Dixon Gallery

 A new day with a really nice breakfast at the Hotel Memphis which we both got a nice night’s sleep in, so thank you hotels.com.  I’m in a better mood about it now, but damn big town’s and their traffic.  John is going to be late to the first session this morning because of

 wrecks on a Saturday and there is no rain.  What the hell are these people doing in their cars?  We drive on snow and ice up here and don’t have as many wrecks as I’ve seen here on good days.  Finally got John seen off to Rhodes and decided that I would check out the art museum

  on their campus.  Uhmmm, there’s not one.  There is their building with the art and other humanities departments in it with some student art, but that does not a museum make.  So, I got out of the car and sat on campus, in the sun, reading again.  Ah, simple pleasures and just a 30 degree temperature

Pissarro

Wright

Renoir

increase.  When John got out for lunch and we had some time to go to the Dixon gallery, he had to take a picture of the temp in the car because it was 70 degrees.  We were driving with the windows down and at the Dixon gallery and gardens, I was able to get some signs on spring like flowers and robins and stuff.  I’m pretty sure that these harbingers of spring would simply freeze to death halfway to Michigan, somewhere in Illinois or something.  These gardens are probably beautiful in any other season, but pretty dormant at this time, although we did walk through them and get a shot of the Memphis Venus, literally, that’s what it is called.  The Dixon Galleries have Memphis’ Impressionist art and it was a pretty little gallery in a house.  They were having a special exhibit on photography and the history of color developing in

 photography which we couldn’t take pictures of (ironic huh?).  But, there was one particular series that was very interesting, the Wait Watchers series by an Associate professor of Art in Memphis.  She sets the stage for herself being an overweight tourist and catches the reactions of people around 

 her that are heart rending.  Art that makes you think because I started to wonder if I could be caught in that series either as the watcher or the overweight tourist.  Probably both unfortunately.  The art that we were able to take pictures of are shown including a Renoir like no other Renoir I’ve ever seen.  And John and I  got to play our game of standing in the middle of the room and picking which picture we would have in the house 

(as if we could afford it or would turn any of these works down).  You see my choice, the Pissarro, and John’s choice, the Wright.  All and all a good little visit to something we wouldn’t have seen without this little detour for lunch.