Around the Bloch

The Bloch addition is finally open at the Nelson. A few weeks ago we went, I'd misunderstood what I'd heard on the radio and it wasn't open yet.





The bad news: a couple of ticketed displays. Still, there's a ton of stuff that's free. It used to be the Nelson was only free on Sundays (or was it Saturdays?), so I'm spoiled expecting to walk in on a donation-only basis. Which you can still do, but there's a couple of points you can't go past.





Em bitched about her tired legs and sore feet the whole time, but that's about par these days. She's not in as many pictures as she used to be because she tends to scowl at the camera or hold up her hand in front of her face and so on.



Ahh, tweenage moods and attitudes.





It was great to see some old friends that hadn't been on display lately. The Nelson looks a lot like the Met at first glance, but I realized when I was in New York a few years back, the Nelson is basically a scale model. I don't think I'd be exaggerating to say the Egypt section of the Met was bigger than the entire Nelson-Atkins.





Except now, I don't know how the square footage compares, but the Bloch building is massive. Some of these paintings I remember seeing when I was there as a child. I didn't even remember the artist's name or the painting title, but I remembered being fascinated with the Heineken bottles and litter, reflections in a window, and so on.



Also saw a Warhol I never knew was in the Nelson collection. I've seen it in books or whatever, but never in person.



As we were on our way out, I spotted a piece in its own room, a bunch of crystal figures on the floor, I think supposed to be representations of the constellations. I had Mo trying to pull away and run, Em complaining, and so on, and I was starting to scope it out, and snapped a picture. A guard told me I couldn't take pictures of that one. So I didn't take any more, but I do have this one, illicit shot to share with you. The picture didn't really turn out that well, but I guess it's my way of making faces behind the guard's back.