Ever since an exhibit of John Steuart Curry at the de Young Museum several years ago, Dan has wanted to photograph a particular painting of his that is owned by the Muskegon Art Museum. Muskegon is about thirty miles north of Grand Rapids, a port city on Lake Michigan. The day we went there the weather was exceedingly gray, and the little town seemed forlorn.
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| Muskegon Museum of art, parking lot entrance |
One might expect all masterpieces and other really significant paintings would be swept up by major institutions, but a wonderful thing about this country is that even a small-town museum might have great works, works that are well worth going out of your way to see. The art museum in Muskegon has a handful of big stars. Curry's painting of a Tornado in Kansas is a good example.
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John Steuart Curry, 1897-1946
Tornado Over Kansas, 1929 |
A restaurant scene by Edward Hopper is also significant to fans.
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Edward Hopper, 1882-1967
New York Restaurant, 1922 |
They have a few good examples of 19th-century American art.
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Severin Roesen 1815-1872
Tabletop Still Life, 1850 |
A great treasure that seems out of place is this religious work by Joos van Cleve.
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Joos van Cleve, c. 1485-c.1540
St. Jerome in Penitence, c. 1518 |
I was fascinated to discover a highly accomplished contemporary black artist named Kadir Nelson. A few of his large works featuring handsome black people were exhibited in a small gallery with glaring daylight from a picture window.
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Kadir Nelson, b. 1974
Game Bus, 2006 |
I also liked the work of a 20th-century black artist named Hughie Lee-Smith who had a slightly surreal style.
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Hughie Lee-Smith, 1915-1999
Aprés-Midi, 1987 |
For lunch Dan decided we should have a Muskegon experience, so he drove down to the Marina. We ate at the Lakeshore Waterfront Restaurant, a pleasant airy place with big windows. A party of about twenty senior women sat between us and a nice view of the boats, the silvery lake, and the tin sky beyond.
On the way back to Grand Rapids we stopped at a convenient Kmart to pick up various supplies.
Back in town we left our car in the motel lot and walked to the Grand Rapids Art Museum—passing the Gerald Ford Museum and the Public Museum, crossing the Grand River by the Pearl Street Bridge, passing the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel and the PNC Bank tower, through a public plaza with benches and lawns, and into the museum's inviting, contemporary building.
The museum's collections range from Renaissance to contemporary.
I was very pleased to see a rare work by a woman artist from the 1600s. Louise Moillon actually had a successful career painting fruits and vegetables.
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Louise Moillon, 1610-1696
Fruit, 1640 |
There were a few magical works by a regional artist who is best known for his paintings of passenger pigeons, a species which used to be numerous but is now extinct.
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Lewis Luman Cross, 1864-1951
Passenger Pigeons, c. 1900 |
Alexander Calder mastered the spirit of imaginative play. This work combines a stationary sculpture with a mobile in a form Calder called an "animobile."
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Alexander Calder, 1898-1976
Blunt-Tail Dog Animobile, n.d. |
Here is a particularly fine work of German Expressionism.
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Max Pechstein, 1881-1953
Reflections, 1922 |
Richard Diebenkorn worked and taught in the San Francisco Bay region; he was part of the Bay Area Figurative movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
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Richard Diebenkorn, 1922-1993
Ingleside, 1963 |
This skillful self-portrait was done by a contemporary artist.
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Michael Triegel, b. 1968
Self-Portrait, 2012 |
When the museum closed, we walked back to the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel to have a drink. This place consists of an older grand hotel, known as the Pantlind plus a more modern wing. We looked into the bars in both lobbies; one was too empty, one was too full. The Cygnus 27 Lounge on the 27th floor was advertising a happy hour, so we went up there. The decor was crisply contemporary and the walls were glass; the views would have been fabulous if there had been any visibility. Still it seemed rather glamorous.
We got a brief sun break on the way over the Pearl Street Bridge. We walked over to the grounds of the Gerald R. Ford museum and took a few pictures.
As a compact metropolis, Grand Rapids makes a surprisingly good tourist destination. It has three museums, a river and a historical hotel within easy walking distance, plus Meier Gardens and Sculpture Park a short drive away.
Our Holiday Inn has quite a nice restaurant called the Pearl Street Grill. Dan and I took all our evening meals here because the waitress and chef would work with us to get just what we wanted, including plenty of fresh veggies.
