Amarillo: The Panhandle Plains Historical Museum

By mary gallagher

One of many great things to see and do in Amarillo, Texas is visiting the huge Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. Amarillo is an interesting city any time of the year and to many travelers drive straight through to or from Denver, Santa Fe and other points. Stay a few days, you will find great food, interesting sights and some pleasant surprises.

In an average year, I'm probably in a museum - new or familiar - a 100 times minimum and that's likely ten times more than the average person. Sometimes the gift shop is the first place to hit, not to buy but to see what "they" think is the top attraction and therefore has the most souvenir items. On occasion the physical buildings are really grim even if they are newer. Just a sterile grey void and the word historical in their title sometimes rhymes with boring. Not every exhibit at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum will have you tap dancing with joy but there is enough here to keep even the most jaded viewer happily occupied. The old cars, petroleum history, silver jewelry, furniture, crafts and other changing exhibits draw you in and soon time has just slipped away.

There are many areas I would like to go back and study again as well as the sections completely missed. Unfortunately exhibits change or move and we don't always get that opportunity but then a new show opens and another favorite emerges.

The Panhandle-Plains Museum is where I first became acquainted with Frank Reaugh, an extraordinary Texas artist. His style reminded me of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and the first time I saw the works of that romantic painter in Scotland. Turner is known and admired for his portrayal of the transcendent power and turbulence of nature in his paintings of landscapes and storms at sea. His interpretations of light have always fascinated me. Frank Reaugh brought this same power of nature to his works featuring West Texas.

Although born in Illinois and therefore not a true native Texan, Reaugh, was very proud of the state he settled in with his family in 1876.

He began by sketching cattle during his teens in pastures near the family farm outside Terrell, Texas. Participating in cattle drives to Kansas allowed him to further observe range life. After studying at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, Reaugh returned to Terrell and became a private art instructor. He enjoyed annual "roughing it" sketching trips to West Texas with his students. Reaugh loved this culture and believed that the cowboys, plains and cattle he depicted were the clearest expression of the state's uniqueness. He also felt that art should coexist with philosophy, literature and music to "refine" the individual.

After the 1890s, Reaugh worked increasingly in pastels, making the pastel crayons himself by molding them into more than 300 shades. He once said that, "Nature's church [is] the only one this ultra-modern world has left unspoiled." In later life, he mourned the passing of the open range for the sake of progress but vowed never to live outside the state.

The Capitol in Austin also has a small collection of Reaugh's work.

While I was touring the museum they had a fantastic exhibit of cowboy boots and currently through June 2003 are showing FLAPPERS AND FADS: FASHIONS OF THE JAZZ AGE. Here in the textile gallery are costumes and accessories from the 1920s including a typical dress of the time. The knee-length silk chemise has short sleeves and decorative beadwork and sounds identical to one I had in the 60's or 70's. This proves classic style never goes out! Close-fitting cloche hats and costume jewelry were the essential accessories.

Located here is one of the largest and most significant historic costume and textile collections in Texas, numbering approximately 7,500 items, with the majority reflecting the post- 1875 Euro-American settlement of this area. The women's clothing collection is strongest in ca. 1900 - ca. 1950. Recent exhibits have included Navajo and Chimayo weavings, quilts, and historic clothing. The collection also contains military uniforms, hats, shoes, handbags, jewelry, quilts, rugs, and household items.

The featured exhibit from May 24 through September 2, 2003 is Let The Good Times Roll a summer-long museum exhibit and party celebrating American's love of transportation.

Two wheels or four, 2003 includes several unique anniversaries that represent events that led to an unprecedented century of progress in U.S. transportation, from Henry Ford's first mass-produced automobile to the production of the first Harley-Davidson motorcycle in a shed in Milwaukee, WI.

The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum agrees one hundred years later it's time to celebrate!

The centerpiece of this exhibit is a major artifact of the museum's collection- an extremely rare 1903 Ford Model A. This car bears the serial number 28, making it one of the oldest surviving models of this rare automobile. In addition the visitor will see

• a car dealership featuring Amarillo street scenes (circa 1953) highlighting the 50th anniversary of the Chevrolet Corvette.
• a 1950's era drive-in movie theater.
• a picnic scene from Palo Duro Canyon featuring a Ford Model A (complete with rumble seat).
• a 1940s tourist court with vintage vehicles parked outside.
• a 1940s-50s diner, with appropriate cars parked outside.
• several classic Harley-Davidson motorcycles from the early 1900s.
• and various Route 66 scenes.

Volunteer interpreters, dressed in period costume, will help visitors understand and appreciate this golden age of transportation.

Special events, such as car and motorcycle shows, will be planned on the weekends through the summer, helping to emphasize the popularity of transportation in this country. "We anticipate this exhibit will be a must see for all kinds of groups, from car and motorcycle clubs to Route 66 fans. In all, we expect about 15,000 visitors to the exhibit and summer series of special transportation events," Dr. Walt Davis, director of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, says.

Better yet, the core of "Let The Good Times Roll" will live on for several more years as part of the museum's permanent exhibit by helping the museum restore and renovate its entire transportation collection and exhibit.

The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum is the largest history museum in Texas, with over 200,000 square feet and more than 2 million artifacts in its collection. It's like being at the Smithsonian, but with a Texas accent.

So let the good times roll, y'all.

