Museums

Let’s get out of here

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(Courtesy State Library & Archives of Florida, via Flickr Commons)

Feeling like you need a break?

We do.

Between the news and the weather and, well, really just the news, we’re reading every email that pops into our inbox that has a whiff of something fun to do somewhere else.

Here are some museum exhibits we’re putting on the “let’s go there” list:”

Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form in Seattle

(Du Gu, Zao Dao, 2014, character design for “Le Vent traversant les pin”)

This week Seattle’s MoPop Museum opens Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form, an exhibition that features over 400 works from Japan, China, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Afghanistan, and Vietnam and explores the diversity and creativity of Asian comic art and its powerful impact on global pop culture.

In San Diego: the Spooniverse at Mingei International Museum 

(Photo courtesy of Erica Moody)

Across the Spooniverse opens April 12 and runs through August 17 at San Diego’s charming Mingei International Museum with over 100 spoons from across the globe.

Yes, spoons.

“Some are adorned with exquisite carvings of human and animal figures, and others are brilliant for their simplicity of form,” the exhibit notes tell us. “Some show decades or even centuries of wear and use, and others are pristine. As objects of use, spoons are universally understood.”

(Photo courtesy of Ron Kerner)

250th anniversary of the American Revolution at the Concord Museum

 

The 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution is coming up and in Concord, Massachusetts, the Concord Museum is ready to rumble.

The museum has the best collection of items related to April 19, 1775 – the day “the shot heard round the world” kicked off the American Revolution – including the original lantern used as a signal on the night of Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride.

And for the 250th, more than 200 Revolutionary War-era muskets, powder horns, flints, supplies and other objects will be on display across five galleries. 

Where to go?

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(Queen Elizabeth II by Andy Warhol (1985). Credit: Courtesy of UCR ARTS)

California sounds good

Maybe it’s the new year. Maybe it’s the cold, rainy weather here at Stuck at the Airport headquarters in Seattle.

But we want to go everywhere – and see everything – that pops into our inbox.

In California, the Catalina Museum for Art & History on Catalina Island is getting ready to open Pop Icons, an exhibition that features influential artists of the Pop Art movement.

The exhibition includes a print of Andy Warhol’s f Queen Elizabeth II (1985) and prints from his Campbell’s Soup series, alongside works by other Pop Art figures such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg.

Pop Icons runs January 18 – April 13,  2025

(Stitches by Robert Rauschenberg. Courtesy of UCR ARTS)

Places we’d go: Stradivarius exhibit in Phoenix at the Museum of Musical Instruments

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The Stuck at the Airport Museum Team missed visiting the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, AZ our last time through and we plan to make the MIM our first stop the next time we head that way.

Which may be soon.

The museum displays more than 4,200 instruments representing all the world’s countries and many territories. 

This week MIM unveiled Stradivarius and the Golden Age of Violins and Guitars, showcasing more than 70 exceptional string instruments and bows crafted by master luthiers such as Antonio Stradivari, Andrea Amati, and Giuseppe Guarneri “del Gesù.”

This exhibition includes violins, guitars, lutes, and bows from the 16th to 19th centuries—many of which have never been publicly displayed before.

Exhibition highlights include:

  • The “Tartini” violin by Antonio Stradivari (1726). This comes from late in his golden period when he made his most mature instruments.
  • A mandolino coristo by Antonio Stradivari. This is one of only two known surviving mandolins crafted by the iconic luthier.
  • A violin by Andrea Amati who created the violin and the violin family as we know them today. This violin is one of only twenty-three documented Amati instruments known to survive today.
  • A guitar from the school of Matteo Sellas, c. 1625. This Venetian guitar is embellished with ivory, ebony, tortoiseshell, and pearl, and it has a tiered “wedding cake” rose, a common feature of guitars until the mid-18th century.

If you’re a music fan flying into Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport (PHX), check the airport’s Traveling Tunes live music program schedule. Local artists take the stage and play live music on the Traveling Tunes music stage in Terminal 3, Level 4 on the main concourse, and in the Terminal 4 Food Court on Level 3.

There’s a different musical genre featured each month. And for November the theme is classical.

See you there!

Museum Monday: Vancouver BC’s Museum of Anthropology

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It’s been a while since we had a chance to visit the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus.

The whole museum was closed for more than a year while seismic upgrades were made to the spectacular Great Hall, which has 50-foot-tall glass walls and displays of Northwest Coast poles, house posts, carved figures, canoes, feast dishes and other objects primarily from the mid-19th century.

Work by contemporary artists are mixed in here and there, and there are other temporary exhibitions as well as permanent galleries, including the Koerner European Ceramics Gallery, which displays one man’s collection of over 600 objects.

Beyond the Great Hall, our favorite part of the museum is the Multiversity Galleries displaying more than 16,000 objects from the museum’s permanent collection in open storage and in enticing pull-out drawers.

Impossible to see in one visit, many of the exhibit groupings were created in consultation with members of the communities whose relatives and ancestors made the pieces on display.

SFO Museum celebrates San Francisco

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Here’s a great reason to plan or be thankful for a long layover at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

The SFO Museum‘s newest exhibition, San Francisco: City of the World, offers travelers a thoughtful, fun and educational look at the iconic city’s colorful history.

Find it post-security in Terminal 2 through July 6, 2025.

A preview of images and information from the exhibit is below.

Content and images courtesy of SFO Museum.

In 1848, gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The following year, more than seven hundred ships arrived in San Francisco.

The Gold Rush transformed the region into a bustling city of approximately twenty-five thousand inhabitants, including thousands of Chinese immigrants who established California’s oldest and largest Chinatown.

Andrew Smith Hallidie (1836–1900) tested the first cable car in 1873 on Clay Street and public service began in September that same year.

By the turn of the twentieth century, San Francisco was known as the “Paris of the West,” until the 1906 earthquake and resulting fires leveled the city.

The resilient metropolis was quickly rebuilt, and during the early 1900s numerous San Francisco landmarks, such as Coit Tower (1933) and the Golden Gate Bridge (1937)—the most photographed bridge in the world—were built. In addition to its natural beauty and historical sites, San Francisco has long served as a meeting ground for diverse groups of people and countercultures, which are also explored throughout the exhibition.