Category: Museums

Florida Fling: Winter Park

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WINTER PARK EXCURSION

Florida has been our home for more than three years, but we haven’t explored much beyond our immediate area.  Thanks to the prompting of good friends, Alice and Bill, we made a short visit to Winter Park with them. Bill is a consummate organizer and tour guide (and driver!), and we were the beneficiaries of their combined knowledge from previous visits.

Winter Park is a lovely walkable town east of Orlando.  Rollins College (founded in 1885) is a dominant force in the community and graces the town with its tasteful Spanish/Mediterranean architecture.  Surrounding the campus are quiet residential streets with elegant houses and expansive churches of all flavors.  Winter Park Avenue, the main street, offers four blocks of inviting small shops and restaurants, many with outside tables.  There are also two small art museums.  It was a charming and pleasant place and, for us, reminiscent of Palo Alto.  

 

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art boasts the largest collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s work and his glass pieces are certainly a highlight of the museum.  It also has glass pieces, ceramics, and paintings by other artists.  

I particularly enjoyed seeing not only the gallery of Tiffany lamps, but also the re-created rooms from Laurelton Hall, Tiffany’s Long Island residence, as well as the elaborate chapel interior with its intricate mosaic work made for the Chicago exposition of 1893.

It’s a gem of a museum (the building itself architecturally pleasing) and was well worth visiting!

 

 

 

 

We also had a brief look around at Rollins College’s small art museum, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, on the edge of their campus. We didn’t realize that they closed at 4:00 pm and so had to hustle a bit to see “Towards Impressionism,” featuring works by Corot, Monet, and Harpignies (the latter new to me), and a bit of the permanent collection.  It’s noteworthy that contemporary works from the college’s collection are on display throughout the lobby and other public spaces in the Alfond Inn.

“The Misfits” by Rosalyn Drexler

Owned by the college, Alfond Inn is one of the loveliest hotels I’ve stayed in.  It’s been open for four years and still looks brand new.  The extensive main floor showcases paintings and sculpture by a variety of artists, including some lovely prism-like glass shapes hanging from a glass dome that I thought were fabulous.

There is also a large outdoor courtyard with seating and a sculpture called “The Hermit” by Jaume Plensa.    

 

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that we also ate well.  The hotel breakfast included some different fare from the usual bacon and eggs.  Lunches at the Parkview and Blu were tasty, and we sat outside watching the world go by.  Dinner was at the elegant and very contemporary Luma on Park where we sampled some creative pasta dishes, Hamachi crudo, and diver scallops.  As to shopping, we ladies bought shoes (a standalone Rieker shop) and greeting cards and browsed in Writer’s Block, a small independent bookshop, where I found Ant and Bee books for my granddaughters and succumbed to a paperback novel by an Australian writer.

All photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

 

Tidy Tidbits: Culture & Nature

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CULTURE NOTES

In addition to the other lectures and cultural events we regularly attend, this year we added Town Hall, the lecture series that benefits the Ringling College Library. Former CIA director John Brennan was the leadoff speaker, and his discussion of intelligence gathering, the United States’ place in the world, and what should be required of anyone holding public office was focused, pointed, and oh, so very timely!

Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion at the Ringling Museum. My sister Sally paints in watercolor and her husband Bruce works with fused glass to make jewelry so a trip to the art museum was a perfect outing. We were all impressed with the wide range of glass pieces on display here. This new gallery just opened and is a marvelous addition. Everything from blown glass to cast glass to slumped by artists from Czechoslovakia, The Netherlands, and Japan as well as the U. S. We also visited the Asian Center (opened in 2016) and explored some of the permanent collection in the main building. If you like glass, this gallery is a must and it’s free!

Shakespeare in Love at the Asolo Rep Theatre gets off to a slow start and then becomes lively and delightful! As always, the acting is wonderful, the staging creative, and the music an essential and lovely counterpoint to the action. Full of humor and fun.

 

SALT FLATS AND MANGROVES 

We live on a small island surrounded and bounded by mangroves, our buffer against tides and wind. The Chief Penguin and I took advantage of the opportunity to see less visible parts of the island, particularly two salt flats, each very different in character. One was dry and gray and bare except for the skeletal remains (gray limbs) of some very dead mangroves.  

The other salt flat gets covered over when it rains, but this day was just a damp stark black with scattered patches of a low ground cover with tiny red flowers and some bits of green foliage. The black surface looked soft, but it was actually about an eighth of an inch thick, and if you peeled up a piece, very leathery. Underneath was some pinkish brown earth.

Our guide and resident naturalist, Bruce, shared some of the history of the island and also showed us the three different types of mangroves we have: red, that are always in wet ground with new growth and curved shoots down to the earth; green, that often have traces of excreted salt on their leaves; and white ones on which some leaves have a small notch at the tip. Both the green and the white mangroves can tolerate a drier setting than the red ones.  You might say, “mangroves are us” here.