Visit the Amarillo CVC website at www.amarillo-cvb.org

Visit the Panhandle-Plains web site at www.panhandleplains.org

The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum is located on 4th Avenue in Canyon, TX, about 15 miles south of Amarillo. Phone 806-651-2244. Open seven days a week. Closed New Year's Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Children 3 and under - Free
Children 4 to 12 - $1
Children 13 and over - $4
Adults - $4
Seniors 65+ - $3
Groups of 20+ - $3

Boston Marathon

by Joe Phalen, Editor, Artcyclopedia.com

The art museums of Boston have the reputation for being among the best in North America. With round trip airfares at all time lows and tickets easy to book, a friend and I recently made the pilgrimage to the original "city on a hill."

We set aside most of Saturday and Sunday afternoons to "do" three famous institutions: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge.

Boston's Logan Airport is so close to the downtown core that we took the subway rather than a cab. In less than twenty minutes we were at Park Station at the edge of Boston Common. Our hotel, the Omni Parker House, was right across from the station.

The Parker House was one of the first great hotels of the 19th century. Celebrities such as Charles Dickens stayed here. Well into the 20th century, it was the place to stay in Boston. John F. Kennedy took the time to propose to Jackie while they were at this distinguished location. The hotel has been restored to its former elegance, now combining a writing desk and colonial style furniture in the rooms with high-speed Internet.

This is a city made for walking, especially on a perfect late summer weekend, so we decided to stroll through Boston Common. With its winding paths, public gardens and waterways, the Common is an unalloyed delight. For this traveler it was an eye opening introduction to the emerald necklace of green spaces throughout the city.

Our first destination, the Museum of Fine Arts is located in the Fenway District which is also part of the necklace. The museum also has its own subway stop, so central an institution is it to the life of this great city.

Like so many other art museums founded in the 19th century, the MFA is housed in a neoclassical building. Much less imposing than the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the National Gallery of Art, it is nevertheless surprisingly spacious and impressive once one is inside. The great staircase adorned with ceiling murals of mythological gods and heroes by John Singer Sargent sets the tone. This is an institution dedicated to protecting art.

The museum's West Wing, designed by I.M. Pei in 1980, is organized along a 200-foot-long barrel-vaulted galleria, which serves as a skylight indoor court, and is the physical and visual focus of the museum's public spaces including one of the best-stocked bookstores specializing in fine art that I have ever visited. Don't miss David Hockney's Garroway Hill at the entrance to the cafe/bookstore.

The MFA is particularly rich in American painting and in French art from the 19th century. All the big names in art are here, represented by some of their most distinguished works. For instance, three artists rarely seen outside Europe are represented by superb pieces: Duccio's Crucifixion, Rogier van der Weyden's Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, and Carlo Crivelli's Lamentation. Every major museum has a Rembrandt but MFA has Artist in His Studio an early work that announces that a new master has entered the world of art.

The thirty-eight works by Claude Monet make this the largest collection of his work outside of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Most of these were on loan to the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas when we were there, so do check before you go if you're into Monet. Nonetheless there were quite enough Monets on display for those of my taste.

What I liked about the impressionist and post impressionist collections is that they contain more than eye candy. There are daring and challenging works by J.M.W. Turner, Manet and Gauguin. In the large 19th-century European gallery, one's eye is captured by the lurid colors and churning brushstrokes of Turner's horrific Slave Ship. One of his most tragic pictures, it finds an especially appropriate home in this city, Boston being the center of ante-bellum abolitionism and many subsequent progressive causes.

From the radical father of impressionism, Edouard Manet, we have a radical political work in the form of his famous The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian. Also Paul Gauguin asking the deepest questions in his Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? And then the high serious of modern art gives way to the most romantic of Renoir's works, The Dance at Bougival.

The galleries devoted to the history of American painting are very strong in portraits and landscapes. I was amazed to see a huge room devoted to the portraits of John Singleton Copley. The MFA owns sixty of his portraits, as well as forty by Gilbert Stuart. Many of Sargent's best portraits are here including The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. Between the halls containing these giants are galleries filled with the artists of the Hudson River School, as well as superb pieces by Winslow Homer and Mary Cassatt.

For all this one should not leave the impression that this museum is devoted only to European and American art. There are also distinguished collections of Japanese, Chinese and Greek art, as well as works from Africa, Oceania and the pre-Columbian America. One of the largest collections of ancient Egyptian art outside that country is here. And again it's the quality and quantity that make MFA so amazing. King Menkaure (Mycerinus) and his queen. Despite its huge size this has to be one of the most intimate works in the museum.

Satisfied and even stupefied by all this art we decided to call it a day at MFA. We crawled back to our hotel, took a nap and then went back out to do a walking tour of Beacon Hill led by one of the tour guides of Boston by Foot. In this neighborhood where Boston's elite has lived for two centuries we made a beginning at the famous old State House designed by Charles Bullfinch, and then worked our way through some of the private homes, which he also designed. On our way we passed Senator John Kerry's townhouse in Louisburg Square but as a result of the Senator being at home that weekend the police quickly moved us along. We finally ended our walk where we began, but this time with our backs to the State House and facing Augustus Saint-Gaudens' famous memorial to Col. Shaw and his regiment.

Later that evening we followed the Freedom Trail to Fanueil Hall and dined at the oldest restaurant in America, the Union Oyster House. No one should visit Boston without sampling its fresh fish. We were not disappointed by the high quality of the halibut, scrod and haddock served simply here or by New England's favorite deserts Indian pudding and Apple Cobbler.

