Brooks Art Museum in Memphis

 We got up and played with demon cat and Sam some before heading on to Memphis.  No exploring on the way down in order to get to the conference on time, but I was really excited about getting gas for $3.05 a gallon, which is just sad to be excited by.  We came into 

 Memphis and the pyramid is off in the distance with bridges everywhere to get you over the river.  We checked in to our hotel which seems to be really nice and a good deal, but isn’t really convenient to anything in town and has the worst soundproofing in the world.  We  also realized that the liquor store close to the hotel is closed off with windows like buying a ticket in train stations because 

 they were broken into so much.  Nice digs, thanks hotels.com.  We grabbed some lunch and I dropped John off at Rhodes College which looks like something out of the Ivy League with beautiful stone buildings.  I

 went to the art museum (of course) and was rewarded even though their website of their collection was nothing to be excited about.  Not only did I get to drive around the beautiful mansions near Overton park in Memphis, but I got to see an exhibit by Dali that was awesome (no pictures though since it was an exhibit).  But, and I’m not a Dali fan per se, but his gala dinner series was 

awesome.  He would put paintings that you know like Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights into a cooked goose, they are strange and compelling, so look them up if you want to see some true Surrealism. 

I did think that it was interesting that the museum had 3 statues of women outside that I thought were the muses until I got close enough to read that they were summer, spring, and fall.  I think that winter got left back in Michigan because the weather is beautiful here.  There are people around here wearing coats, but I’m not sure why….  Anyway, back to the museum.  There was the usual suspects that you expect to see and then some odd things that really stood out.  They didn’t mention their medieval stuff or

 baroque things, but they had a Manfredi that you know that he completed with Caravaggio looking over his shoulder.  There was also a portrait that I got close to and just the man’s eyes were so compelling, I couldn’t help but take that picture too close.  Also, there were two Giordano’s that were long canvasses with mythological things depicted.  They were sweeping and epic, 

the slaying of Medusa and, wait for it,  the death of the Niobids.  We just learned about this in class on a vase I think and I couldn’t believe that here it was again.  Apollo and Artemis with their sun and moon around their heads, killing Niobe’s children with their arrows. 

  I have to include the painting with the fattest, ugliest Christ child that I have ever seen, an awesome annunciation in marble with the dove flying out of God’s mouth to Mary with the archangel telling her over the lily that she will bear the child of God, talk about iconography. 

Too bad I can’t seem to work the panorama function on the camera correctly in order to get a good shot of this, but you get the idea.  I only got an hour and a half in the museum, but the woman there took pity on me and gave me passes for the next day in case I couldn’t see it all and wanted to bring John with me after I gave my zip code and said that it was Michigan.  Very nice people around here in the south and I do love the way that they talk.