great benefit of having a membership to a museum, especially if it's one that's like within your daily geographic life where it's easily to pop in and out. And so that is part of why it's special to me. But it also introduced me to a couple of artists and art pieces that I really love. One of them is a very specific painting called The Lonely Ones by Edward Munch. It's just a painting where you're looking at the backs of two people and they're sort of facing forward, but one of them is kind of turned in towards the other one. They're not touching in any way. They're not directly looking at each other. You can't see their faces. But it, it evokes so much emotion in such a simple painting. Unfortunately, I don't believe it's on display there anymore. I like went back one time and it was gone and it was very upsetting for me.

Betty: Aww.

Quinn: But it truly, it just hit me emotionally, and it's one of my favorite paintings. Just the way that it's the depiction of a man and a woman and the man is kind of turned towards the woman almost in a way that suggests that she might be walking away from him, but it's very ambiguous whether they're walking together or apart. There's also different versions of it as well. Like he—there's all sorts of different prints and all this stuff floating around, um, from Munch and different places. So I'm sure it exists in display other places too. But the, the first version that I saw was like the full color, uh, fully painted one. And I really loved it. And then I also experienced Rothko for the first time at the Harvard Art Museums. I love Mark Rothko. He is the artist who paints giant dark squares. So they're these really big canvases that have sort of just layered squares and rectangles on them. Some of them are very brightly colored. My favorites are actually the ones that are really dark reds and blacks because I feel like there's so much depth in color that you can only get when you're staring at them for a long time, which is fun for me. These are the ones I was referencing earlier that my parents are like, what are you looking at? And also, to shout back out the Tate Modern again, there's a Rothko room in the Tate Modern. It's very cool. It's a lot of darkly colored Rothko paintings, dimly lit, and it's a really cool space to kind of be in for awhile, it's almost a meditative experience to look at these paintings in this space. And there's one painting that if you look at it, the paint drips on the painting are going up. So there's actually—and I was like, is this painting hung upside down? And I looked it up and it's actually controversial in the art world which way does painting is supposed to be displayed, because he would turn them when painting them. So sometimes—so paint drips aren't necessarily going the right way when they're actually the finished product hanging up, but in certain places it's been displayed in one direction or another. But the last time I was in the Tate Modern last year it was still there and it was still upside down. So I'm very curious of, I mean, we, we don't know, but I'm very interested in that phenomenon. I'm like, wow, this painting could fully be upside down, and we actually don't know. 

Betty: That's true. I guess he's dead, so we can't really ask him. 

Quinn: Yeah. But I just, I just think these paintings are so cool. And they, they're also, they exist in a lot of different places. They, there tends to be like traveling exhibits of his work that go around lots of museums, lots of major art museums have at least one Rothko. And so highly recommend checking out. 

Betty: Yeah. Rothko's are, yeah, they're definitely one of these things where they're very like immense and powerful in person and you're just... I mean, some people of course are like, what the hell are you looking at? But I actually, I get a, I get a similar reaction from Barnett Newman's. I'm like, he's also a painter who paints a lot of squares of color. There are a lot less, like... vibrating then Rothko's, they're more like sharp edges. But when I look at Newman paintings, I'm just like, wow. And I stare at it for 20 minutes and the same thing my parents or my friends are like, "what are you doing? It's just the red square." Like there's actually, we have a, we have one of his works in, I think, the National Gallery in Ottawa. And when I was there, this was—I think I told you this experience, there was just a guy standing in front of it so angry, like, "why is this here? This is ridiculous." And I do think that was a painting where there was like protests about like spending public money on such a ridiculous painting when they first bought it. But you know, I love it.

Quinn: Oh my gosh, I cannot wait til we start having episodes about art controversies because there's so many. Don't worry. They're coming.