On the way out we noticed an unusual series of glass towers rising in front of us with smoke coming out of the ground. Once inside we realized that we were looking at the New England Holocaust Memorial.

Sunday morning we made our way back to the Fenway, or "the Fens", as the locals are wont to say, to find the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. This is one of those rare institutions that forever bears the impress of the single individual responsible for its creation. John Singer Sargent's portrait of Gardner is therefore a good place to begin one's tour. The artist truthfully conveys the force of nature she was: a woman able to hold her own in the highly competitive ultra macho world of art acquisition at the turn of the 20th century, a world were all the other players were super millionaire merchants and industrialists.

Gardner loved Venice so much that when she came to build her museum she created an indoor courtyard in the brilliant style of that city, with a sculpture garden and open skylight. This innovation makes even the dreariest winter day in Boston into something redolent of the Mediterranean.

Gardner sponsored the young Bernard Berenson before he became the éminence grise of Italian Renaissance art. He returned the favor by alerting her before great treasures were to come on the market. To list the artists whose works she acquired through him is to string pearls: Giotto, Fra Angelico and Masaccio. Best of all there is the grandest Titian in America, The Abduction of Europa, and a Hercules by Piero della Francesca, from the artist's Arezzo studio in Tuscany.

The museum is bound by the terms of her will not to loan out pieces or to even change their location. Consequently anything you see here will not be seen elsewhere. As a result of this "no change" legacy the visitor to the Gardner sees things exactly as Mrs. Jack intended for them to be. In the Dutch Masters room there are even empty canvases where several Rembrandts and a Vermeer were stolen in the early 1990's. Give yourself about 90 minutes to do this museum and then treat yourself to lunch in the garden cafe, which serves smart seasonal dishes and insidiously good desserts.

Just across the Charles River are the museums at Harvard Square in Cambridge, our final destination. Harvard is easily reachable through Boston's excellent subway system. This is a more bohemian part of the city and is home to many well-stocked bookstores and cafes and filled with college students. The Harvard Art Museums are a bit hidden in the center of the campus on Quincy Street. Harvard is oldest and richest such institution in the country, and its museums are the Busch-Reisinger Museum (German Expressionism and Bauhaus), the Arthur Sackler Museum (Asian, Ancient Egyptian, Indian and Greek) and the Fogg Art Museum.

The Fogg is a neo-Georgian building, which contains another interior courtyard modeled on a fifteenth century Italian palazzo. This one is made of travertine with an opaque glass ceiling. In startling contrast to the Gardner, the austere bleached white walls and high empty spaces of the Fogg seemed rather formidable. High minded, severe, and quite definitely cloister-like this space announces you are here to be educated.

The first floor has an impressive collection of large medieval, renaissance and northern European devotional paintings. There are few of the Madonnas and nativities that Mrs. Gardner loved. Rather these galleries are filled with the tough side of Christian art: flagellations, crucifixions, depositions and last judgments. The heroes of the spirit - Saints John, Jerome and Francis - share space with condottoris and mythological men beloved during the Renaissance.

There is a rich collection of French art of the 19th and 20th century on the second floor and French art means females nudes. Ingres' famous Odalisque with a Slave is here, as well as one of Renoir's most voluptuous women . Famous works like Monet's Gare St. Lazare , and Vincent van Gogh's 1888 Self Portrait as a Buddhist Monk are alone worth the trip into Cambridge. But most appealing to me was Edgar Degas' The Cotton Dealers of New Orleans . You can almost feel the sponginess of the cotton he has placed in that picture.

How do you know when you have seen enough? With that unexpected Degas picture, I decided my pursuit of paintings in Boston was finished. My companion and I had met our goal of seeing many of the best things we had read about in the guidebooks. This left us the remainder of the afternoon to relax and enjoy Harvard Square's shopping. Later that night we explored restaurants in the Italian North End.

Mark Twain once remarked: In New York they ask, "How much is he worth?" In Philadelphia, "Who were his parents?" And in Boston they ask, "How much does he know?" Given the collections on display in the art galleries of Boston, Twain's characterization seems very fair, at least as far as the collectors, curators and connoisseurs of the city's museums are concerned.

Tips for the Artful Traveler

Timing:

• MFA: allow 3 hours plus lunch
• ISG: allow 2 hours plus lunch
• Harvard: allow 2 hours no lunch

• Do take a look at each museum's website before visiting, not only for basic information but also for tours, layouts, and highlights.
• Do take a docent-led tour if possible (preferable the audio tours in my experience)
• Do flip through the collection guides
• The Museum of Fine Arts website has an online guide to the collection, as well as a one-hour virtual tour, and a database of 50,000 works.

Boston-area attractions mentioned in the text:

• Museum of Fine Arts
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
• Harvard University Art Museums
• New England Holocaust Memorial
• Omni Parker House
• Union Oyster House
• Boston by Foot
• The Emerald Necklace Conservancy

Philadelphia is for Art Lovers

by Joe Phalen, Editor, Artcyclopedia.com

Seasoned travelers know how much a noble museum can transform any city into a much-desired destination. The art museums of Philadelphia offer a fascinating alternative to the well-known institutions of New York and Washington. In fact very few North American cities offer as rich and exciting an opportunity to view the full range and quality of American and European and world art as does Philadelphia.

Day-trippers take notice: the Philly tourism board advises "You just can't do it in a day." This is especially true when one considers visiting the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Rodin Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and, just a few miles outside the city, the Barnes Foundation in Merion.

