HOLY CRAP this place is amazing. Just forget the Louvre – proceed directly here from the airport. It’s now my favorite… I was going to say my favorite museum, but it’s more like a unified work of art. And I had such low expectations: “How quirky I will be,” I had thought, “going to look at a dumpy collection of flea-bitten skins and rusty guns!” But no. First, it’s in a beautifully modernized building – kinda pomo Renaissance. Next, it’s a unified mixture of natural history, old masters, contemporary art installations, and cultural history – not so much of hunting per se, but of the history of man’s relations to the animal world. For example, the first room draws you in with an enormous Rubens hunting scene, from which you look down to see a very realistically posed stuffed boar looming up out of the darkness. Seriously, I kept glancing nervously at it while I walked around the room – it’s just standing on the floor, looking like it’s going to charge. And then, all amped up from the boar, I nearly wet myself walking into the next room, which features a ceiling coated in, ummm, stuffed owls? Owl masks? Sorry, dear reader, but I couldn’t stick around long enough to find out, because I have enough nightmares as it is. The early rooms are all dedicated to animals – boar, stag, hunting dogs, etc. They set the stage for the rooms on the second floor, which tip the balance towards contemporary art and which question man’s impact on the animal world. A weird place for a vegetarian to feel happy, but that’s what happens. Basically, what the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA wishes that it was. Just go.
Bourbon-Ginger Pecan Pie
6 months ago
