The three of us went to The Museum of Russian Art, the only non-profit museum in the US devoted to Russian art, which is relatively new. It is housed in a Spanish mission style former Congregational church. They didn’t allow photography in the inside, but I pulled some images from their website for this blog. There were 3 exhibits currently running. The first we pored over was called Shades of Red and featured paintings done by artists during the Soviet era. It depicted the freedom given artists immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution, then the strictures imposed by Stalin on the style of art permitted which essentially lasted until the collapse of the USSR. The 3 of us especially liked the one of the coal worker.
The second exhibit showed early photos of special buildings in and near St. Petersburg. Peter and I have both been there, but nearly 20 years apart. We compared our recollections of several of the buildings. The third exhibit was the favorite of the 3 of us. It displayed porcelains from czars and czarinas, beginning with those from Czarina Elizabeth who was the main force behind starting the porcelain industry in Russia.
Peter directed us to the Midtown Central Market, housed in the ground floor of a classic former Sears Roebuck store. It is a great place for exploration of various cultures. Some of the signs are in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Hmong, Somali and Arabic. About half the stores are food stalls with a wide variety of standard and ethnic foods. Ardith chose a veggie pizza. Jim and Peter went to a place with East African – oriented food. Peter had the veggie delight – a combination of rice, veggies and an East African curry. Jim enjoyed a camel burger and mango juice. The proprietors said they sold the only camel burgers in Minnesota. Jim had never had one before. None of the food stalls offered fountain sodas (well, here the word is pop). There was a wide variety of bottled and canned drinks available.
There was also a variety of clothing and knick-knacks being offered. Ardith showed Jim some brightly colored silk shirts and he opted to buy a blue one.
As we were driving from the market to our next destination, Jim pulled into a semi-legal parking place and popped out of the car to take pictures of several murals at the intersection he just passed through. Some of the neighborhoods have lots of murals.
Our next destination was the University of Minnesota, where Peter works as academic advisor for the Art History and Anthropology departments. He showed us both of his offices and introduced us to several people in the departments. We got a great tour of the anthropology labs from the guy in charge of the labs.
Peter had arranged for us to go to the James Ford Bell collection in the largest library on campus. This is the collection of objects from before 1800. We had a good chat with Margaret Borg from the staff. Since Jim especially enjoys maps, she brought out 2 volumes of a 12 volume atlas published in Germany in 1611. One of them is of the Americas and the other Germany, the country of Jim’s ancestors. We were permitted to pore over them as much as we wanted without gloves! Ardith had originally thought we might have to have Margaret turn pages for us.
Margaret also brought out a “portolan chart” that was made in Genoa 1489. This is a type of navigation chart that shows reasonably accurate information about harbors and hazards, features lines emanating like radii from a circle, and shows a compass. This chart was quite large and was stored in its own box. We were also permitted to touch this, but did so very little. It was made of a very heavy material. The map covered all of Europe, some of North Africa and much of the middle East. The writing was done so that it could be read from the nearest edge. There were small flags, emphasizing places that were under the control of Genoa and Venice. It wouldn’t surprise me if Columbus consulted this very chart before his first voyage to the new world.
The German atlas had perhaps 100 maps of the German-speaking areas of Europe with a few that covered larger areas. Some were highly detailed, showing tiny villages. The maps of the Americas were very sketchy away from coasts, since very little exploration had yet been done there. We spent over 2 hours combing the wonderful maps.
After that we popped into a nearby yarn shop, where Ardith made a small purchased, then went off to the Mapps Cafe (which features maps on its walls) for beverages.
The Black Forest Inn – a German restaurant – was our last stop for the day. Peter’s friends Karen and Andy were there to perform at the restaurant’s Spargelfest, a week plus celebration of asparagus. They have a special menu of asparagus dishes, from appetizers to dessert. This can be viewed at http://www.blackforestinnmpls.com/pdf/sparg2011.pdf. Jim had the pastry wrapped spargel appetizer, while Ardith and Peter stuck with potato pancakes. For our main course, Jim and Peter both had spargel peroges (pirogues) while Ardith enjoyed the spargel and ham. For dessert, we shared a hazelnut torte and a sacher torte. While the asparagus was wonderful, we were saturated with it and not ready to venture to the spargel and rhubarb strudel. We were totally stuffed with delicious food.
Our motivation for going there was to see Karen and Andy (a.k.a. Dreamland Faces) perform. In this guise, Karen play accordion and Andy alternates between accordion and bowed saw. They played music that had German roots. We really enjoyed the music, though other dinner patrons did a lot of talking. After their first set, they joined us at our table for their entire break. Karen’s day job is with the Minnesota historical society where she often deals with old maps. When they were in Washington this winter, they visited my map curation efforts at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum. Karen said that she regularly uses the web site I built to give folks access to those maps.
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