Betty: Of course. Okay, so my next one is a... art museum from New York city. Uh, it is called the Guggenheim, and it... It's another one of these buildings, one of these museums that I really like because of the building, uh, as well as the collection or the artworks that's being displayed. So the Guggenheim was designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and it's this building that's like a spiral. So a lot of people don't realize, but when you go in it, you're actually supposed to take the elevator to the top and work your way down. Unless some, some of the exhibits, they might display differently, but it's much easier to go down and to go up. So it's like a rotating ramp that goes around and around, and the artworks are hung, you know, like around the outside walls of this, this building. So. Yeah. Like I, I've seen, I actually, first time I went there, I saw a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition where it showed, like miniatures and drawings of his—the architecture, uh, that he designed. But the last time I went there, there was an, a really interesting exhibition called Art in China After 1989: Theater of the World. And it had just contemporary Chinese artists since 1989. And the reason they chose that year was that was the year of the Tiananmen Square protests, that, you know, uh, failed. In achieving democracy in China. So yeah, it has just all kinds of really interesting pieces by Chinese artists. They're not all political, but a lot of them are, so. I like, I loved it because just cause these artists are obviously not very well known because the Chinese government kind of suppresses anybody who is not state sanctioned. So, and then some of them are a little bit well known in the West, like Ai WeiWei and people like that. But most of them, I think there were people that I had never heard of so. Yeah, I just thought it was really interesting. And now I know that this podcast will officially be banned in China as well, now that I've mentioned that. 

Quinn: Perfect. Great. Good.

Betty: Bye, Chinese audience.

Quinn: Bye! I think I've only been to the Guggenheim once. I, I did enjoy it. I do think the architecture of it is very cool. I want to give a specific shout out to when I was there, I was really excited to see Joseph Albers's paintings. Who's another person who just paints squares, I don't know what it is—they're small, smaller though. But that's actually just because at the time I was working for a film maker, I was doing a project that was based a lot on the work of his wife, the textile artist Anni Albers. And so when I saw them, I was like, that's that guy who's married to the person I care about. So I took a lot of pictures of the, of these squares, and I have a picture of me of—like taking a selfie with the square like, look, I found one.

Betty: That's awesome. 

Quinn: That's my most pressing experience with the Guggenheim. My next museum that I want to shout out is not a traditional visual art museum, but it is the American Writer's Museum in Chicago. This is probably actually my favorite museum in Chicago. I am a member and it's the only museum I think I've ever been a member of that I didn't get for free with like, uh, being in college or whatever. And part of that is because it's very affordable. I think visits are only 12 or 15 dollars to go. And then it was like $25 to become a member for a year. And I was like, great. So obviously it's a, it's a celebration of American writers and it's a hugely interactive museum, so it incorporates a ton of multimedia. They have typewriters you can, you can type on. They have all of these different interactive elements to, to learn about genre and specific writers and where people came from. And also just sort of like elements of writing. There's—it's really good for kids and adults, I think, because... It's mostly adult focused and then they have like a kid specific room. But even the stuff that is more adult focused is like so tactile that I think it's very engaging for kids too. So I just really like it. It's not the same kind of art museum because it's not really focusing on visual art, but obviously like, writing is an art form in itself. And also I just love it so I wanted to talk about it anyway. And I really liked them because they also have so many events. They have—like, basically they're, they're a really popular stop for book tours. And so every week, basically, they'll have at least one event where writer comes to speak. And they also pretty frequently have free events. So like just last week I was there for a used book sale. That was also like totally free admission. So you could come in and like, buy used books—and I actually, while I was there, I got a, I got a couple of books and one of them is called $ellebrity, but with an S money sign instead of a C. Anyway. And it's just a, it's a coffee table book of advertisements featuring celebrities that's discontinued from the Illinois Institute of Art Chicago Library.

Betty: Okay. 

Quinn: Anyway! So it is a really cool place and it is such a nice, way that it is like smaller and more accessible and is like, I think, a very sort of non-intimidating space. In a way that a lot of other museums can be kind of confusing of like how to navigate them. The Writer's Museum is very welcoming and I think it's very easy to engage with it physically and emotionally in a much different way than a lot of more sort of like, giant traditional art museums are.

