The first Thursday of the month in Seattle is free museum day. For those that know us well, this is right up our alley. The initial and unrealistic goal for the day had been to see 6 or 7 of the museums in town. The first and best museum we saw was the Seattle Art Museum. (You know you've gone to a bunch of museums in a day, when you forget one. We actually went into Chinatown to the Wing Luke museum about Asian Pacific Americans first). Luck was with us once again and we got in on some tours. Our guide first took us to see the Native art on the second floor which took up a couple of rooms. All the pieces were unique and fantastic in their own way (though Isaiah and I did differ in opinion on the piece that was painted half black and half white with me thinking that I could have done it and Isaiah thinking it had great composition (Actually, I was thinking that was part of the point. Why do people hear good music and think, "Hey, I could do that" and start bands, but when they see simplistic art say with disdain, "I could do that" and then don't-I). As we viewed the Native art the guide explained that for a time in history Native artwork was banned as the early US tried to force the Natives to assimilate. In a gesture to honor their culture and as a funny practical joke, the Natives would gift elaborately sculpted pipes to the settlers. What the settlers did not realize was that they were chock full of beautiful religious and cultural symbolism. The second tour explored some of the African art of the third floor. The first piece in their collection was a wooden man with nails stuck into him. The guide explained that this wooden doll was used to settle arguments. Once an agreement was reached, a nail would be hammered into the doll and would symbolize the end of the argument forever. A very helpful tool for anyone with kids.
The Museum of Flight is outside of town but can be reached by the 124 bus. Unbeknownst to us, though the museum did have a free day it didn't begin until 5. We killed time outside the museum napping in the sun and then went in to explore. Since we still had other museums to see we decided to try and do the tour in an hour. We hurried along through gliders, to the Wright brothers, to World War I and II and then to infinity and beyond..well at least to the moon landing and hopped on the bus all in just under an hour. Several different sources had heralded that the Experience Music Project museum would be free until 8p. After hurrying by bus and then by foot we discovered that, in fact, it does not participate in the free day anymore. Choosing to skip the exorbitant price we walked to the Olympic Sculpture park instead. Our tour guide at SAM had told us about a festival happening in the park and that it was a can't miss. As our luck had run out for the day we did miss it. The festival in question starts next week. We tried not to let the miss events spoil the remainder of the day and settled for doing the very loosely "planned" Art Walk with no apparent set upon start time or route that we could determine (Damn flaky artists. One of the flaky artists admitted to us that they, artists, really like fireworks and sun-I). At 8p we walked around 1st and 2nd street to find artist after artist packing up their artwork. Apparently it did not start at 8p after all. We did find success and beautiful exhibits at the OK Hotel and then called it a night. (As for the actual building, "OK" was a bit of an oversell-I) Back to Bellevue and sleeping in a neighborhood. -A
Note: No real pictures of the fireworks or art, as the camera couldn't do them justice.
SAM (Seattle Art Museum)
Museum of Flight
First flying car at Museum of Flight
Statue at Olympic Park
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