Tag: free

Yale University [FREE] Art Gallery – New Haven Connecticut

I know life is getting...grim for a whole lot of people right now but that only confirms that free entertainment and beauty are more needed now than ever and the Yale Art Gallery is free with so much to offer!

We expected a nice museum, though not enormous, maybe with a famous name or two tossed in we can recognize but no, this place was huge. Four whole floors just chuck full of fine art with so many famous names. A real smorgasbord of human creativity that touched on so many cultures and time periods around the world.

Of course I was already in a good mood because I managed to parallel park almost directly in front of the door in one try, during traffic, without attracting an audience of spectateurs. And then I had enough quarters to stuff that goddamn parking meter until it timed out. It’s the little things in life we must celebrate.

ANYWAY. The first exhibit we walked by on the main floor was the African section. I admit, I do not know much about African art or culture, which I realize I could be better at. These pieces were mostly tribal but from all over the continent. A lot of wild animals, masks, colorful figurines. Granted we were the only ones there and the guard followed us around like he thought we were going to stage a heist. Little intense. But I suppose… we’re both white and our ancestors were likely dicks sooo… I get it. But that’s not to say some white people aren’t capable of being respectful.

To be fair since we were there during an intense lull the first two floors had guards who continued to follow us. It was… uncomfortable. At one point I found a silver serving tray made by Paul Revere and went to point out the plaque that this information was written on when a guard barked at me not to touch the exhibits (in this case literal furniture hiding the damn plaque.) My inner 8-year-old knee-jerk responded by yelling, “I DIDN’T TOUCH ANYTHING!” And I honest to god didn’t. Not that my dirty paws could turn furniture (much we’d already seen at antique stores) into dust but you know, respect and all. The last concerning encounter we had was with a very large black guard literally hiding in the shadows of a nook waited for us to pass before saying in a booming voice, “How are you today?” But it wasn’t his stature that made me weary, nor the fact he was hiding in the shadows, it was the pained wheezing that came after his salutations that made me want to ask if he was OK. His facial expression did not seem to be the sort who’d want to be checked in on so I uncomfortably scuttled away, wondering if I was being trolled for being just another timid looking white chick. (I’m totally fine with a little teasing if this was the case.)

Luckily people started to fill the museum and we stopped getting tailed right around the time I squealed with excitement to see not one, not two, but three Van Goghs, none of which I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen almost his entire catalogue save for those in personal collections and Starry Night which is always on tour. That one’s on my bucket list but this one… was a lovely surprise!

We also got to see some Georgia O’Keefe landscapes, some decidedly not ballerina Degas, a couple Jackson Pollocks which looked exactly like the projectile baby vomit and/or splooge I thought it’d look like, quite a few Picassos that seemed like a decent into madness, er, I mean Cubanism, and some others that sounded vaguelly familiar.

These notables were smattered about in different places but we got to see a lot. Roman pottery and mosaics, a likely haunted ancient Meso-American doll, another Meso-American figurine that looked bizarrely like the trash Muppet in The Labyrinth, a gorgeous intensely ornate Buddha that was courting a young photographer who was taking photos of EVERY angle, a delightful depiction of Kali, another Buddha that was thin and serene, some unreasonably jacked baby Jesuses, some Cherubs that probably came from the depths of Hell, some fun abstract sculptures, an exquisite painting of a baby declaring her mom’s titty as her territory, some photography that gave me some ideas about my own, a bunch of “you know what a baby/horse/cat/dog look like, right?” Kinda paintings. A cursed jester, a terrifying baby tinman, some other super questionable scenes on canvas. Oh! And some really impressive shadow puppets! Which were colored on their back sides??

We were having so much fun by this time we had to go back out to feed the meter again. All and all we were there for almost three hours. We saw everything and even swung by the gift shop to buy a magnet and some post cards.

This place was so worth the drive and the fact it was free was astounding. And it was right next to the British Art Museum if you really want to be a glutton for free art. We were pretty exhausted though so we saved this for another day. Perhaps after I remember more than just Banksy as British artists…

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Mead Art Museum – Amherst Massachusetts

After enjoying the Beneski’s Natural History Museum it was only a short walk across campus to the Mead Art Museum which was also free.

I noticed the tower out front before we got there and realized it was part of the art museum and I enjoyed taking photos of different angles.

Inside the art museum there was one woman at the check-in and a few other visitors wandering around. The art museum was pretty small and had a very disjointed collection that seemed to be a completely random sampling of different unrelated topics from ancient Etruscan engravings, to recreations of destroyed funeral art, to a room decorated more like a medieval castle than a college, to a visiting black art exhibit, to a painting of a woman being harassed by a cherub weilding a knitting needle. The latter was my favorite because of the expression on the woman’s face that seemed to say, “It’s back again isn’t it?! I can feel it’s sticky hands over my shoulder!”

My other favorite part was the visiting black art exhibit which unlike the rest had a unifying theme making it seem more approachable and less neurotic and all over the place. We had seen everything in maybe 20 minutes. And that included a lot of dawdling.

