I Love It When You Hang 'Em High

How lame was I today?

I got a hankering to spend a free afternoon admiring art and before I knew what I was doing, I was online checking on what the current exhibits at the Muscarelle and UVA Museum were.

WTF?

Despite not one, but two visits of late to the recently reopened VMFA, it wasn't my default first thought.

Sorry, guys, but you were closed a long time, so perhaps you can understand how such a thing could happen.

I do so enjoy being able to enter the museum through the Boulevard entrance and it's how I hope every first time visitor experiences the new VMFA; personally, you couldn't pay me to go back to being a backdoor patron.

In a recent conversation with the President of the VA Historical Society, I shared my longing for them to also return to a Boulevard orientation.

A grand street is the way to enter grand spaces, if you ask me (and no one did).

I decided to do it European-style this afternoon, so I'm taking a mistress.


Mais non!

With so many more objects on display, I prefer to concentrate on one area at each visit.

I was leaning European today, in large part because I began by coming through the Tapestry Hall which put me squarely in the 18th century gallery, which focuses on the age of Reason and the Enlightenment.

I'm intrigued by how fascinated the Romantic era was with all things scientific (me, I'm all about the romance, but the science not so much).

But what I loved most about this gallery is that it's hung salon-style and while some people find it chaotic or a challenge to their neck muscles, I find it especially appropriate for paintings that would have been originally hung that way.

The only downside in this particular room was that it's narrow and a through-way, so in places it was challenging to get enough distance to properly admire some of the higher-hung pieces.

Still, I applaud the choice to do so and wish more of the galleries were hung like this.

Next up were the British Sporting Art galleries, also known as Paul Mellon's pride and joy.

I like these galleries for the glimpses they provide of a way of life I'll never know.

And as a former beagle owner, I have no problem looking at depictions of hordes of hounds (none as cute as mine was, but that's neither here nor there). I found the elaborate pictures of hunting scenes fascinating for their minute detail.

Which led me to a complaint with these galleries; only one of them had benches provided for distance viewing.

The center gallery had four benches and only one was worth the space it was taking up.

It faced a large hunting scene and offered the perfect place from which to take in the extensive action of the hunting party.

Two of the benches faced the archways between galleries and the fourth faced a storage door.

Where is the logic there?

There were four pieces of sporting sculpture on pedestals in the room and with some minor adjusting, the benches and sculpture could have been rearranged, resulting in a far more functiona, not to mention better viewing space.

Sure, some people use the benches to simply take a load off, but I am certainly not the only one who uses them for a more advantageous viewing point. If there's a VMFA suggestion box, that's going in it.

I finished in the 19th and 20th Century Painting and Sculpture in France galleries, enjoying a healthy dose of Corot, Pisarro and the "king of the skies" Boudin (and not to repeat myself, but Boudin so often worked on such a small scale that he's a natural for being hung salon-style).

The art progressed back into the Impressionists, although clearly a good part of that collection is still not on view; I know that there are at least two more European galleries slated to open in 2011.

The Degas gallery off to the side was a treasure trove of the artist's sculpture, discovered after his death for the most part.

It's challenging to look at it with modern eyes and know how poorly it was received for its "ugly realism" at the time.

The inclusion of a few of his paintings in a space largely devoted to three dimensional work was a good way to put his down-low sculpture work in the context of his well-known painting efforts.

By then it was closing time and I heard one guard tell another that now they just needed to get "all these people outta here so we can go."

I completely understood.

And don't you just know that I made my exit stage right from the Boulevard door?