Betty: I did not expect a non-traditional entry on this list. My last pick, and again, last but not least, I, I'm a little bit biased because I work there, but I do want to shout out the Art Gallery of Ontario here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It's also a very large museum. It's not the biggest in Canada, but maybe it's like the third most biggest. And we have, we're known for our Canadian collection. We have like a huge collection of Canadian art. So that includes, you know, like Indigenous Canadians as well as, you know, European Canadians and just, you know, contemporary, like, you know, all kinds of Canadians. Unfortunately it is more heavily weighted towards European Canadians, because that's just what the collectors who originally donated to the gallery had. But we have, uh, over the years, been actively collecting a lot more of a diverse Canadian art portfolio. But yeah, so there's also a really great European art collection as well as an East African art collection. And we have two floors full of contemporary art as well. And there was always a rotating special exhibitions and, yeah. So I, you know, I would just say that like, you know, other than me being biased. Like it is just, it's, it's a really interesting piece of architecture as well. You know, it used to be just like a—it used to just be an old house that was built in the 1800s in the back. And... but it's since expanded and many different architects have worked on it. One of the expansions in the 70s was like a brutalist architectural design. And then most recently, the Canadian architect, Frank Gehry. So in 2004, he designed the new wing. That's, you know, at the front of the gallery now, and it looks like a big ship. So actually one of the most well known collections is in the basement. We have a ship collection—or I'm sorry, model ship collection gallery, and it has just tons and tons of model ships from—mostly I think from England. And I think it's the second most biggest model ship collection in the world. Other, other than I think what they have in, um, in England. So that's one of the inspirations for the ship design for the outside architecture. And then we do—we recently purchased a Kusama Infinity room, so we have a permanent infinity room on the second floor now that people can check out whenever they want. And yeah, so I would say the thing that I'm most excited about is that we do have a really great like, Indigenous Canadian collection now that's all over the gallery. We have like Intuit art, we have, you know, art from areas around the Great Lakes. They're called Anishinaabe artists. So there, it's just really interesting cause, you know, most of these works are from like modern, like still living indigenous artists. And I think in the past, you know, we had like carvings and sculptures and stuff from like, you know, 16, 17, 18 hundreds, and it's great, but it's still painted this picture of like, Oh, like all the Native artists just make like stuff out of like feathers and, you know, stone. But, you know, we now have contemporary artists who make all kinds of, just different, or out of a lot of other media. Like I saw a while ago, we had a giant... mosaic, I guess, made out of circuit boards. But it was in the shape of a Thunderbird, which is one of the Anishinaabe traditional... I want to say like gods or religious icons. But it's like, instead of being painted or made of like feather or whatever, it was made out of like circuit boards, which is interesting cause the Thunderbird shoots out like lightning, kinda like Zeus, but it was, you know, with like electrical chips. So I thought that was a good... pun. Or like a good association. So yeah. So that's kind of, you know, here's my plug. Come to the AGO. I have tours there Friday nights at 7:00 PM. So, uh, come see me give you a tour. 

Quinn: Ayy! Amazing shout out to your personal place. 

Betty: Yeah. 

