Timeshare art

Magnet #1312 - Baby (Cradle) by Klimt

The same friend who went to Australia brought this magnet back for me from the National Gallery of Victoria's Vienna Art & Design exhibition, featuring artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and architects Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos.

Sounds like the coolest exhibition ever.

Here's funny, though. She went all the way to Australia...to see this painting, Baby by Klimt...owned by the National Gallery of Art. In Washington, D.C. Hahahaha.

I read a story a while ago about a trend for museums to just re-hang important pieces from their own collections and focus a whole exhibition around that one piece, supplementing them with lesser works from the artist, or with works from the same school. Part of it was to cut down on having to pay for the insurance and transportation of important pieces from museum to museum.

But, it looks like that's starting to ease up a bit - for example, that Feininger exhibit at the Whitney that I mentioned a few times already, only one Feininger is actually owned by the Whitney. The rest came from around the world, after years of work.

I love that. I love knowing that museums share their collections with each other - it's like timeshare art! (I know, it's a pretty naive idea that they're sharing, when there's all sorts of deals and insurance and whatnot that actually means they're not really sharing, per se, but go with it.)

What it does mean is that people all over the world get to see artwork they'd never be able to travel and see. It's why I try to see as many exhibitions here in town, because you just never know if you'll be visiting the museums the work came from. Pretty cool.

The sound of a little night music...but not in Cassone

Magnet #192 - Gustav Klimt's Church in Cassone

Country #3 - Austria

Austrian Gustav Klimt was one of the big Vienna Art Nouveau painters back in the day. Apparently, he was also obsessed with painting the female art form...and my magnet of his Church in Cassone seems to be one of the few famous ones without a chick in it. And that's all I got. Except that I've not seen this piece...I think it belongs to a private collection.

Our visit to Austria seems to have been awfully short...I remember only Innsbruck and Salzburg.

Innsbruck is one of the few Olympic sites I've been to - the Bergiesel Ski Jump bowl was just amazing. We performed at their congresshouse, if I'm not mistaken, and we visited the Imperial Palace, and I think saw the Golden Roof, one of the iconic sites of the town.

Salzburg, I dimly remember waiting in a lonnnnnng line to visit the Mozart birthplace/museum, and seeing some of the sites from The Sound of Music...which is apparently so controversial a topic, they couldn't keep the "Visit Salzburg" site from sounding slightly caustic when talking about the movie.

Oiy. More and more am I feeling this trip was wasted on my youth. Argh - my adult self is wishing my high-school self had paid a lot more attention...to what we did, and committed a lot more to memory to what we saw. What I wouldn't give to repeat this trip all over again...minus the boy, but plus a better researched itinerary.