 

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

 

 

 

 

Tidy Tidbits: Around Town

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MARVELOUS MUSEUM

The name may be bland, but the South Florida Museum in Bradenton is doing big things!  The Chief Penguin and I were delighted to be at their groundbreaking this week for a new addition.  It’s an education wing with several new classrooms along with the Mosaic Backyard Universe.  The classrooms will enable them to build on the wonderful partnerships they already have with the local schools and the Backyard Universe is an innovative indoor and outdoor space that will provide new ways for younger children to explore their world.  The new center adds more exciting development to downtown Bradenton (the museum is practically on the Riverwalk) and will attract families with very young children.  It’s a win for everyone!

  

 

The project has been in the works for more than five years and there are a number of forward-looking leaders and partners who’ve made it happen.  Current leadership includes two stellar women, museum CEO Brynne Anne Besio and board chair, Jeanie Kirkpatrick.  It was great too to see the museum’s class of kindergarten children wielding their own little shovels.  

 

 

TIMELY MOVIE

The Post

I like films about journalists and the press and I will see any film that stars Meryl Streep.  Predisposed toward The Post as I was, I found it excellent!  Meryl Streep is superb as Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks captures gung-ho editor Ben Bradlee.  It was also fun to see Matthew Rhys of “The Americans” showing up as Daniel Ellsburg.

But Streep gets my vote for conveying all aspects of Graham.  Graham was a product of her time, a woman who was raised to be a wife and mother and therefore, invisible; she was a gracious and skilled hostess, and she, like her late husband, was a friend to politicians and presidents.  She never expected to be thrust into the job of publisher and in the critical scene where Graham must decide what to do, Streep’s lips purse, her face wrinkles, she hesitates, and you feel the thought process as this woman weighs all she and the paper stand to lose and what might be gained.  In that instant, Graham becomes a publisher to reckon with.

There are some other marvelous scenes too:  when she’s the lone woman meeting with the bankers and when she has a telling and poignant conversation with her good friend Robert McNamara.  

I remember the controversy surrounding the “Pentagon Papers” and so probably did other moviegoers as the audience clapped at the end of the film.  With all the castigation of the press today and the emphasis on “fake news” by some, this film about freedom of the press is a must-see!  I also recommend Graham’s autobiography, Personal History, published in 1997.

 

 

Note:  Photo of Graham from cronkitehhh.jmc.asu.edu

Down Under: Marlborough Pt.2

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MARLBOROUGH PART 2

Yesterday we enjoyed a lovely day in the Marlborough region. It was sunny and even got warm—into the 60’s! Breakfast was a lovely spread of meats and cheeses, fresh fruit, pastry and bread and jam. Genial general manager Peter plopped down to chat and to help us plan our day, area map in hand.

He recommended the Omaka Aviation Heritage Center which initially was a building and commentary about the early planes used in WWI with lots of restored examples. That was so popular they added a second building with a smaller collection of WWII fighter planes from the Allies and the Germans. I knew the Chief Penguin would find this museum of interest and I was willing to go along. Given that these were the real planes and all restored and, supposedly, able to be flown today, it was more than I had expected. I certainly did not read all the commentary about their dimensions and how many battles they saw, but was overall impressed.  

Kiwi filmmaker Peter Jackson was significant in the museum’s creation, and there were several life-size scenes of figures in battle gear, the figures reminiscent of those at the Gallipoli exhibit at Te Papa, only not oversized. I was also taken with the various war posters from England and the US and even France as well as a three-panel display of 5,000 red poppies. Each one was knitted or crocheted or sewn.  

Lunch yesterday was at the Rock Ferry winery and was another lovely experience. The temperature was perfect, the sun was out, and we sat on their porch overlooking a small garden area with picnic tables on the lawn surrounded by flowering trees and blooms. It was almost like being in your own personal garden!   

Following Peter’s recommendations (they’ve been very reliable!), we ordered the fish of the day over coconut risotto with lime and coriander and a side salad and the open-faced steak sandwich with sautéed onions, fries, and a salad, and for dessert the Snicker tart (very rich and sweet).  Here in New Zealand, tasting rooms are called cellar doors and virtually every winery has a full restaurant.

Our last stop was the Makana Chocolate Factory for a look through their production window (they appeared to be making one of the nut brittles) and then a slow swing around the shelves at the many temptations. We left with some macadamia chocolate brittle and some dark chocolate peppermint panache. We’ll see if it all makes it home unopened!

We again sat outside by the stone fireplace before dinner, this time chatting with Lisa, Peter’s second-in-command, and learned about how, although born in New Zealand, she acquired a posh British accent. Her folks came to the UK from Britain and she was born here, but then they returned home and she did all her schooling over there. She has traveled extensively and we shared the joys of those international experiences. We were again the lone diners, but appreciated the chance to chat with British waiter Ben and to learn more about his plans for next year—more travel!

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).