keith haring

The Baker Museum in Naples (Florida)

/ antonioyrocinante / 1 Comment

With money to spend and absolutely no culture to be had (other than Tampa/St. Pete -like the Dali Museum to the North or Miami, the Perez Museum has an important 20th and 21st C art collection to the East), the rich folks of Naples decided to buy culture. Naples, a retirement village for wealthy Midwesterners bought a phenomenal Symphony, and they built Artis Naples as a space to hold the Philharmonic and The Baker Art Museum,

There are many mentions here on the importance of friendship and mentoring, so I will not write about going to Naples (Florida) to visit my old colleague, boss, and friend Edu, and my old student Lukas. But I have never dedicated a post to the Baker Museum in Naples. Voilà:

I recently crossed Florida on the ecological disaster that is Alligator Alley -the highway connecting East and West Florida while cutting the flow of water that is the “River of Grass” that is the Everglades (read about that here).

With a bit of time before meeting Edu, I went back to the Baker Museum, the small but exquisite art museum in Naples.

When I visited there was a great exhibition on Andy Warhol -which is not hard since most of his work were silkscreens which were produced in considerable numbers. Another great exhibit was on the composer George Gershwin and his relationship with artists in other media, mostly photographers and the visual arts including Modigliani. There was a small exhibition on Magritte and his surrealism, and finally, there was art from all the local schools. This last exhibition, on the top floor of the museum was packed with all the children/artists and their parents.

It was great to return to this museum and to get my fix of beauty and art. If you are in Southwest Florida and you have a bit of time to kill, visit the Baker Museum.

Norton Museum of Art

/ antonioyrocinante / 2 Comments

The other day I finally had a chance to visit the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. I was thinking I was going to visit a small museum with a couple of obligatory Impressionists, a couple of Cubist pieces, maybe a few pieces from between the wars, plus some modern random stuff. Well, as usual, I was wrong!

To begin with, the museum is quite large – much larger than say, the Baker Museum in Naples. It consists of a three-floor modern building (designed by Foster) attached to the Art Deco original, plus a sweet garden with a nice modern sculpture collection.

After the necessary Covid protocols: temperature and hand sanitizing, I paid the steep $18 fee (plus $5 for parking). My museum viewing strategy, started years ago (possibly induced by the Guggenheim in NYC) is to take the elevator to the top floor and then work my way down. What was my surprise when I landed on the third floor and I saw a couple of massive 17th and 18th C. portraits! (The first painting you come to is an early 20th C. Orientalist, but probably because it was the only one of the genre there and they did not know where to put it). The third floor has a surprising collection of 16th to 18th C. paintings including Rubens and Tiepolo, and some sculptures, including a gorgeous Spanish wood carved Virgin Mary.

The second floor is mostly Chinese art where I am quite lost. There are Shang, Ming, Jin, and Qing Dynasty pieces which are all gorgeous.

The ground floor is where the majority of the collection is. And what a great collection it is! (for a smaller, private museum in Florida). Sure, you have your unavoidable Cézanne, Miró, Picasso (sculpture and painting!) and Monet, but also rarer Gaugin, Brancusi, Gris and so forth. The American art collection is solid:  A couple of Georgia O´Keeffes, Norman Rockwell, an early Jackson Pollock, Calder, less known but highly influential Milton Avery, even a Man Ray chess set! The old and new buildings are seamlessly connected, so you do not really know what part of the building you are in, unless, like me, you stumble into the old patio, which is a beauty.

A big part of the ground floor is dedicated to Contemporary art and the usually massive installations they require (maybe to compensate for technique? – no, to be fair, I must confess my old fashioned taste and lack of knowledge on the Contemporary art front.)

The garden and sculpture collection are also delightful. Who knew that Keith Haring did sculpture? well at least one, it is here!

There is the de rigueur over-priced cafeteria, but it is spacious and modern, and the food is good. You can sit indoor (as soon as Covid allows) or outside.

So all-in-all a highly recommended visit if you happen to be an art lover in South East Florida.