With all this in mind, a friend and I decided to make a weekend visit to the city of Benjamin Franklin and Rocky Balboa. We boarded the Amtrak train from Washington DC on a Thursday morning and arrived at the 30th Street Station three hours later. The late summer day was so delightfully dulcet that we decided to walk the fifteen blocks to our hotel. The Courtyard Marriott is right in the heart of the downtown core, adjacent to the City Hall. As we walked toward that distinguished structure we admired the way Philadelphia combines the old and the new in its architecture. We were not disappointed by our room, which afforded us a spectacular view of the upper levels of the edifice, which is one of the finest examples of French Second Empire architecture in the nation.

Our first stop after settling in was the medical school of Thomas Jefferson University, a few blocks away. Several notable paintings by Thomas Eakins are housed there. The finest realist painter America has ever produced, Eakins was a lifelong student of the human body. In his early years he took courses in anatomy at this school. Thus there are several portraits of his teachers here, in particular one done in tribute to a Dr. Gross, which must rank as the best group portrait and medical history painting of the 19th century.

The thirty-one-year-old Eakins depicted a heroic physician presiding over a difficult operation while performing the multiple tasks of instructing students and training assistants. The monumental composition is based on Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp. It still has the power to shock with the bold matter of factness and immediacy of the action as the horrified reaction of the sole female in the painting, the patient's mother, indicates. But it is the calm authority, forceful energy and keen intellect of the surgeon that inspires in the viewer a genuine feeling of awe at what human effort can produce at its maximum levels. Over in the extensive Eakins collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there is a later and related work called The Agnew Clinic which, though somewhat less adventurous than this painting, has a more assured feel and makes for an absorbing comparison.

Next on the agenda was the nation's first art museum and school of fine art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Founded in 1805 by Charles Willson Peale, this is the nation's oldest continuously operating museum and school of fine arts. Frank Furness and George Hewitt designed the landmark Gothic Victorian building in 1876. This is where Eakins taught, and many of the great American painters and sculptors studied here. Thus the collection contains major works from every era and every artist in American art, making it arguably the finest such collection of painting and sculpture in the nation.

This summer the Academy is renovating this wonderful old building and getting ready to open its new extension wing next door. In January it will be celebrating its 200th anniversary with In Full View American Painting and Sculpture (1720-2005). This will be the most extensive exhibit of the collection ever presented including pieces from every era of American art.

I was lucky to catch a preview of some of the pieces which will be on display and would not want to miss the opportunity to walk these halls again and see Benjamin West's Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1771-72) Charles Willson Peale's The Artist in His Museum (1822), Winslow Homer's The Fox Hunt (1893) and Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Annunciation.

That evening we made our pilgrimage to the historic district around Independence Hall. This is where the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 and the Constitution was drafted in the summer of 1787. It was a quiet night with only one tour group inspecting the grounds. I was especially struck by how much truly revolutionary political thought emerged from this one square mile of rather humble red brick Georgian buildings.

The next morning we headed for the train station for our trip to the Barnes Foundation located about ten minutes outside the city, in the very upscale suburb of Merion. There has been a lot of talk of late of the Barnes moving out of Merion so I was glad to signs reading "The Barnes Belongs in Merion" on the lawns of the neighborhood houses as we walked from the train station to the Foundation.

Albert Barnes made a fortune in the patent medicine business and turned to art collecting during the period when it was still possible to acquire impressionist and post impressionists paintings by the lot. It helped that his was also very savvy businessman who benefited greatly from his associations with such artists as William Glackens, who scouted paintings for him in Europe.

There are dozens of superlative paintings by Renoir and Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse here. Most of the works in this collection are not that well known despite the great fame of the painters who produced them. Works like Matisse's The Joy of Life (Le bonheur de vivre), Cézanne's Great Bathers (Les grandes baigneuses) and Card Players and Girl and Georges Seurat's Models are infrequently seen outside Merion since, with the exception of the legendary tour ten years ago, the Barnes never sends its works out on loan and rarely even allows them to be reproduced. These considerations make a pilgrimage to the Barnes a must for anyone who loves these artists.

After years of reading that the gallery was "notorious" for its hostility to visitors I was amazed how easy it was to make reservations and how welcoming the staff was. But the biggest revelation was how enjoyable it is to view these works in the way that Barnes required by the terms of his will. The collection is still hung in such a way as to invite the visitor to make his or her own connections between artists unencumbered by the stylist labels and other intrusive didactic devices which most museum employ.

Thus paintings from different centuries (Titian and Rubens and Renoir) are hung together in the eighteen galleries. Since your ticket gets you in for the entire day you are invited to spend as long as you like making your own comparisons. Most visitors seem energized by this opportunity for self-study. And when you need a respite from the demands of appreciating such a fine collection of artworks, the twelve acres of gardens offer a refreshing change of view. (Note - Barnes took a lot of ridicule for his "method" but one should remember that the great American philosopher John Dewey worked closely with Barnes for a time and acknowledged his indebtedness in the preface to his seminal work on aesthetics, Art as Experience.)

After three hours we were satiated by all this largely Gallic genius. We headed back to the city with time to spare to refresh and recharge our batteries before heading out to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is open late on Friday nights. One our way toward this great institution we noted the Rodin Museum just a few block away and made a note to visit that notable repository of the 20th century's greatest sculptor on our next trip.

