Boston, Massachusettes

September 20 - 22
Sunday - Tues

The real fun of this trip is catching up with friends and relatives. Weekends are the best times to do this for folks who are still working.  Work, the curse of the eating class.

In Auburndale, near Boston, Leanne and Rene were snuggling with their darling daughters on this Sunday morning.

Their large new 3K square foot home is one of several on a large lot.

It has been happening all over in this neighborhood of one acre lots.
The older homes are bought by contractors who erect several large homes on the large lots.



 Would you be able to turn down a contractor's offer of several million dollars if you inherited a large old home?!

David and Jane are in Dover on a wooded one acre lot, the kind we Californians are so envious of.

Their two little ones scampered into the Doodle and had to be dragged out when lunch was ready.

They would have joined me in an instant if they could have stowed away.

Deciding what to see next, and looking thru my Massachusettes folder I find that most of the articles I've saved relate to places Bob and I saw when we were here in 2001 for a few weeks on the East coast. We did most of Boston, The Freedom Trail, Harvard Square, the Cheers Bar, the Old North Church, Paul Revere's home, Boston Commons with the Swan Boats.

Boston waking up at 6 a.m.

What I hadn't seen was the MFA, Boston's wonderful 

Museum of Fine Arts.

Researched on line to find an open parking lot near the museum, since the Doodle is too tall for a parking garage and there aren't many open parking lots, land being too valuable.

To be sure of finding a space, I thought it best to be there first thing in the morning when they  opened at 6 a.m.   

So I drove in from the campground in Littleton, 18 miles away at 5 a.m.  And I was not alone on the freeway, with plenty of commuters already on the road.

The Museum of Fine Arts was built in 1870

 with an American wing added in 2010.

While waiting for it to open I said a happy anniversary to Bob.

Today is our 53rd wedding anniversary. Left some of his ashes under the trees on the side.

Decided to take four different free one hour guided tours given by docents in the areas of  Art of the Ancient World, Art of the Americas, European Art and the Contemporary Collection.

No artist is more identified with the MFA than John Singer Sargent, American, 1856 - 1925.

No fewer than 500 of his works are in the museum.

This rotunda and its paintings are his. They are made to look like frescoes but are painted on cloth and were to be installed under his supervision.

 He died the day before leaving to go to America for the installation.

In the courtyard restaurant is  Dale Chihuly's large lime green  glass

Icesicle Tower from 2011.

In the winter with snow outside and the skylights overhead it is spectacularly lit up.

This scene of Venice by Tintoretto was meant to be a postcard for wealthy patrons who had been on the Grand Tour to display in their home to show what they had seen.

In reality all of the buildings in the picture couldn't have been seen from the artist's view.

Artists even then were saavy marketers of their work.

Slave Ship  1840

This by Turner looks like a colorful scene until it's examined up close and you can see the bodies and chains in the water.

Slavery was outlawed in England in 1833 and as Turner got older  made no secret of his antislavery view.

This painting was based on the true story of the slave ship Zong, whose captain, in 1781, had thrown overboard sick and dying slaves so that he could collect insurance money available only for slaves "lost at sea". Turner's painting shows the horror of the event.

Turner was English and lived from 1775 - 1851. A film biography came out last year called Mr. Turner which received three Oscar nominations.

In the Art of the Ancient World exhibit,  this fancy dressed mummy was the wife of a baker. By 1000 BC common folk could also be mummified.

Inside the wooden caskets were drawings of all the necessary items they would be taking to the afterlife.

Apparently flip flops filled the bill.

In the 1980's the MFA did not own a Georgia O'Keefe, who had become quite well known. So a representative went to her home in New Mexico to look into acquiring one.
The artist went into her bedroom and came out with the Gardenia painting on the right, saying "Will this do?" The museum is thrilled to have the painting that had been hanging over her bed.

John Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1881 was painted when Sargent was only 26 years old.
The two older girls in the background could not be less interested. The 14 year old on the left refuses to even look at the artist.
The blue vases on each side are the ones in the painting.

Who knew sharks had lips?!

Paul Revere, 1768 by John Singleton Copley

Paul Revere was already an accomplished silversmith at 33 years old when this portrait was done.
Instead of painting Revere in formal clothes, as most of the upper classes of the day,  Copley shows him wigless and ready for work.
Altho I doubt he would have been working seriously on that highly polished table in the portrait

Because of the informality of the portrait of her father, Revere's youngest daughter was so ashamed of the painting she kept it in her attic until the museum acquired it.

This display room reminds me of the Rubens room at the Louvre.

And lastly, but most certainly least is Andy Warhol's urine painting in the Contemporary Gallery.

During the late 70's, Warhol asked friends to urinate over canvases freshly coated with copper paint.
The uric acid oxidezed the copper, creating green drips and patterns.
The work makes fun of Jackson Pollock's action paintings of throwing paint at canvas in the 1950s.

And the use of urine suggests Marcel Duchamp's famous use of a urinal as a work of art in the 1920s.

Finally, art has gone too far.
 I can only imagine what is coming.

Leaving Boston at 4:30 p.m., it took 2 hours to arrive at Foxboro 28 miles away where I spent the night in the fanciest RV Park so far.

$55 per night, about $10 more than I normally spend

It was too early the next morning to go for a swim

No problem getting a spot anywhere now that school is back in session