Quinn: The last one that I would like to touch on briefly is, going back to traditional, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This is another one of those big ol' art museums. Definitely the flagship art museum in Boston. It's one of the first major art museums that I went to as a kid because I'm from Maine. But Boston is kind of the first place that you get to in New England that's like, even somewhat a real city. So there were like field trips there in high school and I went there as a kid with my parents and stuff. So I've been to the MFA quite a few times, especially then eventually going to a college in Boston. I just want to specifically shout out two quick things. One of which is the first Friday event at the Museum of Fine Arts. Basically like the first Friday of every month, they have a 21 and up event where... it's like an evening and they will like have a band and they, you can get drinks and look at the art and it's just a fun time. It felt very classy. And I went—and I didn't turn 21 until I was almost graduated from college. But getting to go to that event was one of the first like, "Oh, I'm a fancy adult" experiences that I had. So that's very special to me and it was a lot of fun. And just like getting to go with some friends and experience that, I highly recommend. Lots of museums have stuff like that. And so I highly recommend checking that kind of thing out. And also a specific shout out to an exhibit that I went to see several times at the MFA, which was the Takashi Murakami exhibit. This is a traveling exhibit. I'm not sure if it's still traveling right now, but it definitely has been in a bunch of different places all over the US and presumably the world. He's a Japanese contemporary artist and he has like a very bright, cartoony style. He works in like fine arts media as well as commercial media. And the whole exhibit was so well put together and such a fun experience because they had... it was like focused on his art, but then they also had a lot of like, traditional Japanese art that was sort of placed in conversation with him and other contemporary Japanese artists. So it was just a very well done exhibit that I really enjoyed. But I highly recommend looking up his art. 

Betty: Awesome. Do we want to go through some honorable mentions, like in a lightning round style?

Quinn: Let's do it. You want to just shout out some real quick other art museums that you like?

Betty: Yeah, sure. I won't go into them in detail cause we have no time. But shout out to the West coast! The San Francisco MoMA is one of those places that I really enjoyed going to. Uh, unfortunately, I only got to spend like a morning there. I wish I could go back and see more. There's also De Young museum, which is also in San Francisco. I actually really like San Francisco. But that's about the only places I've really explored in terms of art on the West coast. So I'm sure there's others, but I have never been there. Then of course, I mentioned earlier the National Gallery in London, England. Um, it's just huge and there's just so much to see. And then additionally, you—if you're ever in Ottawa, Ontario, you can come to our National Gallery in Canada. I keep saying our as if it's, if it's Canadian, it belongs to me. [laughs]

Quinn: It does though!

Betty: Yeah. So, yeah, come to the National Gallery. It's also is a huge, um, I believe it's the biggest art museum in Canada, but yeah, it's huge. Then of course there's the Met in New York. I actually, I've been there a whole bunch of times. When I was there two years ago, I spent two whole days in there. Cause again, like I, I get him for free with my reciprocal membership. So I just spent as much as I can. But when I was there at the same time, I found a—this is again, this is like a smaller museum. It's called Museo Del Barrio. It's in East Harlem, and so, uh, it's basically a museum, full of artists of like Latin America, Latin American descent, and yeah, it's just like a really interesting museum that wasn't something that would normally be on like a list of top museums you would visit in New York. And then I just have a couple more left! And then there's the, uh, so in Chicago, I actually really enjoyed going to Oak Park in Chicago or in that area. There is a tour that you can take of Frank Lloyd Wright houses. So there's a bunch of houses that were designed by him. There's also a house that he lived in for many years in his life that he also designed, so I took a really great tour there. And actually at the end, cause I was so into it, the guide actually gave me her stack of notes to take home cause she was like, you seem really into this, here you can to have it.

Quinn: That's great.

Betty: And I was like, oh, are you allowed to just give it out? She's like, I don't think so, but you can have it. Thank you. Yeah. And then. Uh, another place I really like is the Perez museum in Miami. It's also just really a really beautiful architectural piece. There's like, not a green wall, but there's just like plants like all over the place at the back of it. So it's, you know, seems quite sustainable. I think there's like a green roof as well. Um, yeah. Super, super awesome museum. And then a shout out to the one place in Asia that I can remember visiting, was, so this is kind of like a museum, but more like an architectural tour. So it's the Forbidden City in Beijing. So you get to, you know, tour through... I think the Ching emperor's house, but it's more like a city, you know, it's just really great, you know, architecture really interesting. Obviously there's also lots of art in the Forbidden City. I haven't been there in... I think 20 years, so I don't remember anything specific, but if you're there, you should check it out.