The PMA is a vast honey colored temple rising majestically at the end of Benjamin Franklin Parkway. A skeptical artist once grumbled about the expense of building the "Greek garage" implying doubts that its vastness would ever be filled. But thanks to an outpouring of gifts and judicious purchases over the years, the Museum now brims with treasures, installed with rare character.

One of the greatest pleasures of this museum is its many period room and installations including a reception hall from the palace of a Chinese nobleman of the Ming dynasty and Ceremonial Teahouse from the 18th century. My favorite was the medieval cloister with a Romanesque fountain but the Grand Salon from a French chateau and the drawing room from the Landsdown House in London, which is an archetypical example of the work of the architect Robert Adams, transfixed my friend. We were both disappointed that Turner's magnificent Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons was on tour but were delighted to discover the small room filled with the oil sketches of John Constable.

The museum's galleries are studded throughout with memorable works. Especially strong in the Northern European paintings, the collection contains some of the best examples of this school in America. It is remarkable to see a Jan van Eyck outside the great collections of Europe or Western Russia, but here in Philadelphia one can see Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata. In this work, less than five inches in height, van Eyck represents the world in miniature with his characteristic completeness. There are flowers, crags, boulders, and pebbles; a river and a spring; hills, clouds, and birds; a city with men on foot and on horseback around its gates; and yet other cities in the distance. This diminutive work is truly a mighty tour de force, which can easily be overlooked. So if you go be sure to ask the guard where it is located

Another room contains Rubens' Prometheus Bound. The eight foot high Rubens is especially eye catching. Prometheus was the demigod who stole the secret of fire from the gods and gave it to man. To punish him Zeus, the ruler of the gods, bound him to a rock where he was tortured for all time by an eagle that fed on his liver. Rubens considered this one of his best paintings and kept in his private collection for years. Fortunately for us, the centuries would see this and many other pieces travel from private collections across the Atlantic to the New World and to today's Philadelphia, where all who have a chance to spend time in the City of Brotherly Love will be in a position to see it.

I could go on and on about the wonders contained in the PMA. Instead let me urge you to make plans to visit Philadelphia soon. And I hope I have convinced you that "You just can't do it in a day" In fact we didn't have time to tour the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which houses the contents of the Royal Tombs of Ur in ancient Iraq dating to 2650-2550 BC. But we will next time.

Museums mentioned in the text

• The Barnes Foundation
• National Liberty Museum
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Rodin Museum
• Thomas Jefferson University Eakins Gallery
• The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Augusta Combines History with Style

Visitors to Georgia golf mecca, Augusta, can steep themselves in historical elegance at the city’s Partridge Inn. Surrounded by magnolias, the Inn exudes graciousness combined with surprising cutting-edge cuisine at its Bambu restaurant. First built as a two-story private residence in the early 1800s, by 1900 The Partridge Inn was the gathering place for Southern society. The hotel grew through a series of renovations to the present six-story edifice which occupies an entire city block.

Rooftop View Century Club, Partridge Inn

A million-dollar upgrade in 2001 completed its transformation to one of the South’s greatest historic hotels. The Inn was the first Georgia hotel to be selected for inclusion in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Hotels of America collection. No two of the 156 rooms are alike; accommodations include full suites, some with kitchens, balconies, and in one case a patio. The rooftop Century Club, featuring sweeping views from its open-air deck, is open to guests every evening for cocktails and complimentary hors d’oeuvres.

Partridge Inn

The hotel’s second annual Best Chefs of the South culinary series, monthly dinners running through October, spotlights celebrity chefs from across the region. The Inn’s executive chef Philippe Chin, the world’s youngest French Master Chef, works closely with the visiting chefs to map out food and wine pairings for the elaborate four-course menus. The series winds up with the October appearance of Kelly Yambor of the award-winning Elizabeth on 37th in Savannah.

Chin, who came to the Inn in 2001 from Philadelphia, masterminded the hotel’s culinary renaissance, including the transformation of the property’s vintage Bamboo restaurant into the state-of-the-art Bambu on Hickman. The restaurant draws diners from as far away as Atlanta to sample Chin’s innovative fusion cuisine, which marries French technique to Asian spices.

Chef Phillipe Chin of the Partridge Inn's restaurant, Bambu on Hickman.

Many visitors to Augusta come for the golf. The Masters Golf Tournament, at the Augusta National Golf Club, draws huge crowds each April, but golf is big business year-round. The latest LPGA tournament, the Asahi Ryokuken, is held each October at Mount Vintage Plantation Golf Club. The city is within easy driving distance of ten public or semi-private courses which allow nonmember play.

Augusta Canal

Augusta’s most recent outdoor attraction is the Augusta Canal Petersburg Boat Tours. The 65-foot-long electric boats, replicas of the Petersburg boats which used to carry nine tons of cargo from the Augusta mills, leave the downtown Enterprise Mill docks for one-hour narrated tours down the scenic and historic waterway. Tours glide past Augusta’s two remaining mills—at one time thirty-seven lined the canal banks—which now produce electricity as well as textiles. One of these, Sibley Mill, has the odd distinction of being built in a reasonable likeness of the British Houses of Parliament.

Canal Interpretive Center

Enterprise Mill, home of the Augusta Canal Interpretive Center, provides a fascinating look at Augusta’s industrial past and the lives of its boatmen, millworkers and merchant class. Today more than 2000 acres on the banks of the canal have been designated a National Heritage Area, and are home to turtles, otters, alligators, and a variety of birds. Canoes and kayaks are available for rent, and a canal side tow path accommodates bikers and hikers. The 10th annual Head of the South Rowing Regatta will bring boating aficionados to the area in November.

