Outshine

I gave my seminar at the workshop yesterday and said goodbye to friends old and new, colleagues, staff, and so on. Today is a hello to tourist mode, with me exploring aspects of Vienna. It is raining today, so it is a good thing that I’d planned to spend a lot of time looking at art indoors.

I’m resting in the cafe at MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst), between bouts of exploration of the exhibits. There’s a modern art and modern science (together, and of course modern means early 20th Century) exhibit on the upper floors. They have the usual chatter about how the artists were supposed to have been influenced by what was going on in science, especially Physics, at the time. It is worth seeing if you’re in town and have not seen that sort of thing presented before. As you know, I love it when people make the effort to place science alongside the other aspects of our culture for the general public to view, so I am pleased this is on. I found it an ok exhibit, but can’t really imagine how a lot of the visitors will make some of the connections if they did not already know them since there’s very little in the way of attempts at explanation of the science or some of the lovely scientific instruments and illustrations they have on display. But, on the other hand, some of the machines are so nice to look at, maybe it simply does not matter so much.

The 6th floor has some lovely neon pieces by Brigitte Kowanz. I took the liberty of sharing her 2010 piece “Outshine” with you. See photo. (Some of you may recall the series of posts I did showing three of Dan Flavin’s striking pieces, three years ago after a visit to LACMA. See e.g. here and see the list of related posts for more.)

-cvj