With 10 hours to kill in Raleigh, I was faced with a dilemma. Do I spend the day at the train station watching CNN and sampling every item in the vending machines? Do I go in search of the good porno stores and camp out in the theatre? Or do I enrich my life in a little bit of culture?
Well, I eat enough junk food at home and I couldn't find a recent edition of the yellow pages, so culture it was.
And I found that culture at the North Carolina Museum of Art. (http://ncartmuseum.org/) While North Carolina is thought to have a dearth of mentally stimulating activities, this museum is trying to break that stereotype.
They've even go so far as to scour galleries around the world in putting together an excellent exhibition called Monet in Normandy (http://www.ncartmuseum.org/monet/about.html). While many know Claude Monet for his famous Waterlilies, the impressionist created many other masterpieces before his stock as an artist rose. Most of them focused on life in Normandy. In this exhibition 50 of his works are on display so the public can see how his style of painting developed. In one section you can see the variations on the same location as he painted Manneporte (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h2/h2_31.67.11.jpg) on three separate occasions.
Of course, there are some obligatory Waterlilies, but only in the context of the exhibition as a whole. I spend over an hour in this gallery and could easily have stayed much longer if I wasn't on a schedule.
In addition to the Monet exhibition, the North Carolina Museum of Art has an excellent permanent collection of art that dates back to ancient Egypt.
Of the many pieces in this collection, two stood out.
1. A 2nd century marble statue of Herakles (http://ncartmuseum.org/collections/highlights/ancient/classical/049_lrg.shtml). Notice, that even a Roman God can have love handles.
2. This one was a bit more sobering. Tar Baby & St. Sebatian (http://www.ncartmuseum.org/pressroom/pressreleases/Michael_Richards/MichaelRichardsrelease.shtml) is a bronze sculpture by artist Michael Richards (not the same Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame). Richard cast himself in bronze dressed as a Tuskegee airman. His body was penetrated by dozens of airplanes. This symbolized the honor these men deserved, but highlighted the shame of how they were treated because of the color of their skin. The sad irony to this is Richards was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. His studio was in Tower One, where he was working when a highjacked plane crashed into it.
Hopefully, I will get a chance to explore the museum more fully the next time I travel through Raleigh. This may be one of the great underrated art museums of the world and it's time more people found out about it.
Regarding Michael Richards: Perhaps he had a touch of precognition. It's quite eerie.