visiting my church for this week's tour guide continuing ed

We all met up at NOMA’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden yesterday morning to begin our tour.  It was hot, but at 10am, not as hot as it would be at noon, & we were determined to complete our visit to NOMA with the garden.  Several of my tour guides had NEVER been…can we say, sacrilege?!  All agreed it’s just as beautiful as I’d told them & marveled at the collection, the meandering paths through the garden, the lovely & well maintained landscaping.  Only one other tour guide in our group is a nola native, so I explained the story of the Besthoff family, which was the “B” in the old K&B drugstore chain.  I told them of K&B purple & how the Besthoff’s donated their entire collection of sculptures to the garden, & were a big part of it’s creation.  In fact, the Besthoff’s still collect & donate to the garden today…what a family, such menschs!  I also introduced my friends to my old favorite that once sat in K&B Plaza when I was a child, Three Figures and Four Benches by George Segal.  They loved it, of course, we took the obligatory pictures sitting with the figures.  I told them how I used to sit with my old friends on the bench & chat with them as a child.  And, I wasn't the only one doing the teaching, some of my friends knew sculptors that I didn't, so I learned from them, as well.

Once we’d made it through the entire garden & were sufficiently sweaty & hot, we headed into the marvelously air-conditioned museum…lord have mercy, did that feel good!  After we checked our sun hats & bottles of water, I brought them to the middle of the staircase in the Great Hall to tell them about Rodin’s Age of Bronze.  The sculpture which created such a scandal when first exhibited at the 1877 Salon in Paris that Rodin was considered an imposter.  Spectators said it was simply too realistic to have been sculpted from scratch, instead it must have been cast from a live nude.  This was not the case, & Rodin decided to prove his talents to the art world the next time by creating a figure on a much larger scale, so there could be no further speculation.  There are many casts of this sculpture, in addition to the one at NOMA, there’s also one is in the Orsay.  I loved seeing it in the Orsay b/c you can actually see it in the round, unfortunately, the sculpture is tucked into a niche at NOMA, so you can only see the front side.  Of course, it’s the museum’s most prized possession, so they want to show it off, which I understand, it does make quite an impression as you first enter the museum.  Before the museum had acquired the Rodin, Vigee Lebrun’s massive portrait of Marie Antoinette had sat in the very same place greeting you as you walked in.  Vigee Lebrun’s Marie Antoinette is what I still picture there when I think of the museum b/c she was there throughout my childhood.  But do not fret, she has not been lost, she’s just been relocated to the 2^nd floor with the rest of the late 18^th century French paintings, so next time you visit the museum, make sure to go say hello, & tell her Leah sent you! 

We made our way through all three floors of the museum & saw almost everything exhibited.  Walking a museum, especially, NOMA because it’s so familiar, is like a religious experience for me.  I’m not really a practicing Jew, but I’ve always said that for me, art is a religion & museums are my churches.  So, I’m very pleased to report that our trip to NOMA & the sculpture garden, my church, was a great success!  After that, we certainly deserved a classy lunch at Café Degas, especially since it’s in the neighborhood.  I even treated myself to a glass of Sancerre to help cool off. 

Sadly, I won’t be able to make our group’s continuing ed next week, but that’s because I’ll be in the middle of training for the Ken Burns Jazz Event tours coming up in early October.  I can’t wait, it should be great fun, & I’m very excited to learn more about nola jazz.  I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know nearly enough to truly call myself a New Orleanian.  But, fortunately, that will soon be remedied! 

I’ll be joining my friend on her tour of St. Louis #1 cemetery tomorrow morning.  I hope to eventually do tours of this cemetery, too, but I have much to learn.  And, my lessons begin tomorrow.