Quinn: Very cool. I have to share real quick, that it just popped up that on my Snapchat memories that as we're recording this, we're recording this on February 2nd, it's actually exactly two years since I went to that event, First Friday at the MFA and looked at the Murakami exhibit, which is so funny. I'll make sure to post one of the pictures from this on our Instagram. But yeah, so my other honorable mentions, I also want to shout out the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I went there and I had a great time. Just a general shout out to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I didn't have this on my short list because I don't super remember it very well, I went as a kid. But my whole family's from Philadelphia, so I definitely had to shout it out. Plus, it's the steps where they filmed Rocky and that was really imprinted upon me as a kid as like, an important thing. I also wanted to shout out the Victoria and Albert Museum. That's also in London. It's just a gorgeous museum. It's so full and rich and—of so many different things. The New Museum in New York... shout out, that is where we met for the first time. We went to the New Museum and hung out. Betty got us in for free because of her NGO membership, which was super cool. And yeah, and that's another modern contemporary art museum in New York, which is great. And then on a more unusual side, I wanted to point out two really cool things that I like. One is the architecture tours of Chicago. You can take boat tours on the river and learn about the architecture of Chicago. They are so cool. They're so interesting. Highly recommend as like, one of the top tourist things to do in Chicago. And I mean like, tourist as in like, if you're visiting for a weekend, I highly recommend making time for this—if it's warm. Not right now. Oh my God, it's so cold. Or even, even if you like live here in the area and you've never done it, like totally worth it. As well as the... I mentioned the first Friday event at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There are also all sorts of first Friday events. I don't know why this is a thing, but it totally is in the art world, is the idea of first Fridays, and a lot of cities have first Friday gallery events where if there's like an art district area where there's a lot of galleries close to each other, on like the first Friday of every month, everybody will open their doors and it'll—they'll have like, free snacks and you're very much invited to like, go and mingle in these different galleries and walk around the area. And so some museums kind of have a feeling of like, we have to be quiet and observe this silently, whereas this is a very different feeling. It's more of a celebration and it's very encouraged to be social when these kinds of spaces, which I really like.

Betty: Nice. Yeah actually I would definitely recommend just walking around to smaller galleries. We obviously talked about a lot about like bigger institutions today. But when I was in London, I just walked around to these like tiny galleries. It's just like one or two rooms. And it was super nice. And most of the people there are very excited to talk to you. And obviously there were some places going in where people were like, Oh, are you buying something? And I'm like, ah ha ha, no. So, but you know, it's still really nice. And actually when you were talking just now about the architecture tour in Chicago, unfortunately, when I was there, and I—we did book a tour and we did take it, but it was pouring rain and it was like the windiest day. Well, maybe it was like a normal day for Chicago, but for me, I was like, Oh my God. Like I had an umbrella and it fell apart and it was not—and we just huddled like in the, where there was cover over our heads on the boat instead of—actually, I don't even know if they did the tour. So unfortunately I didn't get to experience the tour, but next time I go, I will hopefully be, uh, more lucky and not have bad weather during that tour.

Quinn: Tragic. Yeah. Well, thank you so much everyone for listening to this episode of Pictorial. Our show notes and links to all of those museums are at relay.fm/pictorial. There's also a form down there where you could submit topic suggestions like this one. This one came from a suggestion from a listener. Uh, and so we always read those and are excited to talk about more things that have been suggested to us. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. You can follow me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm. 

Betty: Yeah. And we also upload these episodes on YouTube with pictures associated with the things we talked about. And hopefully we can share or put up some of the photos for this episode. And so you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @articulationsV and I am also on YouTube at Articulations. 

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Quinn: Wanted to give a special shout out to our Instagram today because I'm going to be going through and posting on our Instagram stories, a lot of the art museum Snapchat memes that I've made over the years, because I love doing that. And I think it's funny. So if you want to see any of the things that my brain finds humorous, you can find those on our Instagram. Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!

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