Augusta’s “front porch”—the Riverwalk area—hosts a variety of festivals and events on the banks of the Savannah River. The Riverwalk’s brick paths provide access to the Riverwalk Marina, the Morris Museum of Art, and the National Science Center’s Fort Discovery. The Augusta Common, a park and festival venue, links the area with the shops and galleries of downtown’s revitalized Broad Street. Fall sees a number of special events here, including the 23rd annual Arts in the Heart of Augusta festival in September, and Oktoberfest, as well as the Hispanic Festival, in October.

For more information about Augusta:
www.augustaga.org or call 1-800-726-0243.

The Partridge Inn
2110 Walton Way
Augusta, Georgia 30904
1-800-476-6888
Local: (706) 737-8888
Fax: (706) 731-0826
info@partridgeinn.com
Sales and Reservations: (706) 262-1111
Augusta Canal Petersburg Boat Tours: www.augustacanal.com

Philadelphia is for Art Lovers

by Joe Phalen, Editor, Artcyclopedia.com

Seasoned travelers know how much a noble museum can transform any city into a much-desired destination. The art museums of Philadelphia offer a fascinating alternative to the well-known institutions of New York and Washington. In fact very few North American cities offer as rich and exciting an opportunity to view the full range and quality of American and European and world art as does Philadelphia.

Day-trippers take notice: the Philly tourism board advises "You just can't do it in a day." This is especially true when one considers visiting the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Rodin Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and, just a few miles outside the city, the Barnes Foundation in Merion.

With all this in mind, a friend and I decided to make a weekend visit to the city of Benjamin Franklin and Rocky Balboa. We boarded the Amtrak train from Washington DC on a Thursday morning and arrived at the 30th Street Station three hours later. The late summer day was so delightfully dulcet that we decided to walk the fifteen blocks to our hotel. The Courtyard Marriott is right in the heart of the downtown core, adjacent to the City Hall. As we walked toward that distinguished structure we admired the way Philadelphia combines the old and the new in its architecture. We were not disappointed by our room, which afforded us a spectacular view of the upper levels of the edifice, which is one of the finest examples of French Second Empire architecture in the nation.

Our first stop after settling in was the medical school of Thomas Jefferson University, a few blocks away. Several notable paintings by Thomas Eakins are housed there. The finest realist painter America has ever produced, Eakins was a lifelong student of the human body. In his early years he took courses in anatomy at this school. Thus there are several portraits of his teachers here, in particular one done in tribute to a Dr. Gross, which must rank as the best group portrait and medical history painting of the 19th century.

The thirty-one-year-old Eakins depicted a heroic physician presiding over a difficult operation while performing the multiple tasks of instructing students and training assistants. The monumental composition is based on Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp. It still has the power to shock with the bold matter of factness and immediacy of the action as the horrified reaction of the sole female in the painting, the patient's mother, indicates. But it is the calm authority, forceful energy and keen intellect of the surgeon that inspires in the viewer a genuine feeling of awe at what human effort can produce at its maximum levels. Over in the extensive Eakins collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there is a later and related work called The Agnew Clinic which, though somewhat less adventurous than this painting, has a more assured feel and makes for an absorbing comparison.

Next on the agenda was the nation's first art museum and school of fine art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Founded in 1805 by Charles Willson Peale, this is the nation's oldest continuously operating museum and school of fine arts. Frank Furness and George Hewitt designed the landmark Gothic Victorian building in 1876. This is where Eakins taught, and many of the great American painters and sculptors studied here. Thus the collection contains major works from every era and every artist in American art, making it arguably the finest such collection of painting and sculpture in the nation.

This summer the Academy is renovating this wonderful old building and getting ready to open its new extension wing next door. In January it will be celebrating its 200th anniversary with In Full View American Painting and Sculpture (1720-2005). This will be the most extensive exhibit of the collection ever presented including pieces from every era of American art.

I was lucky to catch a preview of some of the pieces which will be on display and would not want to miss the opportunity to walk these halls again and see Benjamin West's Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1771-72) Charles Willson Peale's The Artist in His Museum (1822), Winslow Homer's The Fox Hunt (1893) and Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Annunciation.

That evening we made our pilgrimage to the historic district around Independence Hall. This is where the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 and the Constitution was drafted in the summer of 1787. It was a quiet night with only one tour group inspecting the grounds. I was especially struck by how much truly revolutionary political thought emerged from this one square mile of rather humble red brick Georgian buildings.

The next morning we headed for the train station for our trip to the Barnes Foundation located about ten minutes outside the city, in the very upscale suburb of Merion. There has been a lot of talk of late of the Barnes moving out of Merion so I was glad to signs reading "The Barnes Belongs in Merion" on the lawns of the neighborhood houses as we walked from the train station to the Foundation.

Albert Barnes made a fortune in the patent medicine business and turned to art collecting during the period when it was still possible to acquire impressionist and post impressionists paintings by the lot. It helped that his was also very savvy businessman who benefited greatly from his associations with such artists as William Glackens, who scouted paintings for him in Europe.

There are dozens of superlative paintings by Renoir and Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse here. Most of the works in this collection are not that well known despite the great fame of the painters who produced them. Works like Matisse's The Joy of Life (Le bonheur de vivre), Cézanne's Great Bathers (Les grandes baigneuses) and Card Players and Girl and Georges Seurat's Models are infrequently seen outside Merion since, with the exception of the legendary tour ten years ago, the Barnes never sends its works out on loan and rarely even allows them to be reproduced. These considerations make a pilgrimage to the Barnes a must for anyone who loves these artists.

