September 23rd and 24th - Charlotte and North Carolina Museums, part 2

Driving further south, I am into the land where only half-and-half is offered with coffee.  Charlotte is a town of lots of interesting stores and restaurants, many of which are housed in modern, high-end strip-mall recreations of old shopping districts.  This took nothing away from the enjoyment of seeing old friends, the charms of the city, and the fact of its place on the map of national or international finance (e.g., Bank of America headquarters).

I read at Joseph-Beth, an enormous, airy independent bookstore nestled between a California Pizza Kitchen and a Dick's Sporting Goods.  The people who worked there couldn't have been nicer.

Both Joe Gaines, a high school friend who transplanted to Charlotte, and Cynthia Cassell, an old sorority sister from high school, live there.  They came to the reading and brought friends.  

A lively education director from the local museum came. Joe, Cynthia, and I went taken out for drinks afterwards by Joe’s mom, the inimitable Judy. 

And the next morning, Cynthia took me to breakfast at a place called the Flying Biscuit.  It's not the kind of place I would ask for skim milk, or assume the starches are vegetarian.

I had a spare day to see a lot of the museums in Charlotte.

The first was the Levine Museum of the New South.  It is more of a history than an art museum, with a few elaborately recreated spaces of haberdashery or textiles stores, or TV dinners in a living room.  

Southern history museums necessarily grapple with the history of racism and segregation.  In addition to the pictures of segregated water fountains or soda counters, 

they had some Klan paraphernalia in museum cases.

I was surprised at just how creepy it is to see a Klan robe in person.  They had a grandmaster robe in a glass case, and all I could think looking at it was that they guy wearing it definitely didn’t iron it but someone did.  It was silk.  I tried to imagine someone’s wife ironing his grandmaster Klan robe.  

As with trying to acknowledge and move on from such a fraught history, the museum tried to bring visitors' voices into the conversation.  This often took the form of laminated questions under a "What do you think?" banner, with space to attach post-it-note-sized response.  

Here are some to "Does everyone have equal rights in the South today?":

Without drowning these in talk, I thought they were so powerful, and was fascinated by the everydayness of the public debate they contain, (e.g., "I very much doubt it. Why? Eh. . . guess I'm just one of those "the glass is half empty" kinda people.")

Leaving the Levine, there was a conspicuous surplus of prepared lunches on the table in the atrium with a suggested donation sign.  In the parking garage next door, I held the elevator for two women and learned the sandwiches had been for board members (which they were).  It is the first and only time I have ever, unsolicitedly, given my business card to someone in a parking garage lift.

I drove over to the McColl Center for the Visual Arts, a repurposed church in downtown Charlotte that Hugh McColl, former CEO of Bank of America, has turned into an artist-in-residency program.  Here is another Klan hood, but a bit different:

These were called "In the Hood" by Willie Little.  The one on the right is further titled "Father."

And some big sculptures by Nick Cave. I later saw some like these at the Seattle Museum of Art.

The image at the very top of this post is, I think, by Erin V. Sotak, who had lots of beautiful soft focus black and white -- paintings of photographs -- some framed in gilded gold.  

Here is Rae Goodwin's "You Remind Me of Your Grandmother."

For the full effect of the McColl Center in its setting, it is necessary to see the sign down the street.

I saw both Mint Museums – a design museum downtown and the regular museum out in grounds.  I tire easily of paying to go to museums since, as a former museum employee, I am socialized to go for free.  At the Mint proper, I literally saw a woman have museum legs, sacked out on a couch, shoes off.  Here is a painting I just simply liked:

It is beautifully painted, by someone who looks like they like to paint.

I was driving down to Georgia but Clara, a friend of my aunt’s, had made introductions at the Greenville Museum of Art.  I stopped by – too late to meet people – about ten minutes before closing and legged it around to see the NC Wyeth paintings they had there.  One downside of being a "museum author" is that you want to introduce yourself to people but once you do, they learn that someone writing Museum Legs practically breaks out in a jog to see an entire museum in about eight minutes.  A nice note from Tom, who worked in the Greenville shop:

"You came racing into our museum last Thursday evening, about 8:00pm.  I saw you look at the Wyeth collection briefly and then you made your way into the gift shop to purchase some note cards. . . ."

Driving down from Greenville, I missed the Georgia floods and arrived at about 11pm at my mother’s house in Milledgeville.