Armchair Traveller – Exploring Art Through Time: My Top 5 Favourite Museums

This article was written for the Trinity Times in August 2021

Last week, I shared some of our favourite museums visited when travelling. The list included The Met in NY, The Louvre, London’s Tate Gallery, our own National Gallery, and the Museé d’Orsay in Paris.  This week, here are my top five favourite art museums so far! 

5) Picasso Museum, Barcelona

Compared to the other museums on my list, this one is very small!  That might be exactly why I love it so much.  The galleries display many of the early works of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and because it presents only the work of one artist, visitors can see everything from famous works to tiny sketches from Picasso’s notebook.  There are pieces of his childhood art, and many paintings from his early years creating portraits that are more conventional than his now-famous cubist or blue-period abstract works.  We learned so much about Picasso at this museum, we are now inspired to seek out his works in every museum we visit! One of the most memorable installments was a room dedicated to Picasso’s small abstractions inspired by a famous Spanish painting from the 1600s, Las Meninas.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that this charming little museum is set in five adjoining medieval houses in the Old City with cafés and little shops in the surrounding area!  Well worth a visit if you find yourself in Barcelona – but equally informative in the online version at www.museupicasso.bcn.cat!

4) National Archeological Museum, Athens (www.namuseum.gr)

Athens has many wonderful museums – you may remember me mentioning the outstanding Acropolis Museum in another installment.  The National Archeological Museum is located in central Athens and is a sprawling building surrounded by peaceful gardens.  It is not an art museum per se, but many of the archeological discoveries from Ancient Greece are well-preserved art works, so worth exploring from an artistic rather than strictly historical perspective.  Because it’s a national museum, visitors can see pieces from all over the diverse country.  Some favourites of mine include mosaics from the cycladic islands, and gold leaf jewellery from Northern Greece near Thessaloniki where my dear friends live.  Here, we can learn about art history as the pieces take us through various ages.  Most impressive are the bronze statues, made of cast metals.  The Bronze statue of a Youth likely came to Athens from Ephesus, and an ancient Greek historian suggests it’s the mythological character Paris who slayed Achilles and was the judge of Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera.

3) The Accademia, Florence

I arrived in Florence with my sister on an overnight train from France back in August 1987.  We stowed our bags at our cheap and cheerful pension and headed out for a quick reconnaissance mission of the city centre. After grabbing a delicious gelato from a rainbow-coloured kiosk near by, we saw a handful of people lined up on the street and decided to check out what they were waiting to see.  We paid our entry fee, still not knowing where we were going but trusting that a line up meant that something good awaited through the archway we were about to enter.  We were not disappointed!  There was the magnificent statue of David by Italian Renaissance artist, Michelangelo (1475-1564).  There are other works at L’Accademia (www.accademia.org), but honestly, David at 17 feet high and intricately carved out of local marble is such an impressive sight, I don’t remember much else about the visit.  I read once that people visiting Florence are exposed to so much beauty in art and architecture that they can actually suffer from culture sickness!  I didn’t feel ill in Florence but certainly loved all that city has to offer!  Check out another gem:  the Uffizi Gallery (www.uffizil.it)!

2) Museum of Modern Art, New York (www.moma.org)

A visit to New York highlights many marvels of 20th century development – the skyscrapers, the department stores, entertainment venues, and iconic views lifted from TV and film. It only makes sense that the Museum of Modern Art, affectionately known as MoMA, houses some of the best modern art in the world.  I loved seeing the paint-splattered canvases of Jackson Pollack (1912-1956), a special exhibition of works by Yoko Ono (b. 1933), and especially a wide selection of works by pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) – yes, the famous Campbell’s Soup can lithographs!  But my favourite painting at the MoMA wasn’t by an iconic American artist; it was Van Gogh’s Starry Night, with its midnight blues and golden stars swirling above a French street scene that held my attention!  True to its name, MoMA is committed to modern sharing of works of art and on the extensive website, visitors can see thousands of works (painting, sculpture, video and film, architecture) online!

1 ) Museo del Prado, Madrid

One of the best things I did when buying our tickets for the Prado (www.museodeprado.es) was to include the purchase of the Prado Guide, a 478 page book of every work of art in the museum!  Although it was a bit heavy to tote around, I’m so glad we had it so I could read the full story of every work we saw on a full-day of exploring the art on display.  The guide also identified the top 100 things to see during a visit, so we chose ten and made sure to see those, catching a few others on the way!

The main painting I wanted to see was Las Meninas (1656) by Spanish artist, Diego Valasquez.  This painting depicting a noble family was the inspiration for many modern works, including the Picasso studies we saw in Barcelona; it was also ground breaking in art history because in addition to the nobility in the foreground, it depicts servants in the house, busy in the background.  Hint:  if you want to see a particular painting in a relaxed way, arrive at the gallery early and head directly to the room where it hangs.  On the day we visited, we were able to have about 20 minutes alone with this masterpiece before others arrived.  Passing through the room when we left, we noticed over 200 people trying to get a look at Valasquez’s most famous painting!

Safe Travels

Lynn

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