After years of reading that the gallery was "notorious" for its hostility to visitors I was amazed how easy it was to make reservations and how welcoming the staff was. But the biggest revelation was how enjoyable it is to view these works in the way that Barnes required by the terms of his will. The collection is still hung in such a way as to invite the visitor to make his or her own connections between artists unencumbered by the stylist labels and other intrusive didactic devices which most museum employ.

Thus paintings from different centuries (Titian and Rubens and Renoir) are hung together in the eighteen galleries. Since your ticket gets you in for the entire day you are invited to spend as long as you like making your own comparisons. Most visitors seem energized by this opportunity for self-study. And when you need a respite from the demands of appreciating such a fine collection of artworks, the twelve acres of gardens offer a refreshing change of view. (Note - Barnes took a lot of ridicule for his "method" but one should remember that the great American philosopher John Dewey worked closely with Barnes for a time and acknowledged his indebtedness in the preface to his seminal work on aesthetics, Art as Experience.)

After three hours we were satiated by all this largely Gallic genius. We headed back to the city with time to spare to refresh and recharge our batteries before heading out to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is open late on Friday nights. One our way toward this great institution we noted the Rodin Museum just a few block away and made a note to visit that notable repository of the 20th century's greatest sculptor on our next trip.

The PMA is a vast honey colored temple rising majestically at the end of Benjamin Franklin Parkway. A skeptical artist once grumbled about the expense of building the "Greek garage" implying doubts that its vastness would ever be filled. But thanks to an outpouring of gifts and judicious purchases over the years, the Museum now brims with treasures, installed with rare character.

One of the greatest pleasures of this museum is its many period room and installations including a reception hall from the palace of a Chinese nobleman of the Ming dynasty and Ceremonial Teahouse from the 18th century. My favorite was the medieval cloister with a Romanesque fountain but the Grand Salon from a French chateau and the drawing room from the Landsdown House in London, which is an archetypical example of the work of the architect Robert Adams, transfixed my friend. We were both disappointed that Turner's magnificent Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons was on tour but were delighted to discover the small room filled with the oil sketches of John Constable.

The museum's galleries are studded throughout with memorable works. Especially strong in the Northern European paintings, the collection contains some of the best examples of this school in America. It is remarkable to see a Jan van Eyck outside the great collections of Europe or Western Russia, but here in Philadelphia one can see Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata. In this work, less than five inches in height, van Eyck represents the world in miniature with his characteristic completeness. There are flowers, crags, boulders, and pebbles; a river and a spring; hills, clouds, and birds; a city with men on foot and on horseback around its gates; and yet other cities in the distance. This diminutive work is truly a mighty tour de force, which can easily be overlooked. So if you go be sure to ask the guard where it is located

Another room contains Rubens' Prometheus Bound. The eight foot high Rubens is especially eye catching. Prometheus was the demigod who stole the secret of fire from the gods and gave it to man. To punish him Zeus, the ruler of the gods, bound him to a rock where he was tortured for all time by an eagle that fed on his liver. Rubens considered this one of his best paintings and kept in his private collection for years. Fortunately for us, the centuries would see this and many other pieces travel from private collections across the Atlantic to the New World and to today's Philadelphia, where all who have a chance to spend time in the City of Brotherly Love will be in a position to see it.

I could go on and on about the wonders contained in the PMA. Instead let me urge you to make plans to visit Philadelphia soon. And I hope I have convinced you that "You just can't do it in a day" In fact we didn't have time to tour the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which houses the contents of the Royal Tombs of Ur in ancient Iraq dating to 2650-2550 BC. But we will next time.

Museums mentioned in the text

• The Barnes Foundation
• National Liberty Museum
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Rodin Museum
• Thomas Jefferson University Eakins Gallery
• The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

The Great Blacks in Wax Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

By Mary Gallagher

The history of Baltimore and African Americans reaches back to the beginning of United States' history. Before the Civil War, Baltimore (pop. 100,000) was home to the largest community of free blacks in the nation, more than 25,000, while its slave population was slightly over 2,000. In the late nineteenth century, blacks in the city worked as laundresses and laborers, stevedores and seamstresses. 

At the same time, the city also had prominent communities of African American pastors, barbers, caterers, newspaper editors, bankers, lawyers, physicians, shop owners, grocers, teachers and civil servants. From this base Baltimore became and remains a hub of African American culture, scholarship, business and religion.

It was probably in 1992 or 1993, only ten years after its establishment, that I made my first visit to the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore. Recently, I went back to see it again and witness its extraordinary success and plans for a dynamic future. 

This unique museum, the first one of wax in Baltimore and the first wax museum of African American history in the nation, was the brainchild of Drs. Elmer and Joanne Martin. Unique because it is a wax museum committed solely to the study and preservation of African American history through its presentation of life-size, life-like wax figures highlighting historical and contemporary personalities of African ancestry.

My friend and I found many details and facts that were previously unknown to us and raised our interest to learn more about these historically important persons. It was also fun to see them depicted as life size wax mannequins, sometimes with a creative but endearing artistic hand. It's easy to spend several hours at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum and on my most recent visit two large tour busses and several vans of visitors were present mid- week attesting to the public's strong interest.

