Museums and Art and Films, Oh My!

Sorry for the delay in posting! I've been pretty busy this last week and on top of that, my internet was down for four days!

As of late, I've been going to a lot of museums! On Thursday (and I'm not sure if I mentioned this but many museums are free from 6:00-10:00) I went to the Neues Museum and it was unbelievable! The building itself was beautiful, not to mention the collection was fantastic! There was a "cemetery" of sarcophagi and it surprised me to see how large some of them were. I expected them to be quite a bit smaller. Their enormity, though, really made me think how there would be NO WAY for someone to penetrate the sarcophagus to get to the goods inside--especially because many of the sarcophagi were made of granite/stone.

Perhaps the most well-known item in the Neues Museum is the Nefertiti bust. She is [obviously] enclosed in a glass case and has an entire room to herself. Surprisingly, though, there was not a swarm of people around the case and I was able to observe the bust in close detail. For those of you who have been to the Louvre and have "seen" the Mona Lisa (I put this in quotations because there is a crowd around her that extends a good ten feet outwards), this was NOTHING like that...thankfully.

Then on Friday I returned to Martin-Gropius-Bau, where I had previously seen the amazing Frida Kahlo exhibit, to attend the free screening of Sergei Eisenstein's ¡Que Viva Mexico! The film was interesting (and actually accompanied the current Frida Kahlo "Retrospective" exhibition) but it did not compare to Eisenstein's much earlier work, which skyrocketed him to fame--Potemkin.

Directly after the film I headed upstairs to view the Olafur Eliasson exhibit, "Innen Stadt Außen." It was SO cool. While there were many amazing facets of the exhibition, I will just briefly touch on my two favorites: "Strobe Hose" and "Your Blind Movement." The first consisted of an entirely dark room with a running hose extending downward from the ceiling. Also in the room was a strobe light. The effect the strobe light had on the spraying water was nothing short of cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6lOdmFdp4M

The latter, "Your Blind Movement" consisted of a large room illuminated by red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, fuchsia and pink fluorescent light bulbs. Filling the room was fog, and the result of the fog and lights created a rainbow haze that was so surreal to experience. I, quite literally, could only see color.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNx-Hik4Mus

Today I went to Die Brücke Museum and in so doing I was able to see another part of Berlin that I had not yet seen--Zehlendorf. This area (although I only saw a very small portion of it) was very nice, with architecturally interesting houses and lots of trees. Although difficult to put into words, two words that do come to mind in differentiating this section of Berlin from that of Prenzlauer Berg are, quieter and smaller.

Brücke was a little gem of a museum, though. It featured the work of the Expressionist artists from Dresden who were members of the particular Brücke group. The work featured in the museum belonged to the artists, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Mueller. Though small, the museum had a really nice collection.

As for my actual internship goings on, I have started working on a poster of old German script, as part of a program that commences in September. I have also been continuing my painting of these little box things. I enjoy doing both things immensely but unfortunately, this week I have to work in the summer program four of the five days! I am really not that fond of working in the summer program and feel that I could be much more productive working on the aforementioned duties, which I find enjoyable to do and which need to get done!

Last thing: Kelly--I will compile some photos for the MIISP website to send to you this week :)