I’ve certainly been to more impressive art museums but it was free and near the Natural History Museum so why not visit anyway?

From here we attempted to go to the Emily Dickinson Museum also on campus but that museum charges entry and apparently has the sketchy hours of a salt water fish store. As such we found out it was closed when we drove up.

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Beneski Natural History Museum – Amherst Massachussetts

You know with the economy crashing as badly as it has been I have a feeling more of y’all will be joining me in finding the best FREE entertainment New England has to offer! On this particular day it was the Beneski Natural History Museum attached to the university in Amherst Massachusetts.

This is one of the things I love about New England is their colleges and universities are usually quite proud to share their discoveries and collections with people, even people who do not attend said institutions, which is great because even though I was once academically inclined I now do not have a cent to give towards such lofty endeavors but that doesn’t mean my love for the sciences has waned.

The Natural History Museum is attached to an active science building. There are classes going on in the back but there’s pretty rocks in the hallway just outside said classrooms to enjoy if you’re quiet. I was hoping to eavesdrop on a paleontology lecture as I was surrounded by the aforementioned pretty rocks but instead my eyes glassed over at the sound of someone trying to make unsolvable math problems exciting in two different classrooms. Math. It’s never liked me and I never liked it. But the rocks were cool… there was even a display on rocks and minerals found here in New England and I had NO IDEA were here but now I’ll be looking! And the variety… my god, I’d never heard of most of these little earth treasures.

However I didnt swing by today to tell you about hallways, the main part of the museum was probaly more notable! It had more fossils than anything. Most of the big displays were brought back during one exhibition the college hosted in the 1920’s when all you needed was a $100 car, a pick ax, and a vague destination out west somewhere. The colorful details if this story were everywhere to be read and enjoyed.

But there were also drawers, so many drawers! Each just asking to be opened with all sorts of fun stuff… everything from trilobites to turtle fossils. My favorite displays included an Irish elk, two beautiful archapteryx complete with fossilized feathers, and a sea scorpion which is the state fossil of New York. Also the basement which had dinosaur tracks and dinosaur skin imprints lining all the walls.

And since I seem to be writing this entry backwards I will say the exhibits in the entry were very well displayed and even included a cute little dinosaur I’d never heard of and the school’s mascot: the mighty mastodon. A very excitable student greeted us and told us to ask any questions we had. I didn’t ask anything but I did learn the US used to have tiny camels running around and there’s a rock called wulfinite that’s is a gorgeous orange…

I guess that’s where I’ll leave you until tomorrow when I’ll tell you where we walked from here.

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Peabody Natural History Museum – New Haven Connecticut

There’s few things more alluring than the chance to see dinosaurs. Add to that the fact this museum was free and we were all on board. To the dinosaurs!!

Of course being a natural history museum there was a lot more than dinosaurs but they were the first thing we saw – specifically a life size triceratops guarding the outside of the building and several pterodactyl fossils just in the lobby. Already I was endeared. From here we wandered into a large room with mostly prehistoric ice age fossils – all the most beloved creatures from the time – a mammoth, a sabre tooth tiger, even a moa which I lovingly call a “12 foot murder bird.” It was a nice display.

This wasn’t the end of the fossils. There was also marine fossils, including a precambrian section with an anomolocarus, a whole dinosaur room, and even a huge sea turtle in a large sitting area near the bathrooms. Also near the bathrooms was a super cool little water bottle refilling station claiming to have saved the world from thousands of plastic bottles. I liked that!

The museum also had a selection of very well done taxidermy of unusual species – my favorite was an aye aye, as well as displays about how taxidermy is done, as well as a living lab with leaf cutter ants and butterflies. For the more technical minds there were displays of the evolution of various technologies, for history buffs there was a very touching display of archeological finds including a Mesopotamian legal document showing a woman selling her own children into slavery to spare them from starvation after losing her husband, and finally there were several rooms dedicated to rocks and minerals that were far more fascinating than I had anticipated. Things I’d never seen – including one that looked like rolls of fabric and another spikey creation that made me itchy looking at it.

All and all we spent a couple hours in this museum and for being free I was quite impressed! I would definitely recommend it to any curious minds looking for something to do in the area.

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Dinosaur Footprints – Holyoke MA

During our last visit to the Eyrie House Ruins we noticed a sign aside the road promising dinosaur footprints. We didn’t have the energy to check it out then but this time we did! And of course with four people this time half the group was less than thrilled at the idea of more hiking. However the sign said it was maybe 300 feet to the destination at hand… which is nothing. So off we went!

And we ended up in this weird little rock outcropping with a mural of dinosaurs on it. We were still missing the point until one of us yelled, “Oh my God, there really are dinosaurs!” And looking down there were in fact a series of tracks from several different kinds of dinosaurs. They were eroded from being in the elements but still visible if you knew what you were looking for. Is it worth going out just for this? Maybe not, but it is totally worth a detour if you’re in the area anyway…

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