Text 39857, 60 rader
Skriven 2010-07-08 12:23:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: KC BBQ 2 383
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Saturday morning Lilli, Gregory, and I wanted to spend a
couple hours before lunch at the Nelson-Atkins, one of the
more surprisingly well-endowed art museums around, with,
among other things, it is said, the third largest collection
of classical Chinese art in the country, so I wanted to
check this out as well as the impressionist collection,
which is said to be small but good. And Lilli having a
certain connoisseurship appreciation for modern art, I
asked to tag along as she inspected the new Bloch wing.
Architecturally, it's pretty striking, but the art itself
is kind of a mixed bag. The acquisitions person must have
liked relatively conservative representational stuff (my
favorite, though, was a sculpture of a security guard to
which I Magoo-like said good morning to), which there was
in abundance, interspersed with second-tier works by majors
(a less moving de Kooning toothy woman, for example),
first-tier works by minors, and some that I found disturbing
or ugly or just plain bad. An interesting set of early photos
of Egypt. To get to the Chinese stuff, we had to go into the
original building, so we looked into the Atkins Auditorium, a
nifty lecture hall with murals by Thomas Hart Benton, and
then went upstairs to check out this famous collection.

Some nice pieces. A little disappointed in the ceramics, as
my tastes (as with many things) run to the very old and very
new and not much in between, and I'm not thrilled with Ming
and Ching. Oddly, the painting that spoke most to me was
Japanese. I have this feeling, though, that in common with
almost all great museums, there's much more in the vaults
than on display.

We had time to run through the American galleries then check
out some of the Italian Baroque stuff (not unlike what we'd
encountered a few weeks before). There remain things unseen
that I'd like to see, so that means having to come back for
more art & BBQ some other time.

Rendezvous at the gift shop, then on to Oklahoma Joe's,
which despite its name is in Kansas. We got there right at
noon only to find that many of our friends had been there for
some time and had nearly finished. The advantage of being
way-behind trailers is that there's extra food: we skipped
line and tasted the burnt ends (best of the trip) and ribs
(best of the trip) courtesy of William, who had organized
the Texas BBQ extravaganza a few months ago. Then I sneaked
back in line - if this had been at the airport or in virtually
any other less-laid-back part of the country, this would have
been massively jumped upon - for a half pound of pulled pork
(at the urging of Gregory, who said it was fabulous, and he
was right - best of the trip) and Boulevard Wheat on tap
(draw beer, as they call it), a lightish beer but not nasty
as so many wheats are. I should have gotten several more, as
a 10-oz pour was not enough and only $1.75 anyway, but I
have only so many hands, and I would have had to go to the
end of the line this time, as there were no longer any friends
in line to sneak in behind.

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