Artistic Luxury Show

I got to go to a museum show this weekend with a few of the people from my metals class, which was exciting for me because I don't get to go to museums too often. The Cleveland Museum of Art is having a great show right now called Artistic Luxury, featuring some seriously awesome jewelry, metalwork, and glass from Fabergé, Tiffany, and Lalique. They have several rooms just full of absolutely beautiful stuff, and I love the knowledge that nearly everything there was meant to be worn or used by someone. (I think that's one of the things that puts me off about contemporary jewelry as art: We're all just supposed to imagine a "wearer" or "user". Rarely is there an actual one.) One of the pieces there is a giant vase made of 23 lbs of gold, and nobody in my studio can get over that. :) The show is up until mid-January, so if you're in Cleveland, I highly recommend it.

The rest of the museum seems to be under a lot of construction right now... There were a few rooms upstairs of some paintings and furniture, and a room of armor and weapons (which was great!), but not much other than that. Pretty much all the other exhibits had signs outside of them saying that they were opening anywhere from 2009 to 2012. How disappointing.

There was also a botanical garden, a nifty park, and a natural history museum in the area, but I didn't get to visit any of those... and hence, I didn't get very many pictures out of the trip. Luckily, getting to Cleveland from here isn't as bad of a drive as I thought it would be. When I have a free weekend sometime, I might go back...