Trying to make a purse out of a sow’s ear
It’s a gorgeous day here in Minneapolis and as I have been trotting around with colleagues going to meetings, droves of people in Twins baseball shirts have been headed over for the noon game to watch the Twins play the Detroit Tigers (I think) in their brand new stadium. At one point, I stopped walking and felt the sunshine on my face – it did help with my summertime cold blues.
When work was done I decided to take a walk and get some more of that sweet sunshine stuff and so I headed to the Walker Art Center, in particular to look at the Herzog de Meuron addition. I learned that the museum is considered 5th in the nation in terms of its collection but the reasons weren’t immediately apparent.
For one thing, I might be biased because I feel crummy.
So I went into this interactive room where you can lie on these cocoon like banana hammocks and listen to Jimi Hendrix and watch images of him flashing on the ceiling and walls. Then I went over to the next interactive room where an animated dolphin was on a screen awaiting you to type in questions on a keyboard – the dolphin has artificial intelligence, which intrigued me after reading about how advanced AI has become at IBM in recent years due to guess what? you got it – blogs, which are just adding to the brain database of AI. So I sat down and started typing:
Question: Will the BP oil spill ruin the Gulf?
Dolphin: Good chance.
Question: Is there anything we can do about it?
Dolphin: There is.
Question: What should I do?
Dolphin: What do you look like?
That stumped me. So then I thought these were some stock answers and so I tested the Dolphin:
Question: Is there a god?
Dolphin: I believe.
Then I moved on to the next exhibit, which consisted of a lot of the historic paintings from Walker’s mansion, the endower of the museum. Interesting. World class – not particularly not like the Art Institute in Chicago or the Henry Moore sculpture garden in Paris.
Next many rooms of Argentinian Guillermo Kuitca – again large scale interesting, nothing super compelling for me.
Then I had to get out of there – my nose was running and I started feeling like I needed solar rays to get me better, so I headed out to the sculpture garden on the side, which contained some interesting pieces from the usual suspects – Calder, Serra, Moore – but as I sat on a bench, then laid on the bench, praying for sun recharging, I thought about our own sculpture garden at home and realized ours was more world class and prettier.
Then I wanted to be home. As nice as the weather is here, as accommodating as everyone is here, it ain’t home. So I walked a long way back to the hotel and went straight to the bar and asked for a shot of vinegar.
I’m going to kill this virus – one way or another.