A Glimpse Through the Guggenheim and a Return to 15 Years Ago
On Monday, I decided it was high time I visited the Guggenheim Museum. I had been to New York numerous times but never gotten around to it. Well, despite the fact that the building was under renovation, and I didn't get to see it in all its architectural glory from the outside, the visit certainly was worth it. The biggest current exhibition was that of Spanish painters, from El Greco to Picasso. I had seen a lot of works by Spanish painters both at El Prado in Madrid and elsewhere, but I really appreciated the way in which the Guggenheim had arranged the exhibition. Instead of ordering paintings chronologically or by time periods and art movements, the museum had decided to break with tradition, so to speak, and had arranged the works thematically. Thus one could see Goya and Picasso side by side and pick up the similarities between their work which might otherwise go unnoticed by the amateur art lover (and which I myself would never think to explore proactively). Turns out, that although living in different centuries and embodying two distinctly different art movements, their work had more overlap than I ever would have thought. One could pick up just where Picasso had been influenced by Goya and other predecessors, for example. Just something I thought was worth noting.
And as if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, I also got to meet a middle-school classmate of mine I hadn't seen in 15 years. Funnily enough, he found me through this very blog and got in touch. It's amazing what Google and the internet can do for you these days. Who would have thought that after going to school together in Harare, Zimbabwe, we would end up meeting up 15 years later in New York City? Never in a million years would I have believed that. But, life is full of twists and turns and keeps us on our toes. I personally appreciate such off-course occurrences.
Anyone got similar unexpected "turn of events" stories to share?
4 comments:
I had a similar rendez-vous 18 years later not too long ago, again in New York.
Now that you mentioned Goya and Picasso, it makes sense, some of the Los Caprichos are echoed in La Guernica, maybe also Maja and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
care to share more? who was it with--classmate, childhood friend, etc. and how did you get back in touch? i love to hear stories of how people get back in touch with someone they haven't seen in years or meet unexpectedly on the street.
It was pretty trivial, although very pleasant. A mutual friend met this girl I had a crush on in 4th grade and told her about me. Turns out she's been living in the States without me knowing. So we met in New York. I wrote a story about it :)
Trivial is good. Sometimes the most trivial things are the most rewarding. And as far as meeting people from your far past...it's funny how you are transported back in time to the moment when you last saw that person and start remembering more things from that period more vividly, things you might otherwise not recollect at all. At least that's how it is with me. Strange how that works. It's like seeing that person makes pathways connect in your brain and lead to stored-away memories.
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