September 27th and 28th - Birmingham, AL

I arrived in Birmingham on Sunday afternoon in time to drop my things with Dick and Louise Cecil, my hosts and parents of Grey, my host in Philadelphia,

before going to the home of Gail Andrews and Dick Marchase for a wine and cheese reception with museum trustees and staff.  


Gail is the longtime director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, recent chairwoman of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and longtime, kindly, insightful supporter of Museum Legs, the project.  


It had been raining in Birmingham for weeks, all the doors of old houses sticking as they were opened or shut.  Taking advantage of a crisp and sunny afternoon, we pulled all the chairs out onto their front porch.  It was a fascinating conversation, and I felt a little like an oscillating fan sitting in the middle of a long porch tracking from end to end in the manner of someone watching a tennis match.

I say this genuinely that I hugely admire people who can practice something, anything, and think about it theoretically at the same time.  I was therefore not only so appreciative of Gail and Dick's hospitality, but also Gail's ability to think so much about the theoretical role of museums while being so busy actually running one.  We seem to talk most about the capacity of museums to connect themselves more the creativity, and the huge reservoir of ways in which that is possible.

Two close family friends also came to the reception, Mark Hadley, a neurosurgeon, and Madame Classe, my high school French teacher.  Dr. Hadley is usually in scrubs, in a double-breasted suit, or in a t-shirt and jeans.  It being Sunday, he was in the last.  He strode purposefully up the driveway, participated gamely in the conversation about the role of museums, and then afterwards confided, "I'm not usually in this setting, talking about this stuff."  This seems exactly the point of Museum Legs: how can someone who is good enough with his hands to operate on people's spines, and visually astute enough to read an MRI like the back of his hand not feel that his work is more connected to art -- the idea that art is not a rarefied disciplinary area but a universal language of visual and creative expression, of discovery and progress?  Dr. Hadley (whom I am supposed to call Mark) and I agreed to email on this topic.


Sitting at her kitchen table at the end of the party, Gail asked me if I planned to work in museums again, and I didn’t know.


The next morning, Gail and I were slated to speak in Cameron Gaede's first-period art history class at my old high school, Altamont.  It was the same class that launched me into studying art, taught by Martin Hames.

As a practical lesson on museum management, Gail almost had to cancel in order to go to a high-priority meeting.  She was able to stop by for the first part of class, generously staying as long as possible, and then did a “show not tell” further introduction to museum work by having to go into the office.

Again, on the theme of her interest in museum betterment, she asked all of the students their experiences in the museum and how they thought the museum could do things they would like.  The Birmingham Museum of Art is unusual in its civic charter which makes the museum free.  It is not always clear if everyone knows that is the case. 


I toured around the school with Cameron Gaede and Margaret Whiteside, who runs some alumni programs 

(Margaret on the left, Cameron on the right), saw Mrs. Whiteside, the head of school who had taught Latin when I was there (Salve, Magistra), 

and visited with Susan Driggers, a head of alumni relations, before leaving.


Madame Classe took me to lunch at a wonderful French restaurant, Cafe de Paris, run by two jovial men from Gabon and Martinique, respectively, calling to mind the lesson many years before on the Francophone countries around the globe.  They love to talk to Madame in French.  The part of that I most understood was when one said to her (in French), "I am going to talk in English now so that she [me] can understand."

I spent the afternoon at the art museum -- yet another gesture of hospitality toward me, as the museum was closed that day.  

The staff were in the last stages of preparing for a big traveling exhibition and, as anyone would be, a bit overwhelmed from carrying the project across the finish line.  

I am all for temporary shows, but in moderation, it seems, as one is reminded of the fire-drill sprint.  If you do them all the time, you never have a bubble of quieter mental space in which to, for example, continue scholarship on a museum's permanent collection.  Jeannine, the curator (left in the picture above, with Samantha of the Education department), I visited a James van der Zee photograph I helped pick out, a gift to the museum from the photography guild.

That evening was the book signing at the Little Professor.  

This was another of those amazing gatherings of people that is reason alone to write a book.  Especially touching to watch my parents’ friends and old colleagues turn out in force--the neurosurgeons, the English professors, the Haskells.

Danielle talking to the Smiths. . . 

Group photo with Danielle, my mother's colleagues -- Mary Anne Ivey, Grace Finkel, Lou Cecil (Dick Cecil and Penny Whiteside in the background). . .

With Jean Oliver, whose kids I babysat from when they were nursery-age. . .

The neurology team, part 1: Khurram Bashir and Bevery Layton. . .

The neurology team, part 2: Mark Hadley (in double-breasted suit). . .

Leigh Smith, my sister's best friend from growing up. . . 

The lovely Susan Nettles, lawyer, singer, can lap me on a track without trying. . . 

The next day I went to visit the neurologists at work.  Beverly graciously took me around.  I saw their new offices and visited with a number of people who had worked with my dad.  At some point, Beverly thought I should really see Dr. Oh.  He was in clinic and I think we cut in line ahead of a very sleep-deprived, hard-working resident who had been waiting to see him for an hour and a half.  We visited in Dr. Oh's office.  I showed him my book (Museum Legs).  He showed me his book (a heavy and impressive medical tome the title of which I could hardly pronounce).

Dr. Oh bought a copy of Museum Legs, which I signed to him and his wife (always known to us as Mrs. Dr. Oh -- as she is a doctor too).  I have been really touched by the kind of support for a book that has nothing at all to do with the book itself -- that neither comes from an innate interest in museums, nor from humoring me.  


Art in Everyday Life Redux -- The Cecils. . . 

I haven't yet had a chance to say anything about the Cecils, my hosts.  

Over glorious, simple meals.  I promise to update this blog with Dick's lentil recipe.  I loved hanging out in the art-filled, creativity-filled house. If I am happy in life in proportion to laughter and ideas over a dinner table, it is a wonder I ever left.

In semi-retirement, Lou, who has always been very creative and a potter, converted one of their bedrooms into an art studio --

where she makes all kinds of beautiful things, including a blank, hand-bound book she gave me, in this earthy, beautiful purple paper.

Dick has a very particular, quietly magnificent, improbable art project of his own.

He made this house:

From scratch, board by board, with his own hands.  All of it.

He was showing me how the garage doors work:

To quote from one of the titles I borrowed from the Louise Cecil Lending Library, as write David Bayles and Ted Orland in their book Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking:
"Art is made by ordinary people. . . . The best you can do is make art you care about -- and lots of it! The rest is largely a matter of perseverance."

And as the authors timelessly quote Hippocrates at the outset:

"Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgement difficult."

(The same line, untranslated, closes the introduction to The Tate Modern Handbook: "Ars longa, vita brevis.")

Addendum:

Dick Cecil's Lentil Recipe

3 large onions

6 T. olive oil

in a large skillet

while

4 cup of water w/salt and lots of pepper

come to a boil in a sauce pan

then add 1 1/4 cup lentils

simmer for 15 minutes

then add 3/4 cup rice

summer for 15 minutes more

then combine lentils/rice

with onions/olive oil in

the skillet