Museums, et cetera

My sister, Lindsay, came to visit this weekend. I was really impressed that she decided to leave her cell phone at home so we could have quality time together. We took a quick trip to San Francisco to check out the de Young and SF MoMA museums.

At the de Young, designed by Herzog and de Meuron (two of my favorite architects), we spent a while in the sun at the outdoor cafe under a beautiful clear cool sky. There were no empty tables when we got outside, so I asked if we could share with this girl who was sitting by herself looking at a San Francisco guide. It turned out she was from Paris and in SF on vacation as part of a work trip to Seattle. We ended up chatting in French for about half an hour, which was good practice for my quickly rusting French.

When I realized that SF MoMA closing was rapidly approaching, we jumped in the car and headed across town to take a quick peek at the Olafur Eliasson. This exhibit will be here in SF for a while and is touring afterwards, if you get a chance to catch it it’s totally worth it. Imagine a science museum for adults. This exhibit asks you to re-experience a number of novel and everyday experiences. Getting off the elevator into the mono-frequency light filled room immediately warns you that you’re about to experience something strange. The single frequency of light creates essentially a tonal black and white world. I don’t ever remember seeing a live black and white well light image. The image with this post is taken from the ground level looking up at the 5th floor walkway which Elaisson covered with small triangles of chromatic glass. Walking through it was another great part of the whole experience. I was also really struck by the arrays of images from Iceland, highlighting different features like waterfalls, rocks, and glaciers.