This week, I wrapped up work travel for the Fall Season. I don’t generally write about my work here, but it’s enough to say that my job takes me away from home around once a month. During Fall Conference Season, I’m away more often than that. I have loved travel for travel’s sake since I was a little girl, and it’s not an interest shared by my immediate family. It’s been a good thing to have work that takes me around the nation. I scratch the travel itch, and the family doesn’t have to face their travel angst. No judgement on them: it’s hard for neurodiverse folks -- including one with Type One Diabetes -- to hit the road.
I like air travel. I like buses. I like subways. I like light rail. I have yet to find a justification for Amtrak for my work travel, but I’m sure I’d like long distance rail travel, too.
These are not popular opinions. I enjoy the airport. I even enjoy the Atlanta airport a little bit. I sound like I need a wellness check.
I wasn’t joking when I said I like travel for its own sake. I like packing cubes. I have opinions on suitcases. I have an extra set of toiletries that are always packed and ready to go. I have a travel uniform.” I own compression socks.
I adore my family, and I miss them when I’m gone. My October travel this year was almost too much, I missed them so.
But my feet are always itching because travel allows for magnificent eavesdropping and people watching and because I love art. Whenever possible, I find an hour at an art museum. Over the months in different towns and cities, the exhibits begin to tell stories to each other in my mind.
Here are the exhibits I took in during this travel season and recommend if you find the opportunity.
Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of DY Begay at the National Museum of the American Indian through July 13, 2025 -- I went because I thought I should as a good Berean, even though textiles aren’t generally my thing. I left transformed. The exhibit is a great retrospective of how an artist’s passions and interests change and develop over time, even while the medium of tapestry remains the same. I felt like I really grasped the idea of fiber art for the first time.
Power and Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey at the National Archives, now closed. -- This was a small, easy portable exhibit, so I hope that means it will pop up in other spots. An incredibly lovely depiction of life in the coal fields post WW2. The humanity with which Lee photographed miners and the families is rarely seen. Without preaching, this exhibit was one sermon against Appalachian stereotypes. Lee had a way of catching his subjects’ eyes and sightlines so that you felt like you KNEW those people.
Wild Things: the Art of Maurice Sendak at the Denver Art Museum through February 2025 -- I almost didn’t pay the five dollars extra to see this exhibit. I’ve never been a huge Sendak fan as I was scared of the Wild Things when I was a little girl. I was so wrong, and I’m glad I went. Sendak’s approach to his art was so much more complicated than I imagined from my own childhood fears. I imagine this one will travel to other museums. Worth catching.
Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment at the National Gallery of Art through January 2025 -- A historical exploration of how Impressionism came to be in the wake of losses in war and civil war. Cast off anything you learned in high school humanities about the Salon vs the Impressionists. This exhibit tells a much more complex story of how both the Salon artists and the Impressionists were grappling with the same theme and same world of chaos and loss. I loved this historical dive that reminded me that the Impressionists are more than greeting cards, tote bags, and umbrellas, even if all of those were for sale in the gift shop.
Also seen this fall: Weaving a Foundation at the Denver Art Museum, Unbound: Narrative of the Plains at the National Museum of the American Indian, This Evening, This Morning, So Soon: James Baldwin the Voices of the Queer Resistance at the National Portrait Gallery, Basquiat X Bansky at the Hirshhorn, and the Eisenhower Memorial by Frank Gehry.
The Textile Conservation Studio at the Denver Art Museum