Tag: museum

weeknotes, 23/26

have you heard of the let-down effect? basically, your body performs well in high stress situations for a while, and then, after the stressful period is over, it collapses.

that’s what happened on our last week in boston. after the stamp launch and all the meetings and work things were over, our bodies immediately went on strike and we both spent a week in bed, suffering from aches and fevers that wouldn’t go away. 😩 what a waste of our last week! i had such big plans for birdwatching and museum hopping, and ended up watching crappy american tv shows in bed instead…

on the last 2 days of the week, feeling a little better, we managed to gather enough strength for a couple of outings and went to the harvard natural history museum and the mit science museum — both great!

the harvard one had been recommended by our friend clarisse, who told us to check out the “glass flowers” exhibition. so we went… and wow… what a wondrous thing that was! a whole suite of glass flowers and other plant models, all painstakingly made by hand by a german father and son team over their lifetimes. they were so impressive, so beautiful and life-like! and it was impossible to tell they were made of glass — even while we were looking at them, our brains couldn’t quite figure it out. sadly, no pictures allowed, but you can check them out here. if you’re ever in boston, go see them!

we also had time to grab some last meals, this time chipotle and banh mi sandwiches, which we hadn’t had in years.

and then, it was time to send some last postcards with these gorgeous stamps and fly back home.

bye-bye, america!

in spain weeknotes

weeknotes 42/24

i confess i had no idea one could see so many famous works of art in madrid. the museums really are world class, with the kind of paintings everyone has seen on books at some point. picasso, dali, goya, caravaggio… it’s enough to give you stendhal syndrome :|

so our strategy has been to savor these in small bites after work, and not try to get to everything. we’ve seen bits of the reina sofia museum, the gallery of royal collections and the natural sciences museum, which is always a highlight. so many taxidermied birds and insects! :D and dinosaur bones!

we’ve also managed to rent some bikes and ride around the retiro park, to give the boy a rest from all the walking. he has been increasing his training to prepare for his next race and now has a case of shin splints… :/

in the uk

bletchley park

so, this gorgeous place where we had our afternoon tea is called bletchley park, and it’s not just a gorgeous park…

… but also the home of the WW2 codebreakers, and a fantastic museum!

it was a beautiful sunny day this past august when we took the train to bletchley from london, not knowing very well what to expect… but optimistic on the prospect of exploring 2 things i enjoy: science and history! having seen the imitation game not that long ago, and having studied cryptography some years ago in university, we were definitely curious.

on the entrance, we got ourselves 2 spy kits (supposedly for children, but way too much fun to pass on) and then just followed the clues, decoding the mysteries of the park one by one.

we were stoked to discover that bletchley park is wonderfully interactive! not only did they preserve much of the furniture and materials from the war time, they also use clever projections to show people talking and working on the actual rooms, along with screens that you can use to learn the basic concepts of cryptography.

the museum takes place in several huts and houses around the park, and you can see the effort that went into giving the visitors a sense of what life was like here… and the dimension of the puzzle they were trying to crack against the clock, over and over, every single day.

one of the highlights of the trip was to see a demonstration of (a reconstruction of) the bombe, the machine used to decrypt enigma’s messages!

with our geeky hearts filled to the brim, we hopped on the train back to london at the end of the day, ready to finish our kits and write some postcards for friends. it was the perfect day! :)

in germany

a museum for… things!

a few weeks ago, we visited the museum of things. it was an intriguing premise…. all museums have things. so which things would the museum of things have?
museum of things, kreuzberg, berlin
the answer, we found out, was all kinds of things! :)

well, mostly interesting things, anyway. instead of following a chronological order, they’re grouped by color, shape, material, function… sometimes in contrast, others in tune, with little words or explanation. the patterns are implicit and easily spotted.
museum of things, kreuzberg, berlin

there were toys, measuring tools, german things and foreign things, furniture pieces, appliances…
museum of things, kreuzberg, berlin
…kitschy things, cutlery and plates and pots and pans…

… useless things, boxes, tins, cans, electrical odds and bits, old telephones, mail items…
… writing tools, signs, cutting tools, postboxes, hangers…

… creams, perfums and powders, jewellery… we even saw a little shrine from our lady of fatima! there are so many things, you’re guaranteed to find something that makes you go woooow! :D

there’s also a model of the frankfurt kitchen, which revolutionised architecture in the 20s by introducing the concept of functional kitchens with standardized dimensions and layout.

the museum is on oranienstraße 25 (top floor) but it has odd opening hours, so make sure to check them out before you go!

in china photography

suzhou museum

here comes another post overflowing with pictures. the second stop on our suzhou tour was the suzhou museum: we had it on our bookmarks since noticing it on coolhunter. it is designed by I. M. Pei, a suzhou-born architech. he explained his ideas for the museum on the ny times:

He sought to remain true to China’s tradition of courtyards and gardens yet rethink those models. He wanted neither a flat Western roof nor the arched gray tile roof typical of Suzhou.
He found a solution that incorporated the idea of whitewashed walls but eliminated the gray tile roofs, accenting the building instead with gray stone.

“Instead of gray tile roofs, I needed something that would develop volumes,” he said, drawing a diagram on a paper showing an ascending roof pattern. “So I let the walls climb onto the roof. If the walls were stucco, why not the roof?”

The result is a 160,000-square-foot museum that has many of the hallmarks of Mr. Pei’s earlier designs — his squares, rectangles and pyramids — as well as an expansive use of glass and light. It also has traditional motifs, like a large Chinese garden with an artificial pond, a Chinese footbridge and a wall of thinly sliced rocks that yields an image of a series of mountain peaks against an older, whitewashed garden wall.

the result was impressive, intriguing, geometrical, modern yet classical. quite neat, if you ask me, and as a result, we didn’t pay much attention to the exhibitions. :P