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| Alte Pinakothek |
Our first off day saw us back in
Munich for a museum marathon! The Pinakothek museums (a complex of 5 different
warehouses of glorious human artistic achievement) was our first port of call.
The museums are grouped together in the Kunstareal district – a lovely area
bounded by the Koenigsplatz on one end and the Altstadt
on the other.
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| Playmobil Drurer |
We
left Bayreuth early so as to have our noses pressed to the glass as soon as
they opened. Our time is so limited, and today’s plan was so ambitious that not
a second could be wasted. We started with the Alte Pinakothek and were
disappointed to discover that fully half of the galleries were off limits due
to a long-term renovation designed to make it a good green citizen. They need a
renovation to their lighting program – they use the white, light screening
window treatments, and that combined with LEDs reflected down from the ceiling
recesses was a horrible combination. The glare on the surface of the paintings
was terrible. You wandered the gallery, craning and contorting your neck in the
vain quest to find the magic perspective that would allow you to actually see
the whole image. It was like that “Cinema Sins” joke about the lens flares – Renaissance
Redux presented by J.J. Abrahms and Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen.
They
have a marvelous collection and had thoughtfully pulled some of their heavy
hitters from galleries under construction into special exhibition spaces. We
will spare you our tedious prose on the glories of the collection; you can read
all about it here:
Next
it was on to the Neue Pinakothek – this was our favorite museum of the day! It
is such a charming space. Although it is small, the collection is wonderful, the
layout is beautiful, the lighting was significantly better than at the Alte Pinakothek,
and it posseses what we have come to see is the most valuable attribute a
museum can have – wooden floors! See more about why you wish you were here: https://www.pinakothek.de/besuch/neue-pinakothek
See?
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| Neue Pinakothek |
We
left the Pinakothek universe for a visit to the Glyptothek – two temples
erected to the art of the Greek and Roman world. One building houses a series
of lovely rooms housing their collection of marble statuary (principally Roman
copies of Greek originals – including the exquisite Barberini Faun) surrounding
a central court. The other building has an extraordinary collection of Greek red
and black figure-ware and a marvelous series of rooms highlighting the vast
superiority of the Etruscans to us. Seriously, when you look at the spectacular
artistry, innovation, and just general awesomeness of civilizations long gone
it makes you pretty sure that evolution is an exclusively biological
phenomenon.
Hobbling
on swollen feet and clutching at our strained backs, we gamely set out for the
der Moderne. We just aren’t as young as I think we are when I plan these trips!
Anyhow, the Pinakothek museums each have a different late night and so we had
until eight! Ten hours is a lot of museum, but the variety of venues and
collections kept the Stendhal Syndrome from kicking in – to be fair, if half
the Alte Pinakothek hadn’t been closed, we might not have made it! Also, at
this point the off-spring was bleating about child abuse and a cold drink, but
we powered on.
This museum had enormous sections given over to special
exhibitions and a whole floor dedicated to design. We were able to show Z a
Commodore 64 AND a dot matrix printer! The paintings on permanent display
occupy just a few galleries, but there were some wonderful Fauves, lots of
German Expressionists, and a nice sampling of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism.
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| Glyptothek |
We
crawled out and dragged ourselves down to the tourist fleshpots of the Altstadt.
We decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the Ratskeller – we wanted to dine
in the gorgeous courtyard and gorge on local bier, wein, brot, and kasse! Sadly,
the courtyard area was completely encased in scaffolding (which made the
disclaimer on the menu about the prices being so high because of the ambience
pretty bitter!), but the food was wonderful, and we were far to whipped to get
up and seek out other options!
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| Pinakothek der Moderne |
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