It only took the museum two years to outgrow its original location and with the assistance of a $100,000 matching grant and a newly-formed Board of Trustees launching a fund-raising campaign, they searched for a larger building.

It is important to know that the Martins objectives in establishing the museum were far more reaching into community consciousness than just having a wax museum. They believed community and cultural development go hand in hand. We've all seen examples of this premise in similar cities around the nation and unfortunately though some failed that is certainly not the case here.

Primarily the Martins sought to and have become a dynamic cultural and educational institution that stimulates interest in African American heritage by revealing the little-known, often-neglected facts of that history. 

The enrichment of the lives of youth was a primary motivation for establishing The Great Blacks in Wax Museum not just an entertainment venue providing a casual ho-hum stroll through another historical moment. Youth can become involved at an early age and continue in various positions as they grow older. The opportunities for young people include volunteer and intern programs that often providing a safe haven for at-risk youths. If you have ever done work or volunteered in any programs involving at-risk youth, you know the tremendous raw talent and potential they have just waiting for guidance, positive reinforcement and intellectual stimulation.

The following statements of purpose were the force behind the decision to relocate the Museum in 1988 to a fragile community in East Baltimore. Here the institution could serve as a catalyst for community revitalization.

1. To use great leaders as role models to motivate youth to achieve 
2. To improve race relations by dispelling myths of racial inferiority and superiority 
3. To support and work in conjunction with other nonprofit, charitable organizations seeking to improve the social and economic status of African Americans 

On my first visit ten years ago, we were puzzled at the location of the museum and concerned that visitors would drive up to the East Baltimore area, look around, lock their car doors and go back to the Inner Harbor. Today it is a neighborhood in transition, perhaps not as quickly as we would all like but the changes are evident. Unfortunately renewal frequently means vacant buildings, boarded up for a time, awaiting rehabilitation. Do not let the area deter you, in fact you'll start gazing at all these stunning historical properties, and, as we all do, think, "What a wonderful renovation I could create."

Between 1985 and 1987, the City of Baltimore awarded Great Blacks In Wax $300,000 in grants and loans and designated an unused fire station at 1601 East North Avenue for the museum's development and expansion. The entire block including the firehouse, a Victorian Mansion, and two former apartment dwellings, when renovated, will provide nearly 30,000 square feet of exhibit and office space. Through the blending of new design, preservation and restoration of existing architectural structures, and significant landscape improvements the livability of the neighborhood will be enhanced.

In looking at a Baltimore city map, one cannot help but notice the East Baltimore corridors advantageous urban location. The Great Blacks in Wax museum is a serious contributor to the areas economic opportunity by helping to provide a spirit of renewal and vitality.

During African American history month in 1984, at its original location, the museum received nearly 2,000 students from city and county schools and about 2,500 during that period in 1985, as well as visitors and tour groups from Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. The museum has proven that tourism can thrive in a nontraditional setting. The number of visitors had more than quadrupled to 275.000 in 2000.

Inside are over 100 wax figures and scenes, a full model slave ship exhibit telling the powerful 400 year history of the Atlantic Slave Trade, a compelling exhibit on the role of youth in making history, a Maryland room highlighting the contributions of outstanding Marylanders to African American history, sharecroppers exhibit, a gift shop, and a mini auditorium for lectures, films, and dramatic presentations. The large figure of an elephant and Hannibal in the main lobby are an exciting start for the younger set. 

If you have the opportunity, I would recommend visiting the museum now—for it's quaintness as well as historical content and again in a few years after completion of their massive renewal and expansion program. We all like to say "Well I remember when…"

Some of the programs available:

The Youth Advocacy Program provides tutorial, educational, cultural, and social development to youth involved in after school and summer intern programs.

Seeking Cultural Awareness Through Museums is designed to teach adults/parents how to have an enriching museum experience with children, creating future audiences for culture and art institutions. This project consists of "Fun Shop" presentations such as "My Grandmother's Trunk" in which a presenter demonstrates how she discovered and preserved aspects of her family's history through the treasures in her grandmother's attic. 

Field trips to related museums such as the District of Columbia's Frederick Douglass House are offered The Summer Advocacy Program offers neighborhood at-risk youth tutoring opportunities and field trips to other cultural institutions.

The Youth Training and Employment Program offers at-risk youth the ability to create a business concept and develop their entrepreneurial skills while earning income.

Other programs that have been implemented include Tour Guide Development, Internships, and Community Service.

Events for May and June 2003
Mother's Day Gospel Concert & Banquet
May 17, 2003
For additional information contact:
Travis Henson at 410.563.7809 ext. 102 or Liz Byrd on ext. 105

June 2003
Fathers Day Jazz Concert & Banquet
June 14, 2003
For additional information contact:
Travis Henson at 410.563.7809 ext. 102 or Liz Byrd on ext. 105

Sources

The Great Blacks in Wax Museum
1601-03 East North Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21213
www.greatblacksinwax.org
P: 410.563.3404
P: 410.563.6416
F: 410.675.5040
Entry fee

Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association 
100 Light Street, 12th Floor
Baltimore, MD 21202 
Phone: 410-659-7301
www.baltconvstr.com
Relating to African American Heritage www.baltconvstr.com/pages/visit_af_am.htm

Maryland Office of Tourism Development 
217 East Redwood Street, 9th Floor 
Baltimore, MD 21202
Cherish African-American Culture tour
www.mdisfun.org
To speak to a Maryland 
Travel Operator, please call 
1-800-MDISFUN